Depending on how far you want to go back, you could trace this all the way back to 1985 (I was 15). I was at Falls Creek, a Southern Baptist church camp near Davis Oklahoma with a local youth group. It felt like God was calling me into Christian radio (no voices, more like an "unsettled-ness" in my heart).
The feeling was that I was to "blanket the planet" with signal. That phrase always stuck with me, and being the bright young boy I was, I figured I was going to have to build thousands of radio stations. I pictured (and warned future dates!) that I would be moving every two years, putting up a new station, then moving again in two years, etc. No breakables, living out of suitcases... I didn't get many dates. :)
I tried to kick-start things in many ways over the years, including putting out a weekly cassette that sounded like a radio station to about 25 people, doing Christian rock on the college station in Claremore Oklahoma, and running a Christian rock show overnight on a local AM.
Indirectly, that show (AM 970 / The Rock) created Savage Rock. A friend of the show built a website, and I later learned how to post recordings of the show each morning in "streaming audio." When my local radio show died, the internet show continued.
We became The Rock WorldWide, then WWR (Worldwide Rock), and then finally a friend said, "why not Savage Rock? You're (Gene) Savage, the music is Savage, the music is rock and Jesus is The Rock of Your Salvation... why not?" I felt it was too vain to put my last name into the station, but after putting it to a vote of the listeners, Savage Rock was born.
Nocturnal John is a radio veteran, having put his own station on the air in Florida, among other accomplishments. He's also possibly our most immature announcer. :) Lucas Webb is a friend from high school, and Bradly in the morning is the guy who introduced me to my wife Cindy. He and I worked at competing top-40 stations in 1990.
Our music started out as an edgy top-40, but mutated when we went web-only: first into a hard rock format, then once we saw how many good Christian hard rock streams already existed, we went "underground": Christian black (or un-black or white) metal and Christian death (or life) metal. This is music even Christian rockers have a hard time with! Basically, if they scream or growl, we play it. :-) It reaches a surprisingly large group of people who can't get this music anywhere else, and gets them a message they may not be exposed to typically in their lifestyle (at least not in a form they're likely to accept).
Savage Rock had been on about a year before it hit me: I was "blanketing the planet with signal." Anywhere you can get a phone line, or a clear shot to the sky, you can get internet. Anywhere you can get the internet, there we are. Without having to live out of suitcases and WITH my wonderful wife, Cindy, helping and encouraging me, we have done what I feel like I was called to do 18 yrs ago.
We don't make any money at it, and for now it HAS to be a hobby only because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (we couldn't afford to stream 5 minutes if Live 365 didn't pick up the tab and charge us only $10 / month), all of the jocks are volunteering their time, but we all believe in what we're doing ...we care about our listeners... and we love the music... that's why we keep doing it.
The station has always been run out of the front room of our house, and continues to this day that way, a single computer sitting in the corner "playing the hits," feeding our audio to Live 365 and then Live 365 feeding it to the world.
Our listeners built the computer through donations to the station.
We only use one piece of software that isn't freeware, and that's our audio processing. Our player (WinAmp), our playlist generator (Tobasco's Amazing Clock Wheel), our playlist updater (RTL365), and our encoder (ShoutCast) are all provided over the web at no cost to internet users by others who believe in internet radio.
This must be a labor of love, because we're all losing time and money doing it! :-)
In His Majesty's Service,
Gene Savage
Savage Rock
http://www.savagerock.com
Tulsa, Oklahoma USAMonday, March 31st 2003 / 5:30pm