Independent Perspective 1690 with Mike Benzin talking about Radio Reading's 35th Anniversary
Host: Welcome to Independent Perspective, a public affairs presentation of Western New York Independent Living (WNYIL). Our guest today is Michael Benzin, Executive Director of the Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service (NFRRS). And I'm your host Ernie Churchwell. Welcome to the program, Mike.
Guest: Thank you Ernie.
Host: You're here because the Radio Reading Service is celebrating a significant milestone anniversary. But first, to give people a little bit of background before 35 years ago, if people who were blind, had dyslexia, or other so called print handicaps, like certain types of traumatic brain injury, they tended to get their news information and entertainment strictly by sound and although even though there were some radio programs and cable news and whatnot, a lot of the same stories tend to be recycled in the course of the day, and none of them have the breadth of a newspaper. But fortunately for the last few decades, there have been organizations of volunteers that have grown up to fill that gap. So, can you tell us what does NFRRS do for people and what area does it cover?
Guest: Let me back up to what you're talking about before 35 years ago. If people wanted to read the Buffalo News, but they were blind or print disabled, they couldn't, the Buffalo News is not available in Braille. There wasn't an audio format, there wasn't online because the internet wasn't quite what it is today. So they had asked a family friend or a neighbor or somebody like that, to read it to them, which can be tedious and burdensome. So, they missed out on a lot of news that would come in the form of newspapers and magazines and even some books. So starting in the late 60s, Congress passed a law that said that organizations who read publications for people that are blind or print disabled and can do so without worrying about copyrights, licensing, royalties, fees, and all that kind of stuff, which gave birth to our industry. So, 35 years ago, this last weekend, NFRRS started providing that service for people who are blind or print disabled in Western New York. And ever since then, for six mornings a week, we read the Buffalo News live on air, and it repeats a couple times during the day. We read USA Today, we read all the B newspapers, we read a lot of the weeklies for Western New York. We read a lot of national magazines, a lot of national newspapers, that even today 35 years later, are still not easily available in audio format. You know, the internet's been great and screen readers have improved. But if a screen reader is reading the Buffalo News, it's going to have burps and hiccups when it sees graphics and images and ads and things like that. So we still find that volunteers reading those newspaper articles and reading that content is the best way to deliver the information to our listeners, and we find that our listeners are they tend to be more engaged in their community because they're keeping up with local news. They're following politics, they’re following their local town governments, their local school boards, high school, sports, entertainment, they tend to get out in the community more because they're clued in on what's happening in the community more so it's been a, a wonderful service for us. You know, I look back 35 years ago and, you know, the Internet was, you know, just kind of a novelty. There wasn't such a thing as audible.com You know, books on tape are limited. And if there was a book on tape, it was like six or eight tape cassettes that people had to fumble with. So, we've been able to provide a great service over that time. We've probably put in almost 300,000 hours or more of time during the entire period.
Host: And I'm sure people will have questions such as how they can access radio reading service online or in broadcasts and whatnot, but we're almost out of time. If people want to get their questions answered, how can they reach you?
Guest: They can go to our website at nfradioreading.org, they can call us at 716-821-5555. They can send us an email to read@nfradioreading.org. Our programs are available online, they just click the listen button on our website, or a lot of our programs are available on their favorite podcast player like Spotify and iTunes and Google so they can find us there.
Host: Thanks so much for being with us Mike.
Guest: Thank you, Ernie.
Host: You've been listening to Independent Perspective, a public affairs presentation of WNYIL. Our guest today was Michael Benzin, Executive Director of NFRRS, and I was your host Ernie Churchwell.