RIP Richard Irwin

Probably not a name you knew, but if you've ever searched for old radio clips or airchecks online (like I have many times), you definitely ran into Irwin's website reelradio. Tom Taylor's NOW column has the details...

Richard Irwin, founder/operator of the “ReelRadio” online museum, died yesterday. That’s the news posted on Facebook by Jeff Rothman. He says “For more than 20 years, [the ReelRadio Top 40 Repository] was the first place I looked every Sunday morning for updates.” “Uncle Ricky” had been in poor health and had been posting about recent medical tests and procedures – but it’s sad news for followers of his “Reel Top 40 Radio Repository.” Irwin ran it as a not-for-profit, and had recently said he’d stopped accepting donations and would spend down what was left in the bank. ReelRadio launched in the pre-dawn days of the Internet – February 1996. It claimed to be “the Internet’s largest archive of popular music radio programs...Most have been saved from the era of top 40 radio (1955-1985) and feature favorite stations and disk jockeys.” Irwin said “our virtual museum is user-supported and our website was the first of its kind.” You’d have to say that onetime North Carolina broadcaster Richard Irwin was himself one of a kind – and he genuinely loved radio. A NOW reader who knew him at East Carolina University says “Richard was one of the most talented and enthusiastic people about radio that I ever met. In college, Richard Irwin lived and breathed radio.”