THE SOUL GUY
More Soul Than You Can Shake A Stick At!
Since the closure of Rosko Radio, we've lost track of the number of people who have asked what happened, so here's a rundown on how the station came into being and why it finally collapsed.Back in 2001, Emperor Rosko was looking for funding to start up his own station and approached me for some ideas and suggestions. He also sent a pile of demo shows over on CD so I could hear exactly where he was coming from with the proposed project. Having listened to the demos, which were incredibly good, I suggested that a webstation may be the best solution - there certainly weren't as many internet stations around in those days as there are today. Rosko mulled it over for a while and came back to say he was looking for sponsorship for a 'proper' station, as webcasting wasn't exactly real radio by his standards - a fair comment really when you consider that the potential of internet radio hadn't yet been recognised - so we left it at that and carried on with other projects.
During the following years, we discussed the project intermittently as we produced CDs such as Rosko Uncut etc, perhaps too distracted to realise that a revolution was going on right under our noses - internet radio was beginning to explode. By this time, nearly five years had gone by.
During the following years, we discussed the project intermittently as we produced CDs such as Rosko Uncut etc, perhaps too distracted to realise that a revolution was going on right under our noses - internet radio was beginning to explode. By this time, nearly five years had gone by.
In September 2006, we again discussed Rosko Radio to see if there was any way forward with the project and came up with the idea of funding it ourselves for the first year, which would give us the breathing space of twelve months to find sponsorship. By now internet radio was in full swing and everyone was beginning to come to the conclusion that broadcasting on the web could be the future of radio in the twenty first century, so we pooled our resources and decided Live 365 was probably the best server to use. The project then suffered its first casualty. Karl King in Vancouver, who in addition to bringing his production skills to the table and agreeing to present The Karl King Show, had become ill and was unable to take part in the foreseeable future. This was a bitter disappointment to me personally, as Karl and I had been friends a long time, so we then decided to bring in our other friend Bruno Hantson from Belgium as our third jock - a decision that turned out to be an inspired choice, but there were now thousands of internet stations in the mix, so how could Rosko Radio stand out from the crowd? Again, we had long discussions and found that the answer had been there all along - Rosko had always wanted to show his appreciation to the loyal fans who had followed him throughout his long and colourful career, so we decided to set up Rosko Radio as a tribute station to them - as far as we know, no other DJ has actually done anything similar at their own expense to this day.
It was now January 2007 and the whole thing was finally in place - Rosko Radio launched as a Soul station on Live 365 and took its chances with all the other stations on the web. The station had its teething problems, but between Emp, Bruno and myself, the technical glitches were soon ironed out and things began to run smoothly. As anyone who has ever set up a webstation of their own will know, you don't just walk into a pre-ordained audience - a new station starts from scratch with little or no listeners at the outset, so it can be rather daunting at first - but perseverance can yield results. Rosko Radio picked up a few hundred listeners in the first week. From then on, the only way was up and the audiences grew and grew until we found ourselves broadcasting into over twenty countries around the world.
At this point it was becoming obvious that the station needed to expand, so we began to think about bringing in other DJs and playing different types of music to cater for the diverse tastes of our new audiences - a reshuffle was on the cards. Rosko was to expand his music and play whatever took his fancy, Bruno was still to present his Soul Box shows, we brought in GT to present the Rare & Classic Soul shows and I moved over to handle the Rock shows. So now we were four.
It was then that I noticed what was going on in Manchester UK - a melting pot of fresh, raw musical talent, most of whom were unsigned, so having consulted with Rosko, I approached Matt Barnes, who runs the Manchester Is Music website and has his finger on the pulse of the Manchester music scene, to cut some shows for us. Matt agreed to come aboard to showcase the latest talent and events in Manchester, so now we were five, but what we really needed was a female DJ, so we enlisted Janet to play the Love Songs Hour - a show which was very well received by our audiences. Other commitments prevented Janet from doing further shows, so into the breech stepped Wendy to present love songs and personal favourites - again, a show that went down a storm with the listeners. In addition to Wendy, we also brought in the outrageous Gaston Gaye to present The Gaston Gaye Experience. By now it was December 2007 and to compliment our adventures on Live 365, we were also podcasting to keep up with audience demand, and were producing our own monthly e-letter, but just as we found the correct formula of seven DJs, doubled our figures and were now in over forty countries across the globe, our time had ran out. We had been unable to find the sponsorship we needed to continue to grow, so Rosko Radio closed in January 2008 - but what a year it had been!
To see the project go from nothing to one of the most popular stations on the internet was quite staggering, but it all came down to money in the end - or the lack of it. I'm sure the other jocks would agree when I say that had we found the financing we needed, Rosko Radio would certainly be a force to be reckoned with today.
In the months since the station closed, we have all reflected on Rosko Radio - maybe we should have done it all six years ago - maybe it got too big too soon, but in any event, Rosko Radio did exactly what it said on the tin - it delivered music which wasn't played anywhere else on radio and maintained a worldwide audience thanks to the loyalty of Rosko fans both old and new, plus of course the dedication of the DJs who gave their time freely to accomplish this goal.
No doubt, the Rosko Radio team could be reunited should a sponsor come forward at some point in the future - if you are that sponsor, you can contact Emperor Rosko directly by clicking here:
