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JED is me, Jim Dedelow. I run two radio stations and a streaming video network in Hammond, Ind. I also write this blog. |
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Noon on Saturday.
Has this ever happened to the three or four of you? You write a good thousand words of your blog… it’s really funny and insightful and tells a little about your American life and a lot about your radio life… and then when you press “Post”… Nothing. The screen goes blank. You do all of the things that a nerdie tech type would do to try to retrieve the masterpiece of a blog entry that you just produced… but to no avail. Chalk it up to one less bit of genius in the blogosphere. 4:22am on Friday morning. Five days of radio in a row are almost over.
Yesterday, Lake County Sheriff John Buncich took fairly critical calls about 1. why the alleged murderer of Val and Lana Taneff was on the streets with such a long rap sheet. and 2. why when you call 911 the dispatcher doesn't know exactly where Centennial Park is. It was not an easy show for the Sheriff. He was a good friend of Val Taneff, the opinionated radio host who got strangled to death in her own home. Sheriff gave the eulogy at the funeral. "It was a bit insensitive for those callers to come at the Sheriff like that. Val was his friend. He talked a the funeral," Alexis said last night on our way back from the Strack and Van Til's grocery store. "He's a big boy, the Sheriff. It's part of the job." 3:21am on Thursday morning.
Radio initiates life. I know these three words, if you think about them, might be better off in reverse order. But that's only if you're on the outside of local radio. If you live it every day, then you could actually experiment with Radio controls your life Radio hinders your life Radio expands life Radio, life Radio Last week, Al Hamnik the sportswriter of 44 years and I took a call from Carl from Hessville, who served in Iraq a few times. He asked if we had seen 13 Hours the movie and when we both admitted that we hadn't, Carl proceeded to tell us that it was an accurate depiction of what it's like to fight in the Middle East. "You should both go see it," Carl said.
4:25am on Wednesday morning.
Radio rolls on. On Monday, longtime WJOB aficionado Will Glaros brought in to the studio Beth Roche, who told her story about being at the finish line to the Boston Marathon when the bomb went off. Bones stuck out of her leg, and she spent 47 days in a Boston hospital rehabbing. She kept her limb. She walked into the studio. That interview kind of crept up on me in that when she and Will sat down, I didn't know what they were gonna talk about. The three or four of you might think that I'd know enough to have some idea who was going to sit down next at the broadcast table. But you'd think that only if you never watched Mash. Remember Mash? Alan Alda as a surgeon in war-torn Korea during the war. Meatball surgery. Bring 'em in, push 'em out. Next. That's all you have time for, stitch them up and get on to the next war injury. Most of the time there's more than you can handle and even when it's not like that you perform as if it is. If you watched the show long enough, you got the feeling that the only way the doctors, nurses, soldiers, generals could get through to the next day was to work at a frightening pace... then drink alcohol and pass out and go to bed. That pretty much describes local radio... |
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