No time, no money: Just a few days after the most recent Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, David F. Jackson, creator and operator of the Bay Area Radio Museum, announced that he was shutting down both the online museum and its pet project, the radio hall of fame.

Jackson, a longtime radio fan who works in printing, graphics and marketing services, has spent $50,000 over five years to build and maintain the site. He designed and operated the museum site, offering a treasure trove of radio news, station histories, biographies, photos and airchecks of classic DJs, news and sportscasts. He also put up the money for online tribute stations for KYA and KABL.

Announcers (including Bill Moen and Trish Bell for KABL, and Gary Mora and me for KYA) have provided DJ voice tracks for free. With the hall of fame, which inducted its first group of broadcasters in 2006, Jackson formed partnerships with the Broadcast Legends and other organizations that helped with the induction ceremonies. But the museum site was a one-man operation.

David F. Jackson

"I can no longer sustain this project on my own," Jackson stated on the site. Jackson, who is married and has two children, works on his radio projects out of his home in Livermore. "The more time I spend on the radio and museum," he told me, "the less I do on my job." And he spent many hours on the site, doing research, writing, organizing donated materials, scanning photos, digitizing audio files and maintaining the archives.

When he announced the shutdown, he said, he got some donations and encouragement from members of the Broadcast Legends and the California Radio Historical Society. "They all said the same thing: 'We can't let this thing die.' "

Jackson restored a skeletal site at www.bayarearadio.org. "It's just text; no audio. That's the biggest expense, for bandwidth," he said. "Now, it's not going to go away, but without volunteers, it's going to die."

Beyond volunteers - ideally skilled radio and broadcasting students at local schools - Jackson wishes the museum could attract a chief executive officer "to run it and get volunteers and financial help." And, he said, to develop a plan "to assure that these recordings, photographs and documents will be collected, stored and displayed in a manner befitting a world-class media museum."