PHILADELPHIA -- A lot of music fans in the Delaware Valley were devastated the day Y100 went off the air in February.

Those disappointed included many former staffers, who decided to start their own radio station on the Internet, Y100rocks.com.

FeedRoom

Y100 Has New Life On Internet

They run the station from a house in south Philadelphia that they call "the bunker."

"I think our ultimate goal is to get back on the airwaves and have a station. As soon as we found out the station was going off the air, we had thought, 'Well, let's try to save it. We know there are a lot of passionate fans out there and let's see what we can do,' and (the fans) really kind of inspired us to keep going and push further, both with the Web site Y100Rocks.com and with the online station," said Jim McGuinn, former program director of Y100.

McGuinn said he and his fellow radio station workers had to learn fast about building an online radio station.

"You look on the Internet and you look for people that are running Internet radio stations and you try and you sort of, like, learn really quickly what's the good software, what's the bad software and you find, in this case, this thing called MegaSeg, which is really great software for $200. You've got to buy bandwidth, and that's the most expensive costs involved," McGuinn said.

McGuinn is amazed at the response they have gotten.

"We've gotten e-mails from Iraq, from troops and e-mails from all over the world," McGuinn said.

McGuinn is convinced that Internet radio is the wave of the future.

"What we'll see nationally, in the long-term, is that it will be similar to what cable television has done to network TV, where it's kind of niched it and taken a bigger and bigger piece year by year. I think satellite radio, and particularly the Internet radio, will continue to grow year by year and more and more people are listening online. I know we, personally, sent thousands of people to their first Internet radio experience," McGuinn said.

At the moment, Y100Rocks.com isn't running commercials, but McGuinn doesn't rule it out.

"Not yet, but maybe we'll be able to stop volunteering and start paying ourselves. So far, it's been the work and the effort of all these guys doing it because they love the music and we want to keep it going,"

McGuinn said that the death of Y100 radio appears to be a growing trend.

"The format is kind of running into this problem in other areas of America and, ironically, radio complains about, 'What are we doing to get young listeners involved? What are we going to do to keep young adults interested? And then they take off the formats that young adults listen to and send them to the Internet and send them to satellite radio. We've seen so many e-mails from people that are like, 'Well, now that Y100 is gone, I'm trying satellite or the Web for my radio now,' and that's a shame for radio," McGuinn said.

McGuinn says Internet radio gives them a chance to experiment in a way they never could in commercial radio.

"It feels like we're stuck in this place that's in the future and we're trying to get back to the present and to the future at the same time, because you feel this surge and this momentum (that) this is where this things are going, this is where media is headed in the future, but until we're at a point where there's broadband wireless everywhere, it's not going to be as easy to execute or to listen. So we know we're on to something that is where things are headed, but it's just like, you know, can we stick around long enough for the public to catch up to where we're at?" McGuinn said.

There are thousands of Internet stations available through Live365.com -- the service Y100Rocks.com runs through. But, even though Y100Rocks.com has only been on for a month, they are already rated No. 2 worldwide when it comes to modern rock.

The Y100rocks.com gang are going to be taking a page from their old employers and continue the tradition of the "Feztival." Check out their Web site for details.