All that aside, I can’t imagine how a community station on a fixed budget would not take the minimal and relatively inexpensive steps necessary to reach a global audience. There are countless web-only stations people are running out of their own homes without any sort of community sponsorship.

The impression I get is that WAIF is run like someone’s private fiefdom. Then to read some of the responses on here from people apparently involved in the station.. Vague threats and confusing innuendo.. Clearly this is not the way to survive as an NPO in a struggling economy. For a community-supported station there seems to be a serious lack of transparency and zero visibility in the community being served. I can’t remember once seeing a WAIF booth at any event in the city in the ~15 years I’ve lived here.

I have a feeling that nothing is going to change at the station until the donations drop off to a point where it’s unavoidable. By that point the station will probably be history.

Thanks for writing this. No one at the station has mentioned the stream even being down. I am seeing this now because I had refered a potential interview guest to this site to show that the station streams and they said ‘uh..nope’. I wanted to say a couple of things - prior to reading this my thoughts were that someone was a dull crayon and didn’t know how to stream properly and I was rather upset that the station wouldn’t take action..but now that I have read this, it makes complete sense. I am a volunteer at the station and I am well aware of how non-chalant the BOT is and how ‘ungrateful’ people come across. It wears on all volunteers but we have to remember that they are volunteers as well and perhaps taking on the role in the BOT is draining to them. I tell myself this so I can overlook unpleasant behavior and turn my cheek. I would like to thank you for all of your dedication and hardwork over the many years that you have worked with WAIF. It has been greatly appreciated (and now more apparent in this blog! thanks).

I left Cincinnati a few years ago and I was very thankful for the WAIF stream when I found it online. It was a nice slice of home.

With all of the corruption, infighting, and counter-productive B.S. that I’ve heard about down at WAIF over the years, (microcosm of Cincinnati that it is) I was a bit surprised that they had ever managed to get a streaming-service up and running to begin with.

The fact that it was set-up and maintained by a volunteer, (out-of-pocket, no-less) comes as little surprise to me after reading your article. What do they do with the money people send-in to support them? Nevermind, forget I asked that.

Anyway, thanks a lot for all of your efforts. I am sad to see it go but I don’t blame you for throwing your hands up in frustration. Sometimes I wonder how that station manages to stay on the air.

The board of directors needs to drop the egos, pull their damn heads out of their asses and start treating the volunteers and the community with some respect for a change.

I’d really like to see WAIF get back to what was once a really cool, small-town, all-volunteer radio-station instead of a perpetual embarrassment to read about in the local weeklies (and now, online).

Wish in one hand…

Cheers!