 Dr. Gordon Bradshaw, Chuck Hughes |  Bobby Morris, Dave Sutkowski |
8:03pm on a Thursday.
I don't know why but I feel as if I should apologize to you for not writing in this blog that nobody reads. That probably needs translation, which is this - if you run a local radio station and host the morning show and develop marketing materials and fix all the tech shit and announce football and basketball games, sometimes you just don't have enough time to write a f#@*ing blog that nobody reads.
I don't know why but I feel as if I should apologize to you for not writing in this blog that nobody reads. That probably needs translation, which is this - if you run a local radio station and host the morning show and develop marketing materials and fix all the tech shit and announce football and basketball games, sometimes you just don't have enough time to write a f#@*ing blog that nobody reads.
And throw in a huge family that you really like to spend time with, and you get the idea. It's a really full radio life and I'm not complaining so you shouldn't either.
Today I rode the bike to work like a lotta times and was nearly attacked by a pack of geese, if that's what you call them. No, I'm not gonna Google it to see if it's a "cackle" or "shockem" or "glom" of geese. Let's just call it a pack of geese.
It happened behind WalMart on the grounds of the former Woodmar Country Club, the demise of which should have been a book in itself, if not at the very least a blog that nobody reads. There were geese on both sides of the path, a lot of them, big honking geese with big bills and massive feet. In a weird way, they, geese in general, remind me of the mud wrestler I used to date once upon a time. Big, webbed feet and a nice, strong beek ... Anyways, I clicked on the gear shifter on my handlebars and eventually the 40 or so geese parted, 20 on one side and 20 on the other.
There must have been a catch to it, though. The east geese, let's call them, must have included offspring of one of the west geese. And as I drove through the cackle of geese, one of the larger of the clan took exception to my existence, hissed loudly, and scampered toward me with that big beek or bill or whatever you call it snapping in the wind. I wore shorts and summer slipper-type shoes and good thing that I'm a superior athlete and could pedal away at an above average speed, or something really bad was gonna happen. I could feel it.
That all happened before 5:30 in the morning. Then I interviewed like a zillion guests. You can review the notes above, if you like, you and the three other people who read this blog. There was the Times editor, and a guy making a film, and a woman looking for a place for 12 Japanese students to stay. There was the always affable director of the Gary chamber of commerce, and a minister-doctor with more degrees than buttons on Andy Qunell's shirt. A couple of baseball coaches came in to tell how they're merging their already-successful youth teams, and Debbie Wargo made an impassioned plea for donations for the Ryan Yates golf outing and soon-to-be foundation.
And don't forget about Brian Tillman, who has brought Italian Ice to northwest Indiana. He and his wife Jodi make the best f$#@ing flavored ice I've ever tasted, even better than that walk-up place on Taylor Street in Little Italy. I used to live in Little Italy in the 1980s. Tell you about that someday.
For now, I'm just beat. You figure it takes about 55 hours of ME a week to keep the whole radio station and digital media empire running with any semblance of organization and stability. It doesn't really matter how you slice up the week - if I don't put in the 55 hours then we fall behind. And that means 65 hours the next week. I know what you're thinking - can't you f#@*ing manage your station and your time better than that? Probably. But I kinda like feeling needed anyhows.
And don't forget about family. Check out some of the photos above and you'll know that daughter Jeanie, who's leaving in less than 48 hours for New York City, and I took a niece and two nephews out for lunch and then brought them back to the studio. I had to answer a few emails so the kids did what they always do when they come to the studio - they turned on the mikes and started some free-form recording. Jack, 8, and Alan, 10, are f@*#ing hilarious. And so is niece Megan, 14. You turn on the mikes and after Jack and Allan make the initial weird boops and beeps and weird hissing and cackling sounds, not altogether unlike that of the mad mother goose this morning, they start making jokes that only an 8 and 10-year-old who are familiar with audio equipment can make. I haven't done it yet, and given my record as a general slacker when it comes to these thing, I may not ever actually do it... but given the time I'd cut their shit up and you'd know what I'm talking about.
The one thing that I would like to address is 8-year-old Jack's infatuation with the word "ball sack." It's an incredibly disgusting term, I know, but used in the right context by an 8-year-old it can make you laugh out loud like a stoned high school football player, no matter how much you try to stifle it.
Ball sack this and ball sack that. You get the picture.
Anyhows, for you radio marketing wonks, Debbie, Jean and I are getting closer to putting together what may or may not be our first official brochure in the ten... oops, 11... years that we've owned WJOB. If you listen to the show on a regular basis, then you know that we invented PMS - the passive marketing system. It's a strategy in which you do really cool and innovative local radio and then you wait for people to call or email you with advertising buys. I'm not kidding. That's how we do it. Don't tell anyone.
It is, in the end, a rather arrogant way to do radio. I get it. How can you get away, JED, with not having salespeople or even a marketing brochure?
I don't know. Quit bothering me. We'd rather make radio than sell it and I don't know if that makes us the good guy or the bad girl, but either way I don't give a ball sack. And if you keep bothering me, I'll sic my 8 and 10-year-old nephews on you after they just drank a Sprite and Coke and Dr. Pepper mix at Potbelly's. You'll hate me forever.
