New Listeners from TiVO and iTunes!

A quick note of thanks to the folks who've emailed me lately and noted that they found PLANET ZEB! on TiVO and iTunes and have started listening.... it's great to have you join the worldwide "family" around here, and I hope you'll continue to email your requests, comments, thoughts, etc. as you enjoy the music! Mentions of PZ are on the upswing in personal blogs and chat boards around the 'net, too, which is wonderful... because now, as has always been the case, this is YOUR independent internet radio station and the BEST way of getting the word out about it is by satisfied friends telling other friends to give PLANET ZEB! a try. I can't tell ya how many emails I've gotten in the past that begin something like "hey, a pal at work told me to listen, and I did, and now I'm a regular."

That's a great feeling because ALSO now, as has always been the case, PLANET ZEB! is a cooperative venture between YOU, the station's other fans around the globe and li'l ole me. None of us are here for the money, because there isn't any. Some of us contribute to the costs of keeping the station rockin', most notably me out of my personal bank account and a handful of much-appreciated listeners who contribute semi-regularly with the PayPal links on our website. ALL of us are here because we love a good mix of rock, popular hits and a few "guilty pleasures" from the deep, dark recesses of our lives and think that eclecticism and creativity still have a place on the air. We also believe that music and radio are too important-- too critical in the modern day-- to leave in the hands of multi-mega-billionaire corporate conglomerates to which they're mere commodities!!!

Music LIVES on PLANET ZEB!... it breathes.... occasionally it even buys a lottery ticket and a pack of Camels (laugh). The point is that every time a new listener emails to say hello and/or "good job," well.... that's EXACTLY why the station is still kickin'. You make it what it is. For which I have to say in return, "thank you." :)

Z

It's getting WARMERRRR.... :)

Hiya, team! Well, dunno about where you are, but here in the Raleigh/Durham metro-nstrosity (fly into RDU airport someday and look at all the middle-class "McHouses" that have popped up all over the place. Some very bad and unimaginative land developers have almost every single local politician here in their back pocket, and they hate trees and want to strip the region of them. But alas, I digress.), things have been warming up dramatically weather-wise lately. Admittedly, summers here are marginally better than my hometown of Baton Rouge, LA because of the lack of humidity-- but just MARGINALLY! I also miss Charleston, SC, where PLANET ZEB! was actually born six li'l ole years ago.

Speaking of which... HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO... er... me.. er... rad...er, PLANET ZEB!!! It was back in Chuck-town on April 1, 2000 that we officially went on the air for the very first time, after spending most of March, 2000 (and a few weeks of February, too) learning the ropes of this internet broadcasting bitrate-upload-FTP-download-etc. stuff. I self-taught m'self a crash-course in it, and managed to get an early four-to-five hour stream going back in the early days of Live365. The station started largely as a self-indulgent attempt to hear a lot of my favorite rock and chart-hitting classics from the 1980s back on something that sounded "radioish" again, my having left the full-time announcing business circa 1993. Just me and a couple of old radio buddies who'd think it was kinda cool, I initially thought. ;)

Well, here we are SIX YEARS later-- and wow, it seems like 10 or more. There've been so many changes.... the business has been so fundamentally altered by so many different things, I won't even try to mention a FEW of them here. And PLANET ZEB! survives and thrives, thanks to a completely unexpected-- but always appreciated-- loyal core of listeners like YOU who come along and seem to groove on the same mix of music I and those ole radio buddies do. It's actually something of a "specialty" hybrid AOR/CHR format you hear that a pal and I hammered out at WLCS in Baton Rouge waaay back when... but it worked then, and I had great hopes it'd work again in an era of over-corporatized, over-commercialized, over-cult-of-celebritized and grossly under-imaginative period of modern music that we're smack dab in the middle of now. And it did!!!

THANK YOU for your continued support of PLANET ZEB, as well as for sitting through as brief a "quick rumination" as I could muster for a blog update what with the station birthday having just passed and all. And please-- don't be a stranger! Drop me an email with anything on your mind whenever you want to write, and I'll respond just as soon as I can. Alternatively, you can leave your comments here on the blog by writing a response... that all our other bloggers can check in on and comment on as well!

And even after six long years with every deep-pocketed music interest in the world seemingly wanting to destroy independent internet radio... thanks again for helping PLANET ZEB! remain completely independent, home-grown-and-owned and on the air PURELY for the love of the music. I know it's why you listen, as well, and I'll never forget it. :)

Cheers!

Zeb