It’s Saturday morning at 6am. I announced the Warsaw at Merrillville Regional championship game last night from Demaree Stadium in Merrillville. You can see the stadium from I-65. It’s a huge, concrete structure sticking up from what was once a cornfield. Impressive.
Merrillville won 35-28. We streamed the game live in video to several places:
Typically, we get most or our views on Facebook Live. As a matter of fact, until last night, we ALWAYS get more views on Facebook Live than on the WJOB and IHSAA networks. But not last night. We only got about 3,000 views on Facebook, which is low for a tournament football game. But on all of the other platforms, we got significantly more than our Facebook numbers. We’ll analyze why this is on Monday.
… At Merrillville, I talked before the game with Janic Qualizza, who’s been at Merrillville for 42 years, most as athletic director. Not known for warming up to the media, Janice allowed me into her smile for at least a peek.
“So how much longer, Janice?”
“I don’t know. I love this. I’m not married. I don’t have any children. This is my family.” And she opened her arms to the artificial turf of Demaree stadium, the players doing warmup drills, the many fans in purple filtering into the stands.
“This is my family,” she said again. And she smiled, from ear to ear, something I had never seen her do before. She looked me in the eye. For a moment, I understood Janice Qualizza, which I’m pretty sure not many people in the Region can say.
… I had to announce the game because we had three crews out and only two in-house play-by-play guys available – Ryan Walsh and Sam Michel. Ryan announced Hobart’s win over Russ Radtke’s New Prairie team.
Sam and his crew were at Purdue Northwest doing the men’s and women’s basketball games. Both PNW teams lost. The men’s game went into overtime. We’re giving PNW priority this year, dedicating Sam to announce and hiring Gary Hayes, who’s been coaching around here since 1969, to broadcast the games. It’s a real treat to listen to these two do a game. Try it. At times, it’s better than ESPN, especially since it’s local.
… I’m set to go this morning to “Sidewalk Talk” in East Chicago for the Cline Avenue Bridge. We have been promoting this gathering heavily on the radio and video. You can go out there and learn how they build a huge bridge that goes way up in the air over a canal, train tracks, a couple of steel mills and several church steeples. They’re building it using innovative technology. They basically pour concrete over iron rods on the ground, and then lift it with a massive crane. They hold the different pieces together with cable. If I go out there early enough, I can post a Facebook Live video and maybe attract a few latecomers. My Radio Life literally never ends.
I have a ton of family and friends, but it just dawned on me – Janice Qualizza is married to Merrilville athletics and I am having an affair on my wife with WJOB. Janice carries purple everywhere she goes. I carry a microphone.
Nottingham Square
has nothing on
Ridge and 41, where,
with flowers and flame, we
honor soldiers.
… Debbie and I have come up with this brilliant idea that I should try to have either breakfast or lunch with a client or prospect every day or nearly every day. Yesterday, I ate breakfast at the The Wheel with Ryan Reithel. He’s the head of the Electricians union. Halfway through breakfast, Debbie called:
“Aren’t you coming back?”
“Not right away. I’m having breakfast with Reithel. It’s part of the plan, remember?”
“You’re supposed to host the Democratic show with Jim Weiser in ten minutes.”
I ate a plateful of eggs in a hurry and bowed out gracefully, but not before receiving a cool long sleeve shirt from 697 that salutes our veterans. Reithel understood, I hope. And if he doesn’t… I’ll use union terms to explain it – “Too f---ing bad.”
…. For lunch, I doublie-dipped and ate with another longtime sponsor, Pete Korellis, who owns Korellis Roofing, and Ron McFarlane, who owns McFarlane builders. McFarlane and I are related through the Vanes side of the family. You can go to the old cemetery on 169th by the Subway in Hammond and see Vanes, Mueller and Dedelow graves from the 1800s. It’s impressive history and I cringe at even mentioning it in that I’m a bad descendent for not taking better care of the graves. The gravestones are all faded to the point that some are not readable any more. They were readable when I was a kid. Now that I think of it, maybe I’ll get McFarlane to help me refurbish all that's left of our ancestors.
…. In the afternoon, I worked with Debbie and a part-time marketing guy, Collin Cook. He’s one of the many recent PNW grads who come our way. I hire them for a while and work the shit out of them for crappy pay. They get so tired of it that they get off their asses and get a real job, usually in Chicago. It’s a process that works.
One of the things we’re trying to do with marketing is to make it so that people and businesses can give us money directly through our website. As you know, we have the Passive Marketing System – PMS. We do amazing broadcasting in radio and video and then we wait for people to call us. Most of the time they do.
Now, with the help of Shamari Walker, the Gavit grad who’s now a freshman at Purdue Lafayette, we’re building a back end to let people buy WJOB advertising as easily as they’d buy a laundry basket on Amazon. It’s a work in progress, with an emphasis on “work.”
…. Today, we’re sending a crew to broadcast the University of Chicago football game. Nick Hedrick, our lead producer, is taking Ben Tomera and Sonny Santana. We don’t have to announce, just produce the video and sound and stream it. They say they got it covered, so I’m thinking of going to a movie with Alexis. No doubt we’ll be sitting in the theater and halfway through the movie my phone will go nuts. Someone from the stations will be texting me and I’ll have to go out by the popcorn machine and deal with it. Just like Janice, WJOB is my family.
By the way, we’re planning on sending a team to Carmel on Friday to broadcast the Merrillville game. Carmel has 5600 students. Merrillville has 2100. Doesn’t seem fair. It’ll be David vs. Goliath, with Janice’s family aiming a slingshot at a high school bigger than most colleges. Hope the rock hits. Talk soon. Bye.
