Radio Service for the Blind Ending

04.05.2010 by Elizabeth Ziegler

(KCPW News) For more than three decades, the Utah State Library has operated a radio station for the blind with 100 volunteers reading the daily news, obituaries and advertisements from local papers. But now it will end April 21 due to budget cuts, declining interest, new technology and competition. State Librarian Donna Jones Morris says it was a very difficult decision to make.

“I have to say, I’m very sorry to see it go because I know that there were clients who listened to this and who enjoyed it,” Morris says. “But the numbers have decreased, and we’re definitely into return on investment. And this particular service, the return on investment has not been as much as it was in the past.”

In 2006, the free radio service for the blind had more than 1,000 subscribers who used a special radio receiver to listen. But after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints launched its HD radio station last year, 226 of them canceled the library’s service. Morris says HD technology has rendered the library’s program obsolete.

The Radio Reading Service for the Blind and Disabled cost the library more than $100,000 a year to operate. Lawmakers slashed the state library’s 2011 budget by five percent, or about $250,000.

“This is a series of cuts that we’ve gone through,” Morris says. “And we have lost a bookmobile supervisor position, we’ve lost a number of different positions, we’ve lost a number of things throughout the state library that don’t exist anymore because of all the budget cuts.”

The remaining 800 subscribers will still be able to get the news from three local papers read to them over the telephone through the library’s Newsline service. But they won’t be able to hear advertisements, grocery coupons or obituaries.