Rusty Hodge had a dream from the time he was a child. He wanted to create his own radio station. Even years later after graduating from high school, the dream persisted, never fading. During his college years at Cal Poly Pomona, he began to flesh out his childhood wish when he had an opportunity to manage his college radio station. Hodge’s fascination with radio destined him to make his own imprint on the worldwide stage. Raised in Southern California, Hodge was surrounded by the pop culture and technology that was spreading along the West Coast. With his mom being a piano teacher and his father having an interest in radios and electronics, music was always present in his life and home. Some of his earliest memories from the age of three or four revolve around listening to the radio. Another significant influence on his lifelong radio fascination was his grandfather. He would give Hodge the latest radio device for every birthday or holiday, feeding his growing interest. Southern California, the
home of Disneyland, has always been seen as the entertainment capital of the world. Growing up, Hodge lived very close to the Magic Kingdom so he enjoyed frequent trips to the park. The most memorable part for him was seeing the radio station inside the Disneyland Hotel. One of his father’s tricks as a local was to park at the hotel rather than the car park because it was cheaper. When walking through the hotel to the park he always passed the studio for the station KEZY, stopping to admire all the equipment, tape recorders, and mixers. It was after
seeing the Disney radio experience the seed was planted that someday he wanted his own radio station. Now, fifty years and untold iterations of radio stations later, Rusty Hodge is living out his childhood passion as the owner and operator of SomaFM, an internationally known and successful internet radio station. Many music lovers feel that mainstream radio is repetitive, boring, simplistic, and lacks creativity—not to mention it’s overrun with advertisements. People tune into radio stations to listen to music, not to be sold things that they don’t need. Hodge and SomaFM are proving that there is another way to experience radio rather than simply putting out traditional mainstream pop music with commercials between every song.
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