- Facebook Live for your phone
- WJOBNetwork.com
- the WJOB app on your phone
- the WJOB app on Amazon, Apple and Roku for your living room
- the IHSAAtv network
Typically, we get most or our views on Facebook Live. As a matter of fact, until last night, we ALWAYS get more views on Facebook Live than on the WJOB and IHSAA networks. But not last night. We only got about 3,000 views on Facebook, which is low for a tournament football game. But on all of the other platforms, we got significantly more than our Facebook numbers. We’ll analyze why this is on Monday.
… At Merrillville, I talked before the game with Janic Qualizza, who’s been at Merrillville for 42 years, most as athletic director. Not known for warming up to the media, Janice allowed me into her smile for at least a peek.
“So how much longer, Janice?”
“I don’t know. I love this. I’m not married. I don’t have any children. This is my family.” And she opened her arms to the artificial turf of Demaree stadium, the players doing warmup drills, the many fans in purple filtering into the stands.
“This is my family,” she said again. And she smiled, from ear to ear, something I had never seen her do before. She looked me in the eye. For a moment, I understood Janice Qualizza, which I’m pretty sure not many people in the Region can say.
… I had to announce the game because we had three crews out and only two in-house play-by-play guys available – Ryan Walsh and Sam Michel. Ryan announced Hobart’s win over Russ Radtke’s New Prairie team.
Sam and his crew were at Purdue Northwest doing the men’s and women’s basketball games. Both PNW teams lost. The men’s game went into overtime. We’re giving PNW priority this year, dedicating Sam to announce and hiring Gary Hayes, who’s been coaching around here since 1969, to broadcast the games. It’s a real treat to listen to these two do a game. Try it. At times, it’s better than ESPN, especially since it’s local.
… I’m set to go this morning to “Sidewalk Talk” in East Chicago for the Cline Avenue Bridge. We have been promoting this gathering heavily on the radio and video. You can go out there and learn how they build a huge bridge that goes way up in the air over a canal, train tracks, a couple of steel mills and several church steeples. They’re building it using innovative technology. They basically pour concrete over iron rods on the ground, and then lift it with a massive crane. They hold the different pieces together with cable. If I go out there early enough, I can post a Facebook Live video and maybe attract a few latecomers. My Radio Life literally never ends.
I have a ton of family and friends, but it just dawned on me – Janice Qualizza is married to Merrilville athletics and I am having an affair on my wife with WJOB. Janice carries purple everywhere she goes. I carry a microphone.
Nottingham Square
has nothing on
Ridge and 41, where,
with flowers and flame, we
honor soldiers.
… Debbie and I have come up with this brilliant idea that I should try to have either breakfast or lunch with a client or prospect every day or nearly every day. Yesterday, I ate breakfast at the The Wheel with Ryan Reithel. He’s the head of the Electricians union. Halfway through breakfast, Debbie called:
“Aren’t you coming back?”
“Not right away. I’m having breakfast with Reithel. It’s part of the plan, remember?”
“You’re supposed to host the Democratic show with Jim Weiser in ten minutes.”
I ate a plateful of eggs in a hurry and bowed out gracefully, but not before receiving a cool long sleeve shirt from 697 that salutes our veterans. Reithel understood, I hope. And if he doesn’t… I’ll use union terms to explain it – “Too f---ing bad.”
…. For lunch, I doublie-dipped and ate with another longtime sponsor, Pete Korellis, who owns Korellis Roofing, and Ron McFarlane, who owns McFarlane builders. McFarlane and I are related through the Vanes side of the family. You can go to the old cemetery on 169th by the Subway in Hammond and see Vanes, Mueller and Dedelow graves from the 1800s. It’s impressive history and I cringe at even mentioning it in that I’m a bad descendent for not taking better care of the graves. The gravestones are all faded to the point that some are not readable any more. They were readable when I was a kid. Now that I think of it, maybe I’ll get McFarlane to help me refurbish all that's left of our ancestors.
…. In the afternoon, I worked with Debbie and a part-time marketing guy, Collin Cook. He’s one of the many recent PNW grads who come our way. I hire them for a while and work the shit out of them for crappy pay. They get so tired of it that they get off their asses and get a real job, usually in Chicago. It’s a process that works.
One of the things we’re trying to do with marketing is to make it so that people and businesses can give us money directly through our website. As you know, we have the Passive Marketing System – PMS. We do amazing broadcasting in radio and video and then we wait for people to call us. Most of the time they do.
Now, with the help of Shamari Walker, the Gavit grad who’s now a freshman at Purdue Lafayette, we’re building a back end to let people buy WJOB advertising as easily as they’d buy a laundry basket on Amazon. It’s a work in progress, with an emphasis on “work.”
…. Today, we’re sending a crew to broadcast the University of Chicago football game. Nick Hedrick, our lead producer, is taking Ben Tomera and Sonny Santana. We don’t have to announce, just produce the video and sound and stream it. They say they got it covered, so I’m thinking of going to a movie with Alexis. No doubt we’ll be sitting in the theater and halfway through the movie my phone will go nuts. Someone from the stations will be texting me and I’ll have to go out by the popcorn machine and deal with it. Just like Janice, WJOB is my family.
By the way, we’re planning on sending a team to Carmel on Friday to broadcast the Merrillville game. Carmel has 5600 students. Merrillville has 2100. Doesn’t seem fair. It’ll be David vs. Goliath, with Janice’s family aiming a slingshot at a high school bigger than most colleges. Hope the rock hits. Talk soon. Bye.
RSS Feed
