Final Statement - 08.07.2017
Hello. You may not know me but my name is Fiddle, some of you may know me as Illus. For those who did know me, I was the host of WhirlCast or what rather known to be the Radio Whirlwind Podcast.
Radio Whirlwind has a very long and complex history. It didn’t just start off as a radio station and to be honest, I wasn’t even the one handling anything to begin with. Our journey starts nearly ten years ago in 2009 on a fan game known as Pokemon Mystery Universe. The host of the podcast, Kronic, ran the show for two years before it was retried in early 2011. Eventually, I found this game on Christmas Eve of the same year and I decided to test the waters and host the podcast myself.
For another two years, PMU had a fully functional podcast with a team of dedicated hosts. The show was entirely focused on Pokemon, its community and more. It was something that would eventually evolve, no pun intended, into something bigger and grander which only left the door open for what was to come.
Fast forward to September 2014 and the podcast was being cancelled and moved to become its own independent show. A month passes and the team of eight create Radio Whirlwind, a radio station dedicated to Pokemon music and the host site for the newly named Radio Whirlwind Podcast. Originally, Radio Whirlwind played music from the ga mes but eventually expanded into the anime, movies and even allowed musicians from within the vast community of Pokemon to take part in the station. That wasn’t even my idea. A couple of remixer friends at the time suggested that they add their music to the station. At the end of its life, Radio Whirlwind had accumulated over 90 hours of remixes from over 38 musicians. The station began playing on October 24th, 2014, after gaining approval from Junichi Masuda. The first song that played on the station was “Gotta Catch Em’ All” by Jason Paige. The final song that played on the station was “KISEKI” from Pokemon X&Y.
Radio Whirlwind hit its high in the summer of 2015 with its Summer Fest event. The podcast team put shows together with a variety of content creators from within the community and following that with a Broadcasters for a Cure charity event. Speaking of Broadcasters for a Cure, the charity marathon was able to raise over $2,100 for various charities across of North America spanning over five events.
The station continued to see a huge rate of decline, however, in 2016 and 2017 and the show that kept the station going, WhirlCast, ended on the fifth anniversary in 2017. Unfortunately, Radio Whirlwind was unable to keep up with its musicians and became an unreliable hub for what Radio Whirlwind wanted to achieve. The station became unmanageable and this leads to what is happening right now.
Radio Whirlwind started as a way to carry on entertainment that eight people believed had purpose and meaning. The station was meant to archive and allow the community to come together in new ways through the sound of music and through the words from our voices and while this was achieved, this was unable to be maintained and it lead to the fall of the station.
So what happens now? Radio Whirlwind will hopefully continue on through Radio Nintendo. More information will be revealed at a later date but you’ll be happy to hear that Whirlwind will not be going away that easy.
It’s been a fun ride, let’s do it again sometime. Thank you again for everything. I hope we can meet again in the future.
Until next time, be sure to catch em’ all in the Whirlwind.
- Fiddle