24 Hour Dissident Radio

I think that, in terms of content, the Dissident Right could currently run a 24-hour radio station.

I spoke about this briefly during my time on American Volk, but I’d like to expand on the math and some things anyone wanting to do this should keep in mind.

Take note: I have no clue what the technical requirements of this would be, whether this would be a money-making or money-losing venture, or if there’s any audience demand for this. I’m just saying there’s enough content out there to get it done. Also, I’m using the term Dissident Right instead of Alt-Right to keep the net reasonably broad. I’m not sure I’d count Reactionary Ian’s Christian Hangout as strictly Alt-Right, but I don’t think there would be much controversy in including something like that as part of a Sunday line-up.

First: What needs to be done.

A 24-hour radio station needs to be 24-hours. Since when you talk about TV, you talk about weekly schedules (and most Dissident Right podcasts seem to be weekly), we’ll assume that the schedule won’t change much between weeks. We can figure out seasons of shows after we get this part figured out.

A week has 168 hours. We need to fill those hours.

Second: What should we fill them with?

1. Podcasts

The obvious first answer is podcasts. There are currently 19 shows on TRS Radio. I know that there are a bunch of other podcasts that are not on TRS but are generally aligned with the Dissident Right (NRx, Paleocon, etc…). I don’t think it would be too out-there to suggest that we could find 30 podcasts that would fit with what we want. Convincing the people involved would be up to someone far more persuasive than I.

2. Music

I’m not sure how much music is being made in the Dissident Right, but I know there’s some (See here, here, and here). So, let’s assume that there’s enough content for something, but not nearly as much as for the podcasts.

3. News

I think this would be something worth having, but I have no clue who would be willing to do it or how it would be done. I think something like ten minutes every two hours, where someone comes on live to talk about any breaking news, or, if there’s no news, shitpost. I’m going to leave this off of my calculation because I have no one in mind that would want to take on that role. However, anyone wanting to do this should consider finding a news guy.

4. Books/Poetry

One awesome thing about the internet is that we have access to a nearly limitless supply of free, public domain literature. Anything published before 1923 is just free. This makes for an almost limitless content farm. Any time that has not been filled by some other kind of content could be filled by people just reading. At first, before the radio station is big enough that everyone and his brother wants to read their favourite book on-air (or have their recording played on-air, as the technical case may be), the station could use text-to-speech software to have the books read automatically. Sure, it’d sound kinda shitty, but it’d be better than dead air, and you could put it in the graveyard shifts.

5. Ads

Ads should definitely be something that anyone doing this should try to get. Any business even vaguely OK with our views should be approached. Have the E-Book merchants prepare 30 second spots for their books (You can find mine here). Price it so it’s worth it, as in almost nothing to start. Everyone who could possibly be interested should be approached. Make it clear exactly who we are and the kinds of things we believe, and let them pick whichever show is tame enough for their sensibilities. I don’t think this is likely to be successful, especially not at first, but if Joy Villa could boost her album sales by a billion percent by wearing a MAGA dress, maybe there’s a company willing to give up on wider appeal in exchange for a small but dedicated audience. But, again, unlikely, so I’ll leave ads out of the calculation. The goal should be for book reading time to slowly be replaced with ad time.

6. Other stuff

I’m sure that other things could be used to fill the time. I’m not sure what these are, so I will leave them out of the calculation as well. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments.

Third: How many hours would that work out to?

1. So, we have 30 podcasts. Let’s say we can all agree on the top 5 podcasts. This could be based on an award system, listener count, ad revenue, who the hell knows. It’d probably start off as viewer count, then move to ad revenue when that metric becomes feasible.

Those top 5 podcasts are probably 2 hours per episode, since most of the top podcasts are at least 2 hours. Each of these podcasts get five, two hour slots per week, one show per weekday. I assume that these podcasts would fill that time with one new episode and four reruns, but if they wanted to they could do five new episodes per week.

So that eats up 50 hours per week

Hours left: 118

2. So we have 25 other podcasts. Let’s split them into second and third tier. Again, this could be listener count, audience rating, ad revenue, whatever. Fifteen of them are second tier, ten are third tier. Second tier podcasts get two, two hour slots, third tier podcasts get either two slots that are each an hour, or one slot that is two hours. No reason why moving around the rankings couldn’t be possible, or making any tier larger or smaller than this. This is just an example set-up.

That’s a lot of weird numbers, but how does the math work out?

15 shows with two two hour slots. That’s 15 shows with 4 hours per week each. That’s 60 hours.

10 shows with two hours of slotted time per week. That’s 20 hours.

So that makes another 80 hours per week.

Hours left: 38

3. Let’s assume that we can fill four hours per day with musical programming. No reason why the music would have to be as rerun-phobic as the podcasts, no one minds hearing the same song twice in a day, as long as it’s not twice in a row.

That’s another 28 hours of programming per week.

Hours left: 10

4. Ten hours. That’s around the length of time it takes to read The Iliad straight. There are an absolute ton of books that could be read, for free, on air to fill up this time. And ten hours feels about right for how much advertising you would want to eventually have, approximately 3.5 minutes per hour.

Hours left: 0

Fourth: How would that be worked out?

This is all very hypothetical, but I could see this working as follows:

1. Top-tier podcasts. First thing to do would be to determine Prime Time. When are most people listening to radio, especially online radio? Find that block of time. I believe it’s morning and evening drives. Split that time into five timeslots, give them out to these five podcasts based on their ranking and what time they’d prefer. One suggestion: make sure each podcast has a different slot per day. That way someone who only listens from, say, 7am-9am doesn’t get the same episode of the same show every day.
2. Second- and third-tier. These would be divided the same way as top-tier podcasts, based on their rank and when they want their time to be. Another suggestion, give podcasts based outside of American time-zones priority for their timezone. For example, give an Australian podcast first priority during Australia’s prime-time, a British podcast first priority during Britain’s prime-time.
3. Music. My feeling is music would be used to fill whatever isn’t filled by podcasts. However, if a music program ends up being really popular, they could certainly be included in the ranking that determines time-slots for podcasts.
4. Books. Again, books and poetry would be used to fill whatever time is left over.
5. Ads. 3.5 minutes per hour works out pretty well. My suggestion would be 7 thirty-second time slots, 4 on the hour, 3 at the thirty minute mark. Or, if you had 6 instead of 7, one every 20 minutes.

Final Thoughts

Again, I have no idea about the technical aspects of this, or if this would be a desirable thing for anyone involved. But a couple of people have talked about this, and I wanted to flesh out exactly how a 24-hour Dissident Right online radio station would work.

What you do with this information is up to you.