Stick the Landing
Written by Rick O The Terrible on November 19, 2023
Hey Folks Rick O Here, I wanted to figure out how I was even going to open up with this since you guys can see the renovation is looking mighty fine. I first off want to thank everyone for tuning in everyday. I don’t want to make a long statement, as that can happen sometimes but I do want to be very transparent. So I want to cover a couple of topics so we can stick the landing on this one a little more comfortably. HatchetRadio is changing some things up and its on more of getting back to our roots. So I think a lot of fans know who we are. We’ve been the #1 Underground Station for over 20 years, and we’ve not even felt aged. Our website and a few other things have however. It’s not for lack of caring, nor is it for lack of planning, it’s just lack of time between a handful of folks who have been around the station over the past decade now running it. Still the original owners, still the original network guys, webmasters. Been that way for 2 decades, as others would claim different.
The changes we are making and have made have been detrimental to keeping the website smoother and operational. We started a staff alumni page back in 2020, reached out and paid homage to all of our staff, honoring them with a place on the website that would of course show up on Archive’s website for them to fall back on professionally if need be. We reached out to quite a few people, and we received no replies when updating them, and the replies that we did get were very negative in fashion, unprovoked, and simply put rude & unprofessional. We decided that from that point, that because we had reached out and gotten no replies from the former staff, that we were going to move forward with the renovation and remove them and their content from the website, as to not create any future issues with any future plans we may have.
Our intentions were to line up the alumni staff with a bit more comprehensive in depth build on them, give them more of an up to date look while giving them control of their content as far as what they wanted added. Some people are private and we respect that. So when you’re doing a renovation and the parts you are working on are blanks in the way, or someone who no longer wants to participate, you have to move forward with what’s planned. This is NOT a disrespect piece nor have any of my past posts been either. They are just simple observations and explanations to the fans as to why things change. What this just does is it puts it on the backburner until we can get more up to date interest on people. We’ll be adding staff as they pop in, and agree to participate. We want them to be happy with what they have on their bios. We will also be renovating the staff bio’s when we get the time, but this just made it easier to sort out the active ones for us in the back.
Now onto Big Stink Item #2. So in 2013, we decided to partner up with Shoutcast. This provided us with many licensing luxuries, and other things that were super cool for us to experience, it also put us into the mix with larger sponsored radio stations as we were in the search near them, so people showed interests in our station and it gave us the ability to expand outwards with other projects, but it came with a bit of a cost, and it meant we had to follow guidelines which were a bit more intense than what they are currently with our new host. We had to cut back on multi artist tracks, and basically put other music into the mix in order for us to keep our partnership. Once that ended recently, and our “No Compete” which honestly didn’t really affect us because we kept the format when we left up because the formula worked. I decided to go in and prune most of that content out and get HatchetRadio back to being HatchetRadio in the statement of paying respects to our roots in some way.
We will still have some goodies in the mix, just because it adds to it, but we’ve gotten rid of a lot and I do mean a lot of stuff I wouldn’t listen to in the car. We are still going to support our Indie, and Horrorcore fans, as well as provide you guys with exclusive content from the network. But We had to cut back on some of the things that were playing. I was listening while I worked and the music just didn’t make any sense one day, and it was just something that caught me by surprise because usually when I do listen it’s killing it, but I had no choice but to just get rid of some of the stuff that was on there. So for those of you who exclusively tune in for what I removed. I’m sorry, but I’m not.
The last part I want to tell everyone is that HatchetRadio is always developing new things. We have HatchetShack Discord for anyone who would like to join us live. We keep it real in there. We are also moving forward with all new events, covering more social media streams with our talent, and we have a lot more coming in 2024. Just keep your head on a swivel! Until then Thank you guys for your much needed hits and reads and much needed understanding. Until then, love peace & chicken grease. – Rick O