Changes for Take Five on Film

When my friend and former colleague Ryan Wilson started writing and recording Take Five on Film about seven years ago, things were different. The show was actually five minutes long and it played on Saturdays. Ryan would go see a matinee showing of a movie on Friday, write a rough script on Saturday, revise it on Sunday, and record it on Monday. He did all his own recording and production work and by Tuesday morning, he had a well-crafted five minute review of a new movie out on the airwaves. Each show began with the now-very familiar sounds of George Benson’s version of Dave Brubeck’s famous jazz number, "Take Five."

Ryan valiantly carried Take Five on Film on his back for half a decade, and his show was one of the things I was really excited about when I came to Delta College three and a half years ago. I set an alarm on my phone and tried to make sure I was in the car, listening to the radio when it played. I appreciated hearing his insights into new releases as well as more obscure films on disc or streaming. I’m a movie guy, and so really any conversation about movies – even a one-sided one in the car on the way to work – is a good one. 

When Ryan announced that he was leaving Delta, I was sad to lose a mentor and a pal. And I felt a little like Hamlet’s uncle in that I didn’t wait very long for the body to get cold, so to speak, before I moved in and asked if I could continue his show. But he thought that sounded like a fine idea, so in September of 2014, I recorded my first show. The show moved to Friday mornings, so the reviews might help people looking for something to watch over the weekend. And broadcasting majors took over the producing duties of the show, for which I was very grateful.

In the two years since I’ve been doing the show, two other major things have changed. First of all, NPR changed their hourly clock – the amount of time they spend on newsbreaks, station breaks, and the like, and our window of time for the show went from five minutes to four. It wasn’t a big deal. It just meant two or three hundred fewer words for me to write each week.

The other thing that changed is that Q90.1 began making itself available online by offering its locally produced programming as podcasts. You can now hear cool shows like Lifelines, A Moment in Time, and Studio Q anywhere you have wifi. This is a great development for people who want to hear our programming when they’re not near a radio, but it complicates things a little because it would require us to pay for the rights to use our theme music, which, given our operating budget of zero dollars, isn’t going to happen. So our show is no longer five minutes long and we can’t use the theme music called "Take Five."

Consequently, it’s time for a change. After today, your friendly neighborhood radio show about film and film-related events in the Great Lakes Bay region will be known as Moviehouse. I like the old timeyness of the name and how it suggests a big, old fashioned movie theater, but I also like how it acknowledges that these days with laptops and smartphones, the whole world is one big house of movies. 

So there will be a new name and new music and we’ll be available as a podcast, but everything else, for better or for worse, stays the same. To subscribe to the podcast, go to deltabroadcasting.org, find the link for Q90.1 and click on “podcasts.”