Celebrating the podcast's 17th birthday by talking to Amanda Guest about the 10th birthday of the radio station she founded, BFF.fm.
Show notes:
- Amanda was last on the podcast 10 years ago talking about moving to SF and launching BFF.fm
- Plenty of surprises along the way
- She was a DJ at the Salem State College (now University) station for 18 years
- Commercial radio was already being automated in the mid-'90s
- Built a studio in the Secret Alley in SF
- A lot of the DJs at BFF now weren't alive when Amanda was DJing in the '90s
- Shorter attention spans: Newer DJs are doing one-hour shows
- Jay has been doing a show for BFF since the station started
- "Where's Koomdogg?"
- Building exposure through a crazy boat DJing gig
- Became a nonprofit in 2015
- Amanda was hired as the GM of the station, now doing it full-time
- Went from dues-based organization to nonprofit
- Allows BFF to fundraise and get grants
- Celebrating the station's 10th birthday with events throughout the city
- Amanda plans to stay involved but wants to retire at some point
- SF went into COVID lockdown early and stayed in it the longest
- Studio had to shut down so BFF enabled DJs to broadcast from home
- Found free space in the SF Ferry Building so were able to broadcast from there
- The future of radio won't get less corporate
- Not a lot of commercial stations for indie music, except for college stations
- Amanda: Big electronic music movement happening in SF
- Looking for new music
- The DJ as curator
- BFF has 120 shows on the schedule, most done live in the studio
- Different approaches to show construction
- Great achievements in song segues
- Jay: Coming up on 500 episodes of the radio show
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.