It took a long time to shape the KAST. We started off as a production crew at Trier’s local public access channel.
This was back in 2002. Music on television was still around and available. Unfortunately commercial broadcasters had a tendency to serve the taste of the masses. An audience that preferred indpendent and alternative artists was widely ignored by the commercial stations. We were happy to fill this gap. Later, we also recorded some live shows with a multi-camera setup.
Music gradually disappeared from television and was replaced with reality shows and annoying commercials that made watching these stations a pain. A few years before the advent of internet streaming we continued working on our mission to keep videos from alternative and independent artists available – at least on local cable TV.
Today every internet user has almost all music ever released available at any time. A lineup that requires you to wait for your show to be aired seems anachronistic from today’s point of view. Since copyright law is a mere minefield and plenty of music videos are out there anyway, there is no need anymore to invest time and money in the production of a show dedicated to this topic.
In 2014 we decided to turn towards podcasting. While having a pretty pile of equipment available from the television days we lacked a studio for high quality audio recording.
A basement room has been refurbished and turned into a studio. Plenty of working hours went into this. Since the KAST is one of these things called ‚hobby‘ all had to be done beside working full time. However, today, the studio is up and running.
New tables and equipment has been brought into place. Up to four people can now sit in and be recorded onto individual tracks. Also, it is possible to record callers on Software phones and regular fixed phone lines.
Some really good episodes may also be aired on shortwave. There are a few operators of Transmitters that sell airtime to occasional broadcasters. Doing so we can be heard in large portions of europe.