THE HISTORY OF CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO (Revised September 15, 2023)
The story of CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO began in September 1996.
I was in my second and final year of the broadcast journalism program at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario. I always wanted to do radio and I thought I’d try to get on the air by applying for some air time on our campus radio station, CHMR. I wrote a seven-page application letter detailing how many scores I had, what type of themed programs I wanted to play, how I was going to present the show, who it was aimed at, why it was relevant, who I was, etc.
A few days later I had a sit-down meeting with Andy Posthumus, who was the station manager and also one of the radio instructors at the college (he taught me how to edit reel-to-reel tape…. no word of a lie. I did very well in that class). During the meeting, Andy informed me that the station already had a “show tunes” show, Center Stage with Lyla Miklos, so there was no point in having two shows with the same theme on the same station. I then explained to him that my proposed show wasn’t a “show tunes” program, that it was a show dedicated to instrumental music from film, TV and video games. I used STAR WARS as an example. Once Andy heard that explanation he knew right away that I was offering him an extremely unique program that would greatly complement the other speciality shows on the station. He then offered me a 2-hour slot on Friday mornings starting at 11 a.m. The first-ever broadcast of CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO aired on September 20, 1996, with a playing of John Williams’ “Main Title” to STAR WARS.
At the time I had about 50 – 60 soundtracks in my collection and I felt that I had enough material to produce an entertaining and varied two-hour radio program, just as long as I purchased a new release every week to keep the show fresh.
In 1996 the radio station was only broadcasting on cable FM, which meant you had to attach a coaxial cable to your FM receiver to hear the station. In those early days, my audience was limited to about 5 or 6 loyal listeners. The only real exposure the show got was when the broadcast was pumped into the local pub, The Arnie. There, the four large speakers would blast the wonderful sounds of John Williams’ RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, James Horner’s WILLOW, Jerry Goldsmith’s FIRST KNIGHT – amongst numerous others – to the lucky listeners as they enjoyed an afternoon brew. Once, I stirred up a huge Star Wars debate while playing my first of many Star Wars tribute shows. The entire bar was buzzing about their favourite characters, their favourite movie, and their favourite lines.
Soon enough the station received approval from the CRTC to broadcast on the FM dial in May of 1998. At the same time, my slot was changed from Friday to Saturday. CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO would be on the air between 12 pm and 3 pm every Saturday for the next eight years.
THE FM YEARS
The FM years were highlighted by one particular broadcast on May 1st, 1999. It all began in late April when I received not only the “Duel of the Fates” radio single from STAR WARS: EPISODE I -THE PHANTOM MENACE by John Williams but also the finished album! I had only planned on playing the radio single but when I phoned up the people at Sony Classical on April 29th – two days before by broadcast – and asked them about playing the album in its entirety. They kindly said that they sent it to me so I could have the world broadcast premiere of the album. Nothing much else was said. I said thank you, they said goodbye and I had less than two days to promote arguably the highest-profiled program I would ever produce. If I can remember correctly I posted a few comments on the Film Score Monthly and Filmtracks message boards but I had no idea that theforce.net picked up the story from FSM and published it on their site. That’s when the trouble started. Soon, I started to receive a barrage of emails from fans asking if the program would be available live on the internet. Live streaming was relatively new at C101.5 and we only had enough bandwidth to host 60 concurrent listeners. Unfortunately, that was a fact I didn’t know about until after the program was aired.
When I arrived at the station on Saturday morning to put the final touches on my show prep the DJ on before I informed me that the phone had been ringing off the hook with people from around the world calling in to make sure they could hear the program. As I got closer to show time I received 3 calls; one from the Philippines, one from Germany and one from Massachusetts. The people on the other end were having issues connecting to the C101.5 server. I had no idea that the server was haemorrhaging, but I calmly told the callers to refresh the C101.5 web page and keep trying to connect.
Noon arrived and it was an absolute thrill to hear the new STAR WARS score blasting through the giant speakers above my head in the old studio. I played the entire THE PHANTOM MENACE album for three hours, the original trilogy scores, and Joel McNeely’s fabulous score to SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE. Once the show was over, I left the station and headed home. Little did I know that what had just happened would be something that would never be repeated at C101.5.
On Monday, May 3rd, I received an early morning email from my station manager. He wanted to know what I played on the program over the weekend. The first thing that came to my mind was that I did something wrong. I sent a simple reply back stating that I played the world broadcast premiere of the new STAR WARS score. About 15 minutes later, I received another email from my station manager, forwarding me an email he received from Ted, who was in charge of our streaming server. In his email, he wrote:
“On Saturday, around noon, service request went to nearly 3000. The server then collapsed and died. The server cannot support this kind of service level, nor can the network. If this were to occur during a week when classes were in session I’m sure the IT support guys and most of the students and faculty on campus would be looking for somebody to hang. Whatever was done demonstrates clearly that you can create a demand for this service, be careful how you use it.”
Below is a snippet from that historic broadcast.
