by Jon Beaupre
jbeaupre@broadcastvoice.com

In 1988 radio producer and AIR member Greg Gordon, weary after years of producing segments for LA's local Lesbian and Gay radio program IMRU ( I am, are you - get it?) decided to strike out on his own. He launched one of the longest running radio programs in the country, This Way Out, the International Lesbian and Gay Radio Magazine. Now, eleven years later, This Way Out is broadcasting its 600th half hour episode to nearly a hundred stations in the U.S., a dozen stations overseas from New Zealand to Sweden, on the short wave band from Radio For Peace International in Costa Rica, and over the internet at http://www.planetout.com and on WRN, a satellite broadcaster in Europe.

While it appears to be the Eveready Bunny of non-commercial programs, it's future is never assured. Financed by a small but critical number of grants from groups like The Gill Foundation and C.P. Estes Guadalupe Foundation in Colorado, and The David Geffen Foundation and gay publisher Liberation Press in Los Angeles, Greg Gordon and his co-associate producer Lucia Chappelle still turn out a tightly produced mix of international Lesbian and Gay news - written by their one-woman news department Cindy Friedman - and features from contributors all over the world.

There have been segments on the Gay Games in Amsterdam, legislative battles and pride celebrations in Australia and coverage of the Gay and Lesbian Music Awards from New York, not to mention features from all quarters of the U.S. Needless to say, there is not enough of a budget to pay for stringer contributions, so Gordon and Chappelle depend on the generosity of journalists across the planet to provide them with timely, provocative Lesbigay news and features. The fourth regular staffer to fill out the roster is Leo Garcia, who is Cindy Friedman's co-anchor on the Newswrap portion of the show.

One of the ways that This Way Out survives is via its strategic alliance with Planet Out, a general interest Gay portal on the world wide web. Both Chappelle, Friedman and Gordon are employees of the San Francisco based website, Chappelle and Friedman full time, Gordon part time. Working from their Los Angeles area homes, they provide Planet Out with a daily feed of news stories and audio, in perhaps the most reliable and comprehensive source of Lesbian and Gay news on the internet. In addition to the daily five minute audio news cast and steady diet of hard hitting print stories, Planet Out also broadcasts This Way Out in its entirety each week, for listeners on the Web, as well as making several years of archived shows available.

This leaves Greg Gordon as the only employee of This Way Out, and while he does draw his part time salary from Planet Out as well as receiving a monthly check from This Way Out, clearly he is not getting rich producing the show.

On many occasions during he past 12 years, Gordon and the Board of Directors of Overnight Productions, the non-profit group that produces both This Way Out and IMRU, have considered shutting down. The hours required and the continual lack of funding to pay for satellite time, duplicating, equipment repair, photocopying and production costs have just about overwhelmed the entire group. But as Greg Gordon ruefully explains "...then I get a letter or post card from some kid in rural Iowa or Arkansas who says I listen to your show on my walkman, in my room with the lights turned off so my parents won't know; you are the only voice out there that let s me know that it s okay to be Gay..." and I say dammit, and begin working on the next show. How can you stop when you hear that?

While most of the production work is completed in Greg Gordon's Sherman Oaks apartment, the Newswrap portion of the show is recorded at the studios of KPFK, the Pacifica station in North Hollywood. Then on Monday mornings, Greg goes to the University of Southern California and sends the program up on the NPR satellite for distribution.

Currently, the finances of the show are as stable as they have ever been. But the struggle to find financing goes on, as This Way Out spreads its word of tolerance and understanding into the next millennium.

AIRSPACE

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