Hello Web!
Ron here. I’d like to tell you a bit about “Audio Theatre”, this site, and the zany humans behind it all.
Ganahee’s Media Centre
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Hello Web!
Ron here. I’d like to tell you a bit about “Audio Theatre”, this site, and the zany humans behind it all.
“Audio Theatre” started back in about 2010. My friend Joseph, AKA DJ Jeo Chronis, first started playing shows for his dad, on a nightly basis. It wasn’t until the end of 2011, though, before he began streaming on the Internet.
By about mid 2012, I decided to jump in and help co-produce the show. At the time, Joseph was using a MIDI version of the “William Tell Overture”, better known to most folks, these days, as the theme for the radio and television series, “The Lone Ranger”, for the opening music, and a MIDI version of “Happy Trails” for the closing tune. That year we also decided to adopt an every-other-night system for doing the intro and wrap-up announcements for each night’s stream.
It might seem a little strange to people, but we decided, rather than try to write out the announcement and then either read it, or memorize it, we’d let the computer do that. We both have a decent variety of male and female voices to choose from, so each evening, we switch it up. I guess you could say, paraphrasing those immortal words from Forrest Gump, “Our announcer staff is like a box of chocolates – you never know who you’re gonna get”.
By March of 2013, we’d refined our production even further, by using a new theme song, “The Four Seasons”, for both the opening and closing of each stream. This theme better reflected the title, “Audio Theatre”, and was more professional-sounding. I produced the new intro and wrap-up theme, with Joseph’s voice overlaid on it, and a nice fade-out. This new opening and closing theme was debuted on March 5th, 2013, and We’ve been using it ever since.
Early Summer, 2013, brought the realization that we needed a system to avoid duplicating shows. Since that time, June or July I think it was, I’ve been maintaining a list of each show we play, what genre it’s in, how many shows are in each series, as well as the number of shows played. Oh yes, there are times I’m asleep at the switch, as it were, and a show slips by me, but, for the most part, we do a pretty good job avoiding duplicates.
Further refinements to “Audio Theatre” came in August of 2018, and July, 2019, with the adoption of two new “Sounders”, courtesy of 98.6 The Mix, KKMX. These “Sounders” are professionally done, and give “Audio Theatre” pizaz!
Also, during 2018, we decided to give each night of the week a theme. We’ve got “Comedy Sunday”, “Mystery Monday”, “Detective Tuesday”, “Western Wednesday”, “Thriller Thursday”, “Adventure, Drama, or Historical Friday”, and “Sci-Fi, or Superhero Saturday”. I actually got the idea for this format from the late 70’s Old-Time Radio Revival series, “The Mutual Radio Theater”. You can listen every night, if you wish, or just listen on the nights corresponding to the genres which most strike your fancy.
"Audio Theatre’s" been in production for over twelve years now. To date, we have 4,468 shows in the can, in my official archive, for a total of 395.69 GB. In the early days, Joseph didn’t state what day he was doing a stream for, and they’re missing, because I wasn’t able to identify them, and some are missing because of a booboo I made, sorry to say. That aside, the vast majority of what we’ve produced and archived is there - can’t beat that!
This site is hosted, in-house, from my own web server. The server hardware is a Late 2014 Mac mini with 8GB RAM, Intel Core I5 CPU, running at 2.60GHz, & a 500GB SSD. The “Audio Theatre” archive, itself, lives on a 8TB Western Digital external hard drive. The whole enchillada runs under macOS 12.7.2 Monterey.
The server software is the Abyss Web Server, produced by Aprelium. Each Day’s show is uploaded to the archive, using Rumpus, I hand-code each page, using a killer editor, called TextMate, and completed pages are synched to the server via SyncTime. My INternet connection is a modest one - 30 megabits in, 10 megabits out. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.
I began work on this site, clear back in 2017, but really didn’t start building out it’s various pages till Summer, 2019. I guess you could say, that’s when the “Spirit” really moved me.
To date, I’ve put up 594 pages, mostly pages for the various shows we’ve played on "Audio Theatre." My intent was to put up a simple, easily-accessible, easy to use website, where folks can listen to most of the archived content from the last twelve years of “Audio Theatre”.
Along the way, the site has seen a few changes:
Now, I just need to continue building pages for the various shows, need to learn more CSS so I can improve on the visual appearance of the site, and need to learn more about SEO, so I can get my work noticed. What good’s a website if it’s so-so looking, and no one knows it’s there?
Joseph is the purveyor of Audio Theatre. He’s 45, lives in West Chicago, Illinois, studied office tech at the College of DuPage, and is an avid audio book reader and audio gamer.
His on-line handle is usually “Harmonica Player”, as he has about 15 of them, and likes to play them, from time to time. He’s also an electronic keyboard player.
His moniker for Audio Theatre is “DJ Jeo Chronis”. This name was suggested to him, many years ago, by a friend who taught him about setting up audio streaming and gaming servers, and he’s used it ever since.
Each day, Sunday thru Saturday, Joseph selects Old and New-Time Radio shows, which he hopes will entertain you and allow you to escape, even if briefly, the rigors of daily life. Should you wish to contact him with comments, criticisms, suggestions, to request a show, or to just say “Hi!” simply go to the Contact Us page, click on either the “DJ Jeo Chronis 1” or “DJ Jeo Chronis 2” buttons and fill in the form. He’d be more than happy to hear from you!
I’m Ron, WebMaster of this site, and co-producer of Audio Theatre. I’m 59, live in Salem, South Dakota, studied computer science and education at the University of South Dakota, and am a computer and home theater enthusiast.
My on-line handle is “Ganahee”. A friend of mine, and I, back in the late 80s, chose it because we believed it was the Roman equivalent of the Greek, Ganymede, cup-bearer and lover of Zeus. I’ve used this moniker, and variants of it, ever since.
All my knowledge of server operation, HTML, CSS, and audio editing is self-taught. I work, quietly, unheard and unseen, behind the scenes, procuring show content, doing intro and wrap-up files, merging show content, removing extraneous silence from merged shows, and building this website.
My sincere hope is that the content on this site will provide hours of enjoyment, and will transport you back to a time long-gone. Should you wish to contact me with comments, criticisms, server issues, website issues, or to just say “Hi!” please go to the Contact Us page, click on the appropriate button, and fill in the form. I’ll be more than happy to hear from you!
So, there you have it. Now you know about the evolution of Audio Theatre, this website – where it lives and how its changed, and most importantly, the human element – the two zany guys behind the scenes who make it all work and bring it to you, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Audio Theatre and this site will continue to be brought to you, over the coming years, and Joe & I hope everyone who comes to this website to stream each night’s show, or to peruse the archive, will find something they love, and will be entertained for many hours to come! Happy listening!