10 YEARS ON THE AIR COME TO AN END
On September 9th, 2006 the Cinematic Sound Radio Show turned 10 years old. September 9th, 2006 would also mark the final FM broadcast of the Cinematic Sound Radio Show. Why did the show go off the air? Let me explain. On July 3rd, 2006 my wife gave birth to our first child, a wonderful baby boy. So, like most parents, I had to reorganize and re-evaluate my life to accommodate the arrival of the new bundle of joy. Newborns take up almost every moment of your free time so things like hanging out with old high school buddies, playing the occasional road hockey game after work and simple things like watching a movie have to take a back seat. One other thing that was going to have to take a back seat was my radio show. I didn’t want to admit it at first telling friends and family that I would have no problem continuing with my three-hour show every Saturday. Well, I soon realized just how precious those 3 hours were going to be. I felt that if I continued with my show I would miss out on bonding with my new son. I also wanted to give my wife a break from taking care of Liam all by herself for most of the work week. So with all this happening, I began to write my resignation letter informing C101.5 that after my 10th-anniversary program in September, I would be leaving the station for good.
As I was writing my letter I knew that I wouldn’t be giving up Cinematic Sound for good. I still planned on producing an On-Demand program for my website which takes only a few hours to produce at home. Well, that got me thinking. Why not kill two birds with one stone? I thought maybe I could just send my new On-Demand programs to C101.5, they could upload the programs to the automated WAVE station and play my program during its regularly scheduled time slot. I mean, isn’t that what the WAVE station is for? I don’t HAVE to be on the air live but yet my show can still air LIVE.
Well, unfortunately, this plan didn’t work for C101.5. Below is the complicated explanation from the new station manager as to why Cinematic Sound couldn’t be a pre-recorded program.
“Wave Station has a “Time Next” feature which is applied to an audio file that you want to launch at a specific time. “Time Next” allows the current audio file to finish playing first. The problem here is that C101.5 would have to program the Cinematic Sound “Time Next” file into all of our playlist backup logs because they would have no way of knowing what log would be running at 12 Noon on Saturdays when nobody is in the station. What would happen then is, the Cinematic Sound files could fire at any other day at 12 Noon should we be in Playlist Backup mode.”
So, with the size of my pre-recorded files, the very real possibility of nobody at the station to launch my show and because C101.5 feels they have a better radio station when they have live hosts doing their thing every day it was obvious that Cinematic Sound was going to have to die on terrestrial radio.
So with that Cinematic Sound became an On-Demand program exclusively.
NOW PLAYING: CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO’S C101.5FM FAREWELL SPEECH
THE FUTURE
July 2010 saw the launch of a brand new Cinematic Sound Radio website with a brand new address. Since 1999 the CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO had been hosted on Yahoo! GeoCities’ free web hosting service. In June of 2009, GeoCities announced that they would be closing their doors permanently meaning the CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO would be without a place to call home on the internet. That unfortunate bit of news meant that I had to create a new site and find a new place to live on the World Wide Web. cinematicsound.net was born and the rest was history.
In February of 2016, Cinematic Sound Radio was picked up by the online streaming radio station WROCK. CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO, for the first time since 2006, ran as a live 2-hour weekly broadcast every weekend until the end of the station in October of 2018.
The show was also picked up by various now-defunct podcast affiliates over the years including PODTYRANT and MOVIES SCORES AND MORE RADIO.
In March of 2016, after years of on-demand streaming, we finally made the show available as a podcast.
We’ve also been nominated for three PODCAST AWARDS (2018, 2019 & 2021), and one DISCOVER PODS award (2020). On July 31, 2021, we won our very first podcast award as we were honoured to pick up the BEST MUSIC PODCAST award at the 2021 QUITE THE THING MEDIA Podcast Awards. See the acceptance speech by clicking HERE.
Without an affiliate, CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO turned its attention to creating unique thematic programming by offering “airtime” to anyone who wanted to produce a show but didn’t have the outlet to do so. We’ve had many guest hosts over the years, including TIM BURDEN, JOSHUA HOFFMAN, AMER ZAHID, and DOUGLAS LACEY.
Currently, we have a regular line of shows produced by extremely talented hosts and producers. You can find the current list of programs and bios by going HERE!
CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO is also on Patreon. We have a thriving community over there where you have the opportunity to gather some great rewards like participating in our all-request shows, a chance to program your own show, voting on exclusive polls, an exclusive Discord server, listening to archival FM broadcasts and more. To become a patron click HERE and support the show!
On September 20, 2021, CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO celebrated its 25th anniversary. For this very special occasion, we hosted our very first live & interactive Zoom Chat & Q&A session on Saturday, September 25th, 2021. The panel included the founder and executive producer of CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO and the host of THE FLAGSHIP SHOW, Erik Woods, host of THE ARCHIVE, Jason Drury, host of SOUNDTRACK ALLEY and ANIME SPECTACULAR, Randy Andrews, host of SCORED TO DEATH RADIO, J. Blake Fichera, host of FILMIC, Ley Bricknell and host of OBSCURE SCORES, Robert Daniels. Special guests included Erik Woods’ former station manager at C101.5FM at MoawhK College Radio, Andy Posthumus, and composer Austin Wintory. You can watch the entire stream below.
In 2023, CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO had a brief stint on Bute Island Radio in Scotland. You can read all about it HERE!
Lastly, I always love hearing from YOU! The fans are what makes the show tick and what inspires all of us here at CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, requests or just a thoughtful hello please EMAIL ME.
Happy listening,
– Erik Woods
founder & executive producer CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO | host THE FLAGSHIP SHOW