On Wednesday, November 7, 2007, KSHE 95 celebrated its 40th Anniversary of bringing Real Rock Radio to St. Louis. To celebrate this momentous occasion, the station along with myself created KSHE 95’S Real Rock Museum - an interactive web site. The Museum consisted oF 18 rooms / wings, 100+ audio clips, 50+ video clips, and nearly 1000 photos at launch.
as the museum's lead developer and curator, I built version 1.0 completely in FLASH and created the entire user interface and the visual presentation. when WE launched the site, you were greeted with an interactive map to navigate the museum's many rooms and wings (screenshots below). at the beginning of 2017, ten years after the initial launch, I completely re-built the museum in html. as flash was fading out and support was nearing an end, this was the logical decision. ultimately, Adobe deprecated Flash in July 2017, and announced its End-Of-Life (EOL) at the end of 2020.
10th anniversary relaunch trailer ...
FROM the original 2007 press release ...
"Together through a gigantic effort from many, many people that started in October of 2006, we have created an interactive web site that spans KSHE’S 40 year history in a way that has never before been done by any radio station. As one of the first radio stations in the world on the FM dial to play rock & roll, KSHE 95 has plenty of history to remember. It’s a history that tells the story of not just of a radio station, but a story about rock & roll from its beginnings as an underground format, to what we know it as today. It’s a story of a little radio station that got it’s start in an old cinder block building next to a drive-in movie theater in Crestwood, MO that went on to touch the lives of so many people simply by doing what we’ve always done best, giving the public real rock & roll with a little bit of attitude and a whole lot of fun. With a history of some of the best rock & roll on-air personalities, great promotions and historic community events all presented with genuine passion for rock & roll, a bond was formed between this city and this station the likes of which won’t soon end and we won’t see again. Maybe it’s the shared memories of concerts gone by, the old photos we have with bad hair but great KSHE shirts, the tales about stopping by the KSHE studio window to request a song, purchase KSHE Schtuff or maybe even “party” with your favorite DJ, we all have or know of KSHE stories. So it is on the occasion of our 40th Anniversary that we are proud to invite you to stop by our window once again, take a trip down St. Louis’ rock & roll memory lane and enjoy KSHE 95’s Real Rock Museum."
Results & SUCcess ...
the museum received over 500k page views on the day of launch and quickly reached 2.5 million shortly thereafter. visitors came from across the U.s. and around the globe including Switzerland, Brazil, Japan, Germany, Malaysia, and many more. In comparison, KSHE’s previous all time full month page view high water mark was less than one half million. Additionally, close to $100,000 of new revenue was attributed to the museum launch and Clients included Budweiser, McDonald’s, Doc’s Harley Davidson, The Family Arena, Lordo’s Diamonds, and many more.
