Good things come to those who wait.
‘Tis the finder who lies behind her.
Through all the Facebook Live video, the Amazon, Apple TV, Roku… the robotic cameras and the WJOB phone app, not to mention our labyrinth-like website – there is radio. I can’t get away from it.
And then there’s the app, the HeyJED app, on which I spend an inordinate amount of time developing, prodding, hypothesizing, refitting, applying for grants, etc. All of this is enough to distract you from radio… me from radio. I want to be a high-tech venture capitalist… but in the end what I really love is radio. Sorry.
…. That’s my confession for a Sunday morning. I’m sitting on the bed watching – what is that? – the sun, yes, the sun come up over the neighbor’s house. It’s a cascading yellow light that shows in all of its clarity what winter has done to otherwise healthy and talkative plants and trees. They have no leaves. But at least we have sun.
The key right now, for the three or four of you and me, is – where do we go from here? We have embarked on a journey together to follow my life – MY RADIO LIFE – as it morphs from Autogram board with knobs to an Allyn and Heath digital console with sliders up the wazoo… from radio only to streaming video all over the internet… from the bunkers of a low-lying concrete building between a rail yard and Smith Chevrolet… to a glass-filled ode to modernity on the Boulevard between 171st and 173rd.
Finally, we get together. But the question is – why have I forsaken you for a month and a half? What could I possibly be doing for 45 days that I wouldn’t have taken a few moments to jot down a couple conundrums for you?
There’s another question… and I’ll get to it. You see, the three or four of you and me, I write this not only for us but, as you know, broadcasting students 50 years from now at a small liberal arts college along the East coast…. New England most likely… but it could be further south.
Those students, most likely up late smoking weed, have discovered that at one time in the stone age there was this slob from the Calumet Region of Indiana who thought he could figure out the formula to saving radio…. And, here, he wrote a blog about it. Let’s take another hit and laugh.
Those students can’t interact with me. It’s a one-way street.
- I write
- They wait 50 years
- They smoke weed and laugh.
Then there’s the other audience, of which you are part of. There’s four of us. Me writing it in front of a window at the back of our house. It’s white, it’s white, for as far as the eye can see. Snow overtakes you, me, students 50 years from now.
But here’s the kicker. I put this blog down for more than two months. I haven’t written a thing. I lived the life of radio still. I strapped on a lavolier mic every weekday morning. I pranced around the WJOB studios at the Purdue Northwest Commercialization and Manufacturing Excellence Center, I went to parties, press conferences, client lunches and New Years Eve parties. I did some hot yoga and fixed the leak on the sink in the downstairs bathroom. I cut a few video deals and hosted a zillion paid political programs. I took the wife out to dinner and movies and to her parents’ house to celebrate a 90th birthday.
I have done a lot of things in the last two months – too many things, really – but I have not once written this blog. Not for you. Not for a bunch of potsmokers 50 years from now.
And you know what?
No one noticed. Not one person contacted me asking why I haven’t written about My Radio Life. No one sent an email to jed@wjob1230.com. No one sent an old fashioned letter to WJOB at PNW, 7150 Indianapolis Blvd, Hammond, IN 46324. No one hit me up with a Facebook comment asking – yo, dude, how come you don’t write your blog anymore? No one stopped me in the canned goods aisle at Strack & Van Tils and asked the same thing.
No one, not one person, sent in a HeyJED, using your own voice, your own cadence, you own sardonic wit, asking – Hey JED, when you gonna write some more of your blog?
This is how things are on the third Sunday in February. There is four inches of snow caked neatly on the picnic table parked just a few feet from where I write to you for the first time in 60 days. The sun – yes, the sun – points a yellow finger at the wrinkles above my eyes –
You, my son – write your f---ing blog, lazy ass.
The advantages of anonymity are endless. It’s you, you, you and me. We get to say anything we want. We can even repeat ourselves, if we want. We can even repeat ourselves, if we want.
By the way, we can even repeat ourselves, if we want.
Now just because nobody but the three or four notice if I forsake this blog for a while doesn’t mean that I have other areas of… notice. If I take a day off from doing the show to take an MBA final or to take my wife to Indy for a judges thing…. that night, no matter where I go, someone will come up –
Yo, JED, where were you this morning?
That is gratifying. More than the three or four of you and me listen to the morning radio show and a lot even watch it now in video. I am grateful for this. It brings meaning to my life.
But when I don’t write this blog for two months and no one sends in a HeyJED asking why not – what’s that tell you?
That’ll do it for this morning. I just wanted to tell the three or four of you - and a bunch of burnouts 50 years from now – that the sun came out this morning. It really did. And since it snowed like hell for a few days and then got really cold, my backyard looks like a picture on a calendar. I won’t ruin it by sharing with a photo from my iphone. I’ll just let you use your own imagination. In our next installment, I’ll tell you all about the media stuff that is taking over my life… that I am allowing to take over my life… that I make sure takes over my life. For now, enjoy the view.