After considerable planning and preparation, Mushroom FM is proud to announce The Blind Side, a news and current events show proudly from a blindness perspective.
About The Blind Side
The Blind Side is a magazine-style show, hosted by Jonathan Mosen, that includes news, interviews, technology and lifestyle programming, interspersed with some great music.
The Blind Side difference is that this show proudly looks at issues from a blindness perspective, issues and angles that are usually ignored. We hope we’ll earn your listenership on a regular basis, but there are also many ways to make a contribution to the show as we’ll describe below.
The news and interviews you’ll hear on the show are not all about blindness-related topics, but where a blindness angle might exist, we will focus on that in a way that mainstream media does not. For example, it's our hope to be interviewing blind delegates to recent US party conventions, and looking at issues of interest to blind people in the party platforms.
However, we do take the time to cover blindness and disability-wide issues that the mass media doesn’t cover. We’re constantly scouring social media, and reading media releases from major blindness sources, to gauge the hot topics that warrant coverage on the show. Our goal is that if it’s important to our community, we want to be talking about it.
Some of the stories are of a current affairs and political nature, since almost all of what programming there is on disability issues tends to be light, fluffy and human interest oriented. But we also feature items on technology, health and mindfulness.
We conduct long-form interviews at times with key figures in the blind community who have made a contribution worthy of exploring.
And while the show is usually pre-recorded shortly before it airs, we have the facility to go live and host call-in shows with guests of interest or on hot topics as they break.
In short, our aim is to make The Blind Side compelling, informative listening.
The show involves an extensive amount of research and preparation, so we’re committing at this point to a short series to assess how much listener demand there is for such a show.
How to Listen
The full Blind Side experience is available here on Mushroom FM. It airs every week night starting Monday August 1 at 7 PM US Eastern time. To find out when that is in your time zone, check our schedule.
We realise that any time we pick will not work for everyone, so selected interviews are available via the Mosen At Large podcast. Search for Mosen At Large in iTunes and a number of other podcast clients, or add the RSS feed to your podcast client.
If you'd like to browse content from the Mosen At Large podcast using your web browser, check it out on SoundCloud.
How you can help
We want The Blind Side to be a grass roots media initiative, so we would welcome your help.
Send us your story ideas
Do you know of a story that has a blindness angle you think our audience would like to hear about? Has something happened to you personally, or are you part of something interesting? Please send any story ideas you have to Jonathan Mosen, Jonathan at MushroomFM dot com. Note, the email address is spelled out to avoid spam. You can also leave a message on our US phone line, 701-801-3263.
Book Reviews
So many books, so little time. Our audience is always looking for great book recommendations. We’re looking for book reviews covering both fiction and non-fiction. You can record a review and email it to Jonathan at MushroomFM dot com, or leave a message on our US phone line, 701-801-3263.
Podcast Reviews
The world is full of amazing podcasts, some blindness-related, many not. Discovering the good ones takes a lot of trial and error. If you’ve found a great podcast you’d like to tell us about, feel free to record a review and email it to Jonathan at MushroomFM dot com, or leave a message on our US phone line, 701-801-3263.
Please spread the word
We’re taking on this ambitious show as an experiment, because we passionately believe there is a need for our issues to get an airing in a timely manner. If you agree, and you find the show valuable, please tell your friends. Whether listener numbers demonstrate a need for the show will play a big part in determining whether it continues.
Thanks for checking out The Blind Side. We look forward to the launch on 1 August at 7 Pm Eastern.
You can keep up with the show at its page: http://www.MushroomFm.com/TheBlindSide