I haven't written to you guys for a while. I hope that you're okay with that. I don't really have a good reason for stopping the blog for a couple of months... other than I just needed to. We've got a lot going on at the media company and sometimes you just gotta sit back and reassess where you're headed.
And, as you can guess, I don't really know where we're headed. Since we last talked, we've updated the HeyJED app. Shamari Walker, who went to Gavit and worked me all through high school, is now down at Purdue Lafayette. He recruited Marcus Orceau, a Lake Central grad and also a Purdue software student, to work on the app. It looks better and functions better.
What's the app for?
Once again, I don't have a defined, linear plan. You click on the button and you send us up to 22 seconds of audio. Some people promote their events, like Lara Gonzalez Bates talking about what's happening at the Challenger Learning Center. Or Debbie Trevino promoting the Hammond Hispanic Committee. Others make funny ones, like Jake and MX. Sometimes you don't know why you're doing something. You just know that you should do it.
So we've spent a couple years now developing the HeyJED app and a few people are starting to use it. I have nowhere idea if it will lead anywhere. It is possible that you are reading this years down the line and the HeyJED app has been a huge part of WJOB for years. It's also possible that you would have never heard of it.
One of the things, also, that I want to get around to doing is to start my own podcast. As the three or four of you know, I host the morning show. At one time, I did 4 and 1/2 hours of radio every day. Then it was down to four hours, then three... and now two. I only do two hours of the morning show every day. You could say that doing two hours of a show that airs on radio and TV takes a lot more out of you than just doing two hours of radio. This was true at first. When I first started doing video along with the radio, it was a lot more prep and a lot more work for everyone involved, including Ryan and the other producers.
But it's like anything else. After a while, you get used to it. For the longest time... doing two hours of the morning show on TV and radio was like doing 4 and 1/2 hours of just radio. But now the gap has closed. Doing two hours of the morning show that goes to:
- AM 1230
- FM 104.7
- the TuneIn app
- Facebook Live video
- Apple TV
- Roku
- Amazon TV
- WJOBNetwork.com
- the new WJOB app.
... Now, even though there's a lot more distribution points, it really just feels like two hours anymore. The long and short of it is that I'm looking to produce more later in the day. Maybe it's a podcast. Maybe it's a TV show. Maybe it's a blog. Maybe it's live radio. Maybe it's something we haven't even thought of.
So there. As noted above, since we last spoke a couple of months ago, we developed a WJOBNetwork app. You can download it for Apple or Android. This is separate from the HeyJED app and was developed by a whole separate team. On the app, you can with two clicks be watching local TV shows. It's pretty cool, but, as with the HeyJED app, who knows if it will go anywhere.
That should do it for now. I hope that you're enjoying this amazing Septermber weather. If you're a student at a small liberal arts college 50 years from now, I hope that you have September weather to enjoy and that we haven't blown up our planet by then. See ya.