Just remember: Nothing is ever dead in NYC. Especially not something that beats with a punk heart.
East Village Radio is coming back within the next week after shutting down last year, co-founder Peter Ferraro confirmed. The station is currently running test broadcasts.
“We’re beyond excited,” Ferraro said. “It’s funny because we announced we were going to be doing this a few months back, but this horrible winter was just brutal and we had to do work on the studio, and the studio is right on 1st and it’s a storefront … We needed new heating and air conditioning on the storefront that we had to do and for a while it didn’t seem like a reality. But when the weather broke and spring came around, we accelerated the work … And the fact that we are running test broadcasts, I am pinching myself.”
It will be operated by Dash Radio, and available on Dash’s app. East Village Radio will also operate a new sister station, Brooklyn Radio, which will operate out of Williamsburg.
East Village Radio, which started in 2003 as a pirate radio station but quickly became noticed and became one of the Internet’s first radio stations. Started by Lil’ Frankie owner Frank Prisinzano, and Mark Ronson once served as a DJ, bringing in names to visit like Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Daniel Merriweather, and Q-Tip.
But their popularity ended up hurting them: Licensing costs increased with the amount of listeners, and the cost of being in the East Village didn’t help. The (newly renovated studio) will stay at the same location on 19 1st Ave., between 1st and 2nd Ave.
“There was definitely a hole in the neighborhood [without East Village Radio],” Ferraro said. “Whenever I’d go into the East Village, I’d look at that space and East Village Radio not being there, and East Village Radio not being there, being so far, it was so sad.”
