| Fifteen |
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| Phillip Hong |
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| Taylor Swift once sang "When you're fifteen, somebody tells you they love you, you're
going to believe it". Well, we didn't take fifteen years to sing our praises to our readers,
listeners and viewers, but it did take us this long to achieve some proper context. There were
goals that were out of reach... like sufficient manpower and popular success... but one can
only conclude after taking a glance at our history, that we've always been an underdog in the
world of media. |
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| We were such a rickshaw operation when we started, you couldn't even hold our first
microphone. And internet radio was a pipe dream, at a time when computers struggled to load up
paragraphs of words let alone anything else. And it still had a pretentious, but common
moniker: "The World Wide Web". But we certainly tried to be informative, entertaining, and
most importantly, local. |
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| It's not the least known fact that SRN Mediaworks (publishers of this website) was
created in a dark dingy basement in pot-hole ridden Brampton, Ontario. It was the height of a
pop culture renaissance: Boy bands and former child starlets became unbelievably important to
a kid's psyche, and Titanic was the point of reference from the cinematic drama to a hit song
on a soundtrack to the colossal budget required to film such a saga. A bald man was the mayor
of Brampton long before there was a street named after him; search him online these days and
all you get now are addresses of dental clinics and hairdressers. |
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But what does that cloud of culture from that era have to do with us at all? Why even mention it?
Well it shows that fifteen years later, we can provide proof that we really gave a damn about the
world around us.
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We started with a microphone built into a crafty tape recorder, hooked up eventually to a CB radio
with its on switch jammed on the "transmit" button. We knew absolutely nothing about the technical
aspects of transmission, reception, or even the proper broadcast laws. We didn't (I mean don't)
even know if anyone listened, and certainly had no resources to track that down. But we sucked up
what society provided and spat out our perspectives.
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What were the first words uttered on what is now SRN One, our premiere local internet radio station?
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"Suck my (word meaning male private parts, starting with the letter 'd')".
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We could point fingers at each other about who actually said such a controversial phrase but since
the tape contained our prepubescent voices (all four of them), it's hard to distinguish the
individual that was responsible of uttering that phrase.
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Yes, we started as shock jocks. Take that, Howard Stern.
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As technology moved on, we had moved on to more explorative mediums. When the cost of maintaining a
real website took a dive, we created 148.ca to showcase the suburbs of Toronto, providing a different
insight to various topics. We moved SRN One online, just as the walkie talkie we used moved on;
most of the archive tapes were gone as well, overdubbed with corny Vietnamese music.
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We've also grown up. No (new) references to genitals in this article. And we forgave ourselves for
ever muttering that word since time usually heals wounds like a lengthy Polysporin ointment.
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SRN Mediaworks is the product of its ancestors. With a drive to tell real stories, along with
airing great music in a mix unmatched by anyone in suburban Toronto. We always worked with you in
mind.
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| Phillip Hong, a resident of suburban Toronto, is an avid tourist.
Check out the interesting experiences of his journeys on The Travelling Briefcase. |
