WKIT to discontinue streaming (April 17, 2004)

Update from WKIT:

A Message About Streaming April 16, 2004

WKIT will stop its internet streaming at the end of this month, April 2004. Yep, it's a money thing. When we began streaming in 1998, it was a great feeling to be on the "cutting edge", and everyone's figured that most radio stations would have streams available online in the years to follow. Also, streaming was a fairly inexpensive experiment at the time. We have never made money by streaming. We've paid out money since month one to be able to provide the service. But in the past few months, music licensing companies and others have agreed that they want a much bigger piece of a pie that just ain't there. Again, we've never made a penny streaming. In fact, the more people tune in, the more it costs now. It's something that the company can't justify doing. We wish it was different.

All kinds of people have been listening... locals who listen over their computers at work, Mainers who can't quite pick us up with the radio at home, and we've heard from people not only across the country, but all over the world. We've also heard from many men and women in the Armed Forces (from Maine and from away) who have told us they felt a little closer to home being able to hear us. We're thankful to everyone who's enjoyed this little Bangor radio station.

WKIT Ceases Internet Casting (April 27, 2004)

Soon to be former WKIT deejay, Jeremy Mixer, when asked if WKIT would reconsider and offer the WKIT Internet feed on a pay service, gives more insight:

"The problem with having a subscription service is how the internet stream is distributed, as well as the fact that there are probaby other licensing issues that the station would have to do if they were making money off of the streaming. When we got our new computer system about 2-3 years ago, it was unnecesarry to block out commercials from the internet stream. Unfortunately, it came to a time when we had to. The engineer installed a small switch which lit up when blocking the feed. Once the light burned out, sometimes it was not as easy to do this. And it may suprise you, but I am not the only one who has forgotten to flip the switch and blocked out programming that was not meant to be blocked out. There are a lot of things going on at any given time that sometimes it's just a simple oversight. One that can piss a LOT of people off, but as posted in the message just before this one- WKIT does not make money off of the internet streaming, nor has it ever. WKIT makes money from it's local listeners, and the ratings from Arbtron that we get from our local listeners. The internet stream means diddlysquat to potential advertisers- they are looking to advertise the the greater Brewer/Bangor area.

"The solution? Install a new computer system that automatically blocks out commercials that are produced by AFTRA talent, and replaces them with either a local promo or music.

"The problem- The company does not have the money, or the patience, to suddenly up and get a brand new computer system for WKIT. If that happened, since the computers for all three stations, WKIT, WDME, and WZON, all run off of each other, use many of the same commercials, etc, then a new computer system would have to be purchased for every station.

"I can hear someone crying "But Stephen King owns the station, he can afford it!"

"While the radio station IS owned by him and his wife, Tabitha- it runs as an independent business and that's how they want it to be run. It's not worth it for him to pump tons of money into the station every year, if that were happening we probably already would have been swallowed up by Clear Channel years ago because we ARE a successful station.

"The ones who lose out are you guys- the ones who have listened to the station for many years...and of course we feel bad about that. But as a business, sometimes you have to make decisions that do not work for everyone involved. And unfortunately, this is one of them.

"I somewhat lose out too, after Dr. Demento, tonight will be my last shift on WKIT and I will be moving 2 1/2 hours south of Bangor to Old Orchard Beach, where I pick up a completely different Clear Channel station on the 100.3 frequency. I was looking forward to listening over the internet after I left and now I can't....and I really will miss this station, the listeners, and everyone that works there.

"Thanks for the years of support!"

Jeremy Mixer
soon to be ex-WKIT overnight guy