A few years back I began the JacoToday project to help local businesses in concert with other areas of interest and time investment. It was mean to be a place where people who didnt have Facebook or other social media could still come and get timely, relevant information, business news, school related info and much more. I was doing this while I was working with a great staff at WJAQ 100.9 as the general manager / IT guy / whatever else but with the constant struggle and day to day grind of keeping staff, FCC compliance and radio towers falling and such I let the project go.
Now I am resurrecting it in part because I have been asked to get the radio station back on the air for the last two years and in part simply because I found a love for radio and community in new ways that I had never had before. In 18 short months of working there I met Jackson County people through the station that I had never known and had a great staff and co-host (Dee Armstrong) that kept me in line and on my toes. I think Dee was seeing how close to the edge she could push me before I freaked out. Lifetime friendships built.
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Jackson County needs a resource for news, weather, local and business and I know it more than ever before. Never a week goes by that one or more people dont as me about the station. I worked 18 months to bring the station back to life and with the support and teamwork of the staff we made significant improvements in broadcast quality, more and different entertainment, contests and fun and turned ot over to Dee confident in her abilities and passion for the station and the community. She made more impact in the last 3 months as I did the first 6. However you have to have a tower to broadcast from when you are running an AM / FM operation and that was a critical loss whenever the tower was lost. The tower was leased from the city of Marianna and they made a difficult decision to not bring it back. Due to the very low prices we charged for radio spots the revenue just wasnt there to go on the more commercial towers that would have multiplied the lease by 10X. We approached the county and Rett Daniels was extremely supportive of finding a location and assisting us but exhausted all measures and we just couldn’t get a deal anywhere.
Why am I saying all this? Because Jackson County is worth it. I have been asked by 40 year old men and women all the way to 74 year olds that have committed to installing an app on their phones if I would start an internet based radio station and bring back things like Business News and Auction Block. I have invested in the station back end and we are working on an app. It should be soon. I didn’t want to just do the radio with out bringing back JacoToday. I will be implementing a business directory and an event calendar very soon. That way if we are not broadcasting live you can always come here and check out the latest in arrests, obits, special offers from advertisers or maybe whatever nonsense I might hack out.
I would love to get the feedback you guys might have about the programming. I will cover that in the next post with a feedback form. Thank you for reading this far and if you have would you mind sharing this post with your Jackson County friends? This is a service to and for Jackosn County, help me make it yours.
Jason Johnson
