The Shooting Bench has been on the air, uninterrupted, for almost 12 years. It started as a 30-minute show, once a week, on a FOX Sports AM station in Farmington, NM in early 2005 if memory serves. Due to the irrational behavior and non-professionalism of that station, I quickly pulled up stakes and moved to another, much larger and more courteous station. The show immediately went to one hour, once a week and shortly after that went to two hours. Life was good!
Then, sometime in 2007, a traveler on a highway about 40 miles away was listening to the show and decided that he wanted to meet me and see the store. He was impressed with the content of the show and suggested that I do a podcast. I said, "OK... um, what's a podcast?". Well, we had a lot to talk about and became good friends. Mike helped me get the podcasts started and a whole new audience presented itself! It took some time to realize that I was now talking to the world and not just northern NM and southern Colorado.
In November of 2009, I was introduced to internet radio and another change took place. For a little while, I tried to do both but due to a some other changes that were taking place, I went all internet and podcast. In May of 2010, The Shooting Bench went to two hours a night, five nights a week on Just Measures Radio Network out of Indiana. The show and the network grew together and it was a lot of fun but I can tell you, doing 2 hours a day, every day, began to tell on me. It takes a lot of preparation to do 10 hours of broadcasting every day, 52 weeks a year, year in and year out!. Especially when you're doing it for free! That continued until November of 2014 when the show went to one hour, five nights a week. A month later, just before Christmas, I obtained full rights and ownership of the network and The Survival Circle Radio Network was born. Most of the old hosts from JMR came with me and the network was in full operation again. We have since lost a couple of hosts and picked up a couple of new ones. LOTS of good information available!
On 21 June 2013, with no thought or prior planning at all, I just did a show one Friday night that included no news or current events or gun talk or anything! Just classic country music. WOW! It was wildly popular and Liberty Lounge was born. Every Friday since then, we have have put the world's trials and tribulations on hold and entered into our weekend on a lighter note. We stray off into classic rock from time to time but for the most part, its all classic country. Liberty Lounge still continues for two hours, every Friday night beginning at 8pm Pacific/11pm Eastern.
The network as a whole can be heard 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at The Survival Circle. Live programming is mostly in the evenings but the archives of those shows run all the time.
The most recent change to The Shooting Bench begins 1 August, 2016 when it will go back to two hours on Mondays and Wednesdays and three hours on Fridays. The second hour on Wednesdays will be devoted to outdoor topics; guns, hunting, training, competition shooting, survival, preparedness and militia. The first hour on Friday will catch us up for the week on current events and then Liberty Lounge comes on at its regular time. TSB will start at its usual time on Mondays and Wednesdays and an hour earlier on Fridays. I get a couple of days off every week and you get an extra hour of programming! Sounds pretty good right now.
Here's the starting times for all shows on SCRN:
All times Pacific...
* The Shooting Bench -- (starting 1 Aug, 2016) Mon & Wed - 8pm and Fri - 7pm, then Liberty Lounge at 8pm.
* Living Way Out Here with my lovely wife Amy is currently only on Mondays at 7pm. That may change in September 2016!
* Mother Earth's Homesteading/Cooking Hour --
Mon, Tue & Thu - 6pm and Fri - 5pm
* Three Amigos Live -- Wed and Fri at 6pm
* Concretin's Colloquim -- Mon, Tue & Thu - 5pm
* Concretin -- Sat - 6pm
* The Tinkers Shop -- Sat - 7pm
* Joyful Noise (Religious) -- Sun - 9am