Back in 1979, Gary Vollono graduated from the Connecticut School of Broadcasting with dreams of becoming a radio star. However, fate had other plans for him.
“I found two things happening,” he recalled. “I got a serious girlfriend and I realized radio wasn”™t going to pay my bills if I got married. I had gotten a couple of job offers back then, but for 90 bucks a week. So, I went the marriage route.”
Vollono spent the next 21 years working at the New Haven Register, rising to the position of production manager. He later switched careers, taking on responsibilities for workers”™ compensation and general liability insurance auditing at Overland Solutions Inc. But Vollono”™s interest in show business never abated, and in the 1990s he launched IndepenDisc, a website that allowed him to review new CDs from independent music artists.
In 2005, Vollono received an email from David Vessel, the St. Louis-based founder of the internet-based startup Cygnus Radio, a 24/7 internet-based. “They were on the air about three months when they found me,” he said. “At that time, they were skirting the royalty issues by only playing independent music that they got permission from the artists to play without royalty compensation. Because I was doing strictly independent music, they asked if I would be interested in doing a show for their radio station. And I said, ”˜Absolutely!”™”
However, Vollono, who had no previous experience with internet webcasting technology, was caught off guard by the broadcasting arrangement. “And they said, ”˜You can do it right from your living room.”™ And I was like, ”˜What?”™”
Thus, Vollono realized his jettisoned career goal of becoming a radio star, albeit on the internet and not terrestrial radio. Taking his high school nickname of Gary Gone for his Cygnus program, he began to webcast a weekly three-hour show from a basement studio in his Trumbull home, highlighting a wide range of under-the-radar independent music artists. When Vessel died of cancer in April 2013 and his business partner announced plans to shut down Cygnus, Vollono sought allies to keep the network alive.
“I sent an email out to everyone I knew in the Connecticut music scene, asking if anyone was interested in joining me in this venture. Four other guys contacted me and we bought the station, which basically meant taking over all of the bills. So, for a nominal fee, we officially took control of the station in October 2013.”
Vollono is now majority owner and program director at Cygnus Radio, which he continues to run from the basement of his home. His four partners include Meriden musician Frank Critelli, who handles the network”™s marketing outreach, musician and WESU-FM show host Rob DeRosa and two former Connecticut deejays, Dennis Lamar from WPLR and WLAD and Rick Allison from WPLR.
Although Cygnus continues to focus on indie music and network promotion is primarily through social media and word of mouth, Vollono said the radio station has a loyal audience. “I”™d say we”™re averaging about 500 to 600 listeners during the course of a day. Not all at once, mind you, but unlike terrestrial radio, we have an average listener session of 38 minutes. So, for everybody that does log on, they tune in for much longer than on terrestrial radio.”
Vollono”™s longtime support of Connecticut”™s independent music scene helped to bring in a core audience from the state, but Cygnus also has listeners overseas.
“I went to a show last week, the No Line North CD release party, and the band leader came up to me and said, ”˜We have a fan in England who already bought the new CD the day it came out because he listens to Cygnus Radio and he knew it was coming out,”™” said Vollono. “I got an email from a band in Sweden thanking us because somebody in Germany heard their song on Cygnus Radio and ordered an album from them.”
Vollono identified his network”™s core demographic as being between the ages of 45 and 70, although his schedule includes a teenage deejay playing a youth-oriented brand of contemporary music. Cygnus hosts 14 original shows from different webcasters around the U.S., but at the moment the network is operated as a labor of love rather than a profit-driven enterprise.
“Our operating expenses include a streaming server, website server, the ASCAP and BMI licenses, the software we use when we bring on deejays and the Connecticut business equity tax, our app and minor things that pop up,” said Vollono, who added that costs are covered by him and the partners that helped him acquire Cygnus. The network has some sponsors, most notably a longtime partnership with New Haven”™s Café Nine, while two new advertisers ”” The Moon and the Monocle, a Mansfield boutique, and Copeland Auto Repair in Cheshire ”” contacted the network for promotional opportunities.
But Vollono is not running Cygnus with the hope of building a broadcast empire. And he continues to earn a living as a workers”™ compensation auditor for Overland Solutions.
“I would like to be able to get enough local interest in advertising so it would be self-supportive,” he said. “It doesn”™t have to make a profit. Right now, we don”™t make money. We”™d like to make money. We have sold some advertising, but for the most part the five of us kick in to cover the bills every month. And that is fine. We don”™t bowl, we don”™t fish, we don”™t have a boat. Instead of the stuff the guys normally dump their money into, we dump it into music.”
