Monday, September 23, 2024

Radio show ending


From Beth Riley:

For the last 10+ years, my husband James has done 3 radio shows. It started with Rockabilly N Blues Radio Hour, then went to Catching A Wave (2 different versions) and finally he joined me on my show Boppin' With Beth. He edited and produced all of them. We both put a lot of hard work into them, including planning, research and the actual recording part. There are a lot of things that you might not know about behind the scenes....the anxiety, the frustration, the stress. All you got to hear was the final products of the shows and that always sounded amazing.

James and I used to do radio promotions together but when COVID hit back in 2020, things kind of slowed down a bit due to artists not touring and/or recording as much or in some cases, at all.

In March of 2022, James went into the hospital after being sick for over a week. He was in ketoacidosis and almost died due to how high his blood sugar was. It was 607 upon arrival. He spent 6 days in the hospital and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes (which he didn't know about before), he also had pancreatitis and was in stage 3 kidney failure. It was the scariest time of our lives. James was on insulin 3 times a day for several months (administered by yours truly). He was able to get off of insulin and just take metformin to control his diabetes but we haven't really been able to get over the 6 day hospital stay. He has severe anxiety, stress and to be honest a little PTSD from the days at the hospital.

At the end of 2023, we made the decision to stop doing radio promotions altogether because we had a lot of clients that we had given discounts to in the past, go with new promoters. We were a bit hurt by that but we still wanted to do radio shows and make scheduling music our main focus. To be honest, we were just burnt out. James has been doing Radio promotions for over 30 years and hasn't done anything else that paid in that time.

We stopped doing the radio shows because it was becoming too much. Way too much.....for both of us.

Here's the thing, we knew that radio shows didn't earn us any income but it was a labor of love....a hobby.... something we did to make people happy....and it made us happy. When it stopped making us happy, we knew we needed to make a change. I have a full time job. I am doing very well there and I want to move up at the company I work at.

I feel like I needed to explain everything BUT I also want to try to get James a little help too. If you read this and have appreciated anything that James has done in the last 10 1/2 years, show him some love and support. I'm asking for donations because although we did our shows for free....the quality of his work needs to be paid for. A dollar or 2 would go a long way. He would never ask anyone for anything but I would do anything for him. Your donation would go to whatever the next thing may be. Thank you for reading this!

Ways to donate:

Cash App:

$BethRiley050420

PayPal:

bethriley1969@gmail.com

Venmo:

@Beth-Riley-46

Mailing address available on request.