Podhead

It's 4:41am on a Friday morning and I just posted two podcasts.

The first is "My Radio Life," which is the story of my radio life. The second is "This is Dead Air." It's a Grateful Dead podcast. At the beginning of this podcast, Lane Paradis, who does "Dead Air" with me, and I figure out that we're podheads now that we've joined the growing ranks of people who think that what we have to say is important enough to do a podcast.

And I'm a "podhead" in more ways than one these days. On Monday, March 13, we're gonna start what I'm calling "Live Assist" radio. That's when I or Tony Panek go on the air and tell the weather and traffic and what's coming up later on the radio and any big local news stories that are happening - then we play a podcast. Or, more accurately, a portion of a podcast. I was thinking of calling it "JEDcast radio," but we're not sure at this point. Allz I know is that on Monday we're gonna start playing podcasts on the radio. 

We had to wait until the 13th to start doing this for a couple of reasons. First, that's when our contract with Clark Howard runs out. Clark does a great show, which if you think about it in many ways resembles a podcast, and we're grateful to him for being on WJOB for these years. 

But it's time for a change. As the three or four of you who read my blog know, there are a lot of talented people who do podcasts... or are thinking about doing a podcast. I'm in the process of aggregating their podcasts on JEDcastradio.com and prepping them for play on WJOB. 

To true radio people, it's heresy to step over to the dark side and play podcasts on the radio. It's just not done on a widespread basis. Podcasting is often thought of as the enemy of terrestrial radio. I don't think so. 

I believe that the best audio being produced in the Calumet Region should be on WJOB. And that we should take the step to aggregate the local podcasting community onto a website, hence JEDcastradio.com. (What's a "JEDcast?" It's a podcast you play on the radio.)

There are a lot of logistical challenges with doing this. First, we had to clear two hours in the afternoon to do this every day. And we had to find the hosts to "live assist" the podcasts. Tony Panek's gonna help with this one. I say now that I'll host it two or three days a week, but the three or four of you know that after a while I'll start golfing or sleeping in the afternoons again. Tony will wind up doing it at least four days a week.

We'll see how that goes. Other logistical challenges are swearing. Many podcasters swear. And that's not allowed on terrestrial radio. So we gotta deal with that. Also, most podcasts are too long to play in full during the 2-4pm time-slot, so we gotta find a way to play pertinent portions of podcasts. That's not easy. You either gotta cut the podcast into digestible portions, or you gotta go on the internet to the exact time you want to start into the podcast and hit play. That takes homework on where to start, just as cutting up the podcast into bites would do. 

I don't want to bore you with all of this but this might be a historic moment in WJOB radio. We're already embracing the internet and all that it has to offer. Our numbers in Facebook Live video are going through the roof. But up until this point, much of our internet-based media has been just that - internet-based. We haven't really crossed the internet with terrestrial radio in such a deep way.

That's all changing on Monday. Remember, allz I want on the radio is the best audio being produced in the Calumet Region. I met with a couple of guys on Wednesday night at Byway Brewery, one of our sponsors, who do just that. Ben and just Dave to a podcast called "Hey My Man." Listen to it and tell me that they're not producing some of the best "radio" in the Region. And it's in the form of a podcast. Ben and just Dave will be a part of 2-4pm on WJOB. 

That's enough for this morning. I have to wash my hairy back and drive down to the radio station to do a morning show. Hope it's good. But even if it's not, no worries. All radio is good, just some is better than others.