Anyways, I attached a draft of our first official brochure, one that highlights the new studios coming our way and what great people we are. I don't know if it will help us sell anything. I really don't. But I do know the process of thinking it through what we want our message to be and then putting down the words and choosing the photos and then the design and the fonts and so forth... it was all a pretty good learning process. Heck, it was so rewarding that if we do sell a few packages from the brochure we might even advance to, say, a power point presentation or a standard email for prospective clients. You never know.
Today I rode the bike to work like a lotta times and was nearly attacked by a pack of geese, if that's what you call them. No, I'm not gonna Google it to see if it's a "cackle" or "shockem" or "glom" of geese. Let's just call it a pack of geese.
It happened behind WalMart on the grounds of the former Woodmar Country Club, the demise of which should have been a book in itself, if not at the very least a blog that nobody reads. There were geese on both sides of the path, a lot of them, big honking geese with big bills and massive feet. In a weird way, they, geese in general, remind me of the mud wrestler I used to date once upon a time. Big, webbed feet and a nice, strong beek ... Anyways, I clicked on the gear shifter on my handlebars and eventually the 40 or so geese parted, 20 on one side and 20 on the other.
There must have been a catch to it, though. The east geese, let's call them, must have included offspring of one of the west geese. And as I drove through the cackle of geese, one of the larger of the clan took exception to my existence, hissed loudly, and scampered toward me with that big beek or bill or whatever you call it snapping in the wind. I wore shorts and summer slipper-type shoes and good thing that I'm a superior athlete and could pedal away at an above average speed, or something really bad was gonna happen. I could feel it.
That all happened before 5:30 in the morning. Then I interviewed like a zillion guests. You can review the notes above, if you like, you and the three other people who read this blog. There was the Times editor, and a guy making a film, and a woman looking for a place for 12 Japanese students to stay. There was the always affable director of the Gary chamber of commerce, and a minister-doctor with more degrees than buttons on Andy Qunell's shirt. A couple of baseball coaches came in to tell how they're merging their already-successful youth teams, and Debbie Wargo made an impassioned plea for donations for the Ryan Yates golf outing and soon-to-be foundation.
And don't forget about Brian Tillman, who has brought Italian Ice to northwest Indiana. He and his wife Jodi make the best f$#@ing flavored ice I've ever tasted, even better than that walk-up place on Taylor Street in Little Italy. I used to live in Little Italy in the 1980s. Tell you about that someday.
For now, I'm just beat. You figure it takes about 55 hours of ME a week to keep the whole radio station and digital media empire running with any semblance of organization and stability. It doesn't really matter how you slice up the week - if I don't put in the 55 hours then we fall behind. And that means 65 hours the next week. I know what you're thinking - can't you f#@*ing manage your station and your time better than that? Probably. But I kinda like feeling needed anyhows.
And don't forget about family. Check out some of the photos above and you'll know that daughter Jeanie, who's leaving in less than 48 hours for New York City, and I took a niece and two nephews out for lunch and then brought them back to the studio. I had to answer a few emails so the kids did what they always do when they come to the studio - they turned on the mikes and started some free-form recording. Jack, 8, and Alan, 10, are f@*#ing hilarious. And so is niece Megan, 14. You turn on the mikes and after Jack and Allan make the initial weird boops and beeps and weird hissing and cackling sounds, not altogether unlike that of the mad mother goose this morning, they start making jokes that only an 8 and 10-year-old who are familiar with audio equipment can make. I haven't done it yet, and given my record as a general slacker when it comes to these thing, I may not ever actually do it... but given the time I'd cut their shit up and you'd know what I'm talking about.
The one thing that I would like to address is 8-year-old Jack's infatuation with the word "ball sack." It's an incredibly disgusting term, I know, but used in the right context by an 8-year-old it can make you laugh out loud like a stoned high school football player, no matter how much you try to stifle it.
Ball sack this and ball sack that. You get the picture.
Anyhows, for you radio marketing wonks, Debbie, Jean and I are getting closer to putting together what may or may not be our first official brochure in the ten... oops, 11... years that we've owned WJOB. If you listen to the show on a regular basis, then you know that we invented PMS - the passive marketing system. It's a strategy in which you do really cool and innovative local radio and then you wait for people to call or email you with advertising buys. I'm not kidding. That's how we do it. Don't tell anyone.
It is, in the end, a rather arrogant way to do radio. I get it. How can you get away, JED, with not having salespeople or even a marketing brochure?
I don't know. Quit bothering me. We'd rather make radio than sell it and I don't know if that makes us the good guy or the bad girl, but either way I don't give a ball sack. And if you keep bothering me, I'll sic my 8 and 10-year-old nephews on you after they just drank a Sprite and Coke and Dr. Pepper mix at Potbelly's. You'll hate me forever.
Anyways, I attached a draft of our first official brochure, one that highlights the new studios coming our way and what great people we are. I don't know if it will help us sell anything. I really don't. But I do know the process of thinking it through what we want our message to be and then putting down the words and choosing the photos and then the design and the fonts and so forth... it was all a pretty good learning process. Heck, it was so rewarding that if we do sell a few packages from the brochure we might even advance to, say, a power point presentation or a standard email for prospective clients. You never know.
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