The Collective Voice Radio Broadcast aired from 2002 until 2008. By the time of its conclusion, Collective Voice was featured weekly on eight radio stations in North America, and was downloaded over 2,500 times on a monthly basis as a podcast.
I started Collective Voice in autumn of 2002 shortly after I discovered that CHMR-FM, the campus radio station in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, accepted non-students as volunteers. My interest in radio extended back to childhood, and the prospect of sharing largely obscure music which I felt was worthy of a larger audience was very exciting. The initial live broadcasts were seven hours (later expanded to eight hours) in length, and began on Thursdays at midnight. This early manifestation included a wide variety of requests from listeners situated in range of the station's signal at 93.5 FM, and by individuals abroad who caught the broadcast by means of streaming internet feeds. Later editions were a combination of live and prerecorded elements; this format persisted until the summer of 2005 by which time the program was entirely prerecorded in order to facilitate syndication.
The first affiliate station to broadcast Collective Voice was CKDU-FM 88.1 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which picked up the show in autumn of 2005. Other stations later carried the program, such as CHMA-FM 106.9 in Sackville, New Brunswick; CJSF-FM 90.1 in Burnaby, British Columbia; CFXU-FM 92.5 in Antigonish, Nova Scotia; Radio Driftless in Driftless, Wisconsin; CHSR-FM 97.9 in Fredericton, New Brunswick; and CILU-FM 102.7 in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
The syndicated era encapsulates many of my proudest moments as host of Collective Voice. Amongst an assortment of features on legendary and soon-to-be-legendary acts and organizations, some notable guests from the past two and a half years include Michael Gira, Jessica Bailiff, Boyd Rice, Lily Frost, the Deathbomb Arc records label, Excepter, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Idea Fire Company, Black Dice, Panicsville, Irene Moon, and Zack Kouns.
Feeling that I accomplished much more than I had set out to do with this radio series, the final edition of Collective Voice proper aired on May 01, 2008. Presently there are no plans to revive Collective Voice as an active weekly radio program; however, there is always the possibility of occasional one-off podcast editions. Check this space in the future for more details, or subscribe to the Collective Voice RSS feed. CJSF has expressed interest in rebroadcasting, in sequential order, all editions of the program from January 2006 onwards. Please check the station's schedule for full details.
The Collective Voice podcast archive will remain online for the foreseeable future as a part of http://www.ownness.org
Thank you for your interest.
- Rory Hinchey, May 2008
