Jesse Rose, editor and David Gilmore, host. Photo by Kwai Lam

A farewell letter from Outright Radio’s host David Gilmore…

Dear Friends,

You’ve probably come to the website of Outright Radio because you heard some piece of our show on your local radio station as you were driving and you’re wondering what we’re all about.

Outright Radio is the work of creative writers and radio producers who have captured the essence of gay life in America in radio specials for broadcast on Public Radio International (PRI) and archived with in RealAudio format with accompanying transcripts. The shows are designed to be accessible to straight folks, hopefully bridging an understanding gap between gays and straights and eventually working to end homophobia. Although Outright Radio is ultimately advocacy radio, it is, by design, far more interesting, intriguing and fun than most advocacy.

Alas, I must tell you that Outright Radio is coming to an end. Our Series 2005 is an encore season, featuring some of the highlights of our six years of production. (You can hear the shows you missed on air by clicking on the Season year on the left.)

Outright Radio is grateful to all the supporters and contributing artists over the year, far too many to enumerate as individuals. To protect the angels that underwrote us so generously, I won’t reveal their names. You know who you are and you know we’ll always be grateful to you. We’d like to thank the Gill Foundation, the Tides Foundation, the Rainbow Endowment, and the staff at PRI for being so supportive over the years. When PRI picked us up for distribution in 2000, there was no other network-syndicated gay and lesbian radio program in the US. When we go off the air, there will be none, once again.

And why, you might ask, are we going off the air? Well, the primary reason is that there is simply little money available to independent producers. “Indies” in America reside at the bottom of the food chain caught in an endless struggle to pay even sub-standard wages to the writers, producers and editors of a show, no matter how brilliant the product is. As the show gained national attention winning radio’s top awards, we landed a big grant from the CPB. In the end, we found that managing the grant was more work than it was worth.

I must confess, I always fantasized that some philanthropist would discover us and send us a huge check. Well, it happened. We got a nice big check in our 3rd year. And that got us off the ground.

My fantasies were ill conceived. What we really needed was for someone to FedEx us a staff of business people and top-drawer fundraisers. That package never arrived. When the high tech industry collapsed in California where we were based, the funding streams ran dry. So, I lobbied unsuccessfully to get the show adopted by a radio station, but, considering that the “bottom line” is the paramount concern of most radio stations these days, a wacky little show that came with a network contract and a cache of awards and loyal affiliates simply wasn’t enough. Everyone we approached raved about Outright Radio, but wasn't willing to become a station partner.

So here we are, saying goodbye to our far-flung Diaspora of staff… I’m off to Hawaii to ride the wave of the burgeoning new gay community in Puna on the Big Island. I’m working on a book and have made a short film, which is now on the gay film festival circuit summer of 2005, with our editor Jesse Rose. Jesse is about to have a baby in Santa Cruz and will be soon trading her earphones for earplugs. John, the business manager and executive producer for Series 2005, is zipping around Rancho Mirage in borrowed Jaguars hoping for a glimpse of Tammy Fay Baker while doing computer consulting. Tom Truss, our most beloved writer is getting his Master’s degree in dance at the University of Iowa. Scott Jones, the original editor, is going to nursing school in Victoria, Canada.

A few of my favorite moments while working on the shows over the years:

• Listening to our very first show with Scott late at night lying on the floor in tears at KUSP in Santa Cruz.
• Dressing in sailor suits with Tom at the PRPD radio convention in San Diego to promote the gays in the Navy show and then walking past real sailors who seemed confused that we were holding hands.
• Interviewing Skippy the sailor in the nude.
• Dressing in drag and doing the Advice Ladies with Tom.
• Editing while hunkered down from the rats running on the roof at Jesse’s editing hovel on top of a garage in Santa Cruz.
• Kicking around the shrimp that someone dropped from their plate at the Edward R. Murrow awards.

If you would like to help us archive the shows on the Web in perpetuity, feel free to make a donation – see the “Contribute” button to the left.

Live for the story! Best wishes to all.

David