Homelessness Marathon bannerWhat is the Homelessness Marathon?
The Homelessness Marathon is an annual 14-hour radio broadcast featuring the voices and stories of homeless people from around the United States The Homelessness Marathon features live call-ins all night long via a national toll-free number. The Homelessness Marathon is available for free to all non-commercial radio stations.
How to acquire the 13th Annual Homelessness Marathon's signal
Watch this page for technical updates.PRSS
To subscribe to the Homelessness Marathon on Content Depot, enter the term "Homelessness" in the Content Depot search engine, and you will find the 13th Annual Homelessness Marathon's page.
The Homelessness Marathon will be transmitted in a single 14-hour transmission. Some longer Content Depot broadcasts must be subscribed to hour-by-hour, but the PRSS thought that making such divisions would be too cumbersome for a broadcast of this length (the Homelessness Marathon is the longest broadcast on the PRSS). Limitations on hours of signal acquisition must be set directly on your station's port.
STREAMING AUDIO
All stations wanting to hook up to our webstream can go to: http://ku.audioport.org:8000/kuright_128 (right channel)
If you are an individual listener, please DO NOT use this stream. The direct link to our broadcast for individual listeners is
http://ku.audioport.org/homeless_32.m3u and http://ku.audioport.org/homeless_128.m3u
PACIFICA KU-BAND
All 14 hours of the Marathon will be on the Pacifica right channel.
PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS
13th Annual Marathon 30-second promo: CLICK HERE
13th Annual Marathon 60-second promo: CLICK HERE
Music Bed: CLICK HERE
Poster: RIGHT CLICK HERE and save to your hard drive. Very large editable file.
CLOCK
The first hour of the Marathon comes in cleanly at the top of the 7 p.m., EST, hour, with no billboarding or pre-recorded segment. After that, the clock runs:
59:00 - 59:29 - end-of-hour announcements
59:30 - 59:59 - music bed for station IDs
00:00 - 00:59 - beginning-of-hour welcome, billboarding
01:00 - 05:59 - five-minute pre-recorded report
06:00 - 58:59 - live segment
Note: We haven't always hit these marks perfectly.
FAQ's ABOUT THE HOMELESSNESS MARATHON
Q: When is the next marathon?
A: The next Marathon will run from 7pm, EST, on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 to 9am, EST, on Wednesday, February 24, 2010."
Q: How can my station acquire the marathon's signal?
A: The marathon is distributed via two satellite channels (Ku-band and NPR C-band) and a state-of-the-art web cast. Coordinates and other details will be posted on the marathon's web site (www.homelessnessmarathon.org) and will also be circulated in technical bulletins sent to affiliates.
Q: Does my station have to broadcast all 14 hours of the marathon?
A: No. We're grateful for any time you can give us.
Q: Does the marathon raise funds for homeless people?
A: No, the marathon is a consciousness-raising, not a fund-raising
broadcast. There are no on-air solicitations. While we certainly
encourage "haves" to give generously to "have- nots," we believe that solving the problem of homelessness requires not just volunteerism but also fundamental changes in the way our nation's priorities are structured. The whole mission of the marathon is to ignite a national dialog about what these changes should be. We don't want to muddy our focus by pleading for funds. The marathon also does not carry any corporate underwriting.
Q: If our station wants to do more than just air the marathon, what can we do?
A: You can:
- Contact local shelters, homeless papers, outreach organizations and activist groups to let them know about the broadcast and see if they want to set up "listening rooms," where homeless people can gather to participate in the broadcast. We also encourage listening-room sponsors to invite politicians and the press to hear the broadcast directly in the company of homeless people
- Produce five-minute pre-recorded pieces on selected topics. We need 13 such pre-records to cover our breaks during the broadcast. If you're interested, contact us (at radio@lightlink.com), to discuss possible topics.
- Send us a ten or fifteen minute live feed. We're planning to cut away to remote locations throughout the broadcast. A live feed can consist of a "speak-out" from a listening room, conversations with a local subgroup of the homeless population or coverage of a homelessness-related story that can be handled live.
- Accompany the marathon with local programming. We encourage stations to build their own programming around the marathon, if possible. This can be done either before or after taking the national feed. Or, stations can cut away from the main broadcast while it's in progress. This can be done during the windows for the pre-recorded pieces and live-feeds, so that it is possible to enter and exit the national marathon cleanly at the beginning and ends of segments.
