A Bumpy Ride

Sunday April 20th, 2008 - Kenosha, WI/Lake Villa, IL

Interesting ride on the mothership today. We were back on the air on AM 1050 WLIP in Kenosha, WI after a week off and we had a few speed bumps to fly over. Listeners had no idea that everything fell apart because we really haven’t made an impression on them yet.

We are just getting started and today a few unavoidable pitfalls happened that took us in a direction I for one didn’t expect. For one, our third co-host Jimmy Novack took another day off today. He works for the rock station in the building and they had a remote at some pro marijuana rally or something because it’s 4/20. I had to find out about it third hand.

I really like Jimmy personally but he can be a little flighty at times. This is one of those times. Our other co-host Stu James is also the promotions director for both stations in the building and he’s got more than his plate full. I can’t ask him to do any more than he does already and he does a nice job keeping everything flowing. He runs all the controls on air.

Two weeks ago Jimmy brought up 9/11 and how he thought a whole show devoted to it would be interesting to do so we agreed to do it. Now two weeks later he wasn’t here and it left us dangling. I had attempted to make contact with a few websites on the subject and I found someone who agreed to come on but then he had to back out and leave us empty.

I was going to have my cousin Brett on anyway because he is in construction and he had said it was fishy on the day it happened. He was thrilled to come to the studio so he drove down from Milwaukee and sat in Jimmy’s chair for the show. He said how he felt about it and it was very interesting. We ended up getting more calls than we’d ever gotten before.

At the end of the day we pulled off a two hour show but I was not happy with it at all. It was unorganized and we could have done a lot better. It’s nobody’s fault that the guest we had booked couldn’t be on this week or that Jimmy did his other event. Those things are going to happen and I’m not upset about it. What I am disappointed in is my lack of prep.

I am the one running this show in the long run. Stu and Jimmy are both working at what their jobs are at the station and this is part time. It’s part time for me too but if it will stay on the air for any length of time it’s up to me to keep the guests coming and prepare more thoroughly. Everything fell apart today and there was really no plan B to fall back on.

Cousin Brett did a great job and he was on cloud nine because being on the radio was a new experience for him. He’s very smart and quick witted and funny and he could do this for a living if he wanted to but he doesn’t want to. He still likes doing his carpenter thing.

We covered the time today and there is no real pressure on this show because nobody is getting paid. Yet. If there ever is money involved I would hope we’d still do it because we love to do it and not for the money only. We received calls from people who all said they had heard us before today so that was encouraging. We’re getting regulars after all. We’ll keep showing up and polishing the show and hopefully take this to where it should be.