Kidders And Saucers

Thursday May 28th, 2009 - Chicago, IL/Galena, IL

Lots of running around today. First it was down to WGN in Chicago for a meeting with Jerry’s Kidders to discuss our goals. I don’t mind meeting and I don’t mind discussing but parking is insane. $23 every time we meet is a little steep but for now that’s what it costs.

We’ve got a good solid project here with a lot of potential or at least we think so. We’re a diverse team on the air and we get along off of it so that’s a good start. We’re on one of the most known broadcast entities in North America every week and that helps us as well.

What will really put this over is marketing and that’s what we met about today. Kipper McGee joined us and had a lot to add. He was our program director at WLS and he’s flat out brilliant. He not only likes us he sees the future extremely well. He’s a valuable ally.

He’s the one who suggested we get together and talk about where we’re going with this project. He wants us to be on myspace and facebook and have a ‘Kidder Twitter’ to share with our fans every day. We also talked about a website and things we need or don’t need.

Jerry will make the final decision on all of this and that’s great because the three comics don’t seem to see eye to eye on where we’re going. Ken and Tim and I are not always in a unanimous agreement on what we should do and that can rip a group apart. It did with the Chicago Style Standups because there was no real leader there. It was a lot of bickering.

We’ll keep that to a minimum because Jerry will make a final call and that will be it. As long as we’ve been a group that’s been our rule and it’s worked out very well. We’re all a team and since this is Jerry’s thing we agreed to have his word be the governing decider.

One thing we all agree on is we need to keep doing solid shows and try to improve each time we go on the air. We want to include more production value and make it a package a syndication company would find attractive but that’s down the road a bit. For now we are all on the same page and I hope we stay that way. We all really enjoy being a part of this.

After the meeting I headed out west to Galena for the big UFO Conference at the Eagle Ridge Resort. I always thought Galena was the prettiest part of Illinois but that really isn’t saying much. If Illinois didn’t have Chicago it would be worse than Indiana and Iowa put together. Galena is much like western Wisconsin in that it‘s hilly and pleasing to the eye.

The Eagle Ridge Resort is beautiful. Sam Maranto and his wife Julie are super nice and I’m in a fantastic four bedroom lodge with them and Richard Dolan who is a speaker this weekend. He was also on the Mothership Connection last week and was absolutely great.

He’s about my age and has been in this business for 15 years. Apparently there are a lot of these kinds of conferences and it’s a circuit just like comedy clubs are. He said he does about one a month and also some local stuff in Rochester, NY where he’s from. I learned a lot by listening and he’s a fascinating speaker. This is all new to me and I’m enjoying it.