A Face For Radio, A Voice For Blogging

I mentioned earlier that I was pleased ... but surprised ... that the Wide Awakes Radio crew invited me to join. I'm conservative, sure. And for that, I fit in. However, I don't do a whole lot of political blogging. Sometimes, I do cover political topics. Mostly in the Headlines. Sometimes I'll do a serious kinda post, but not all that often. Certainly, not nearly as much as the other WAR members. Or are we WAR-mongers? I forget.

Anyway, I'm excited about WAR. And the launch day was a success. Too much so. Overloaded the servers, remember?

But besides the fact that I think this is an exciting venture that will make an impact on the blogosphere and the news media ... which by itself is plenty ... there's something else that excites me. Doing radio again.

You see, first job I ever had was in radio. It was fun. Lots and lots of fun.

I ran the board during Braves games. That's where somebody sits and listens to the broadcast and follows a sheet telling who gets the commercials when. Like in the middle of the third, when the commercial is for the local Chevrolet dealer instead of, say, Delta Airlines. Or, back in 1975, Eastern Airlines.

And, since I liked Braves baseball, I liked running the board during the games. And I was pretty good at it.

I also played music. The little radio station was an AM-FM joint operation. The FM was Adult Contemporary. Well, mostly. In addition to carrying Braves baseball, we played Middle-of-the-Road (MOR) music during the day. Tapes, actually. No one on the air. Just a machine. After the 5:00 evening news, we went live. First, a couple of hours of Soul music. That's what it was called then. Used to be Rhythm & Blues. Now it's Urban or something. Then, at night, we played Hot 100. Pop. Rock. Whatever. Essentially, the top hits. Played Elton John, Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, Barry Manilow, and so on.

The AM side was Country Music format. Played Waylon Jennings, Conway Twitty, Dolly Parton, and so on.

I learned a lot about Country Music. Became very familiar with it. I'm not a big Country Music fan, but I know a bit about it.

Anyway, I played the music. On both stations. One day, in fact, I signed on the station, played Sprirituals (traditional Black gospel), Southern Gospel, sports (NASCAR, Braves), Country Music, Soul Music, and Hot 100 Music. All in one day. You see, someone didn't show, and I had only a small break in the middle of the day. Signed on and off the station that day.

Small town radio was always an adventure. I loved it.

Running a board was sometimes a challenge, but I was usually up to the task. I could time the records to network broadcasts so that we joined on time. I never had dead air. Well, okay, very very rarely had dead air. When we had a network broadcast on, I never had missed breaks (okay, rarely) or had overlapping of feeds or any of the crappy-sounding stuff I hear all the time on the local stations in Columbus.

I was good at running a board. But, in small-town radio, you do more than that. You also are the on-air talent. The announcer. The DJ.

And that was my weakest point. Probably better described as my weak point. I'm not a good announcer.

As a child, I stuttered a little bit. Still do to a degree. But I've always had a little bit of a Southern accent. And, over the years, it's gotten stronger.

My voice is not a good radio voice. I mean, I wouldn't hire me. Not for my voice, anyway.

So, I'm a little excited to be an "on-air talent" again when WAR re-launches. It'll be a little different than this little blog, because ... well, would you read this thing for 90 minutes? Didn't think so. So, I'll be doing a little different. Still working all that out. Like this blog is me with a keyboard, the program on WAR will beme with a microphone.

I don't know just how that will go. Could be fun. Could be a train wreck. Which might be fun.