Weather & Sports

Harking back to my days in the television industry, I found myself talking about the weather and sports. No joke. Also, I decided to provide a little social commentary regarding Memphis drivers. Everyone has an opinion about the way people here operate 2,000 pounds of mobile steel.

Regarding sports, you probably won't like what I have to say about it. In general terms of course, I will explain to why I think NASCAR and the NFL sucks. Oh yeah, I'm going there.



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NEXT WEEK: A change is gonna come and there is nothing you can do about it.

Stay tuned...

The Agency Blues

One of the interesting aspects of working in the broadcast field regards the money. Here we are in a brand new world. The internet is kind of like the wild west. This is a good thing. As an internet broadcaster, things get a little weird. This is the price we pay by being ahead of the technological curve.

As a result, we deal with advertising agencies who just don't understand the very nature of internet broadcasting. Radio Memphis often gets lumped into the same group of broadcasters that are broadcasting, but have no idea how to do it right.

Are we always right? Nope. But we are professionals and listening to what some advertising agencies have to say about internet radio. It's all based in (of all things) fear.



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NEXT WEEK: A little talk about the weather and sports. Really.

Stay tuned...

Josh Robert Thompson

Josh Robert Thompson & Geoff Peterson

I have a few heroes. I have a few people I look up to (as do many of you). Josh is one of those people. I have been fascinated with his work since I discovered his work through The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. As the voice of Geoff the robot (Craig's sidekick, Geoff Peterson), I became rather curious as to who this guy is and what all he does. A quick Google search yielded everything I needed to know.

In this conversation, we talked about the business of show business, the work as a comedian and the changes that have occurred in the broadcast industry. We also  had a discussion about creativity and the dark side of comedy.

My time spent with him was brief and in that time I learned so much about what it is to do what he does and how it impacts what I do.

I can say this, he's a great guy and was very gracious with his time and my indulgences in the conversation. If you ever get the chance to meet him, I highly recommend the experience. Perhaps one day, we can sit down again and if that happens, we'll record that conversation as well.



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For more on Josh, I highly recommend his podcast. He is also on the road with Craig on the Hot and Grumpy Tour and he may be coming to a venue near you. You can find it all here and here.

Once again, my personal thanks to Josh and to Raymond for making this all possible.

NEXT WEEK: Where the hell is the money going? What it is like to sell advertising to an industry that just doesn't get it at all.

How I Built The Show

Even though we are not quite through a solid year of shows, I wanted to give you a little look into how we produce From Radioland. You can consider this a behind the scenes look at the making of what has turned out to be a rather popular little show. Over the past year, several people have asked me how the show is done and how we do the layout of the thing. Here is that look.

Over the the last year, we have had some remarkable growth. We may be hitting a little goal we set out for ourselves by having 100,000 subscribers by the end of the first year of production. That is a big thing for us. We are certainly happy about that achievement and we have some great plans as we make our way into the second year of production. There is something pretty groovy things happening with the show starting with the final episode of our production year which is next week. More on that later.

For those of you who are interested in starting your own show, you can take what I talk about here and use it to help build your podcast. For those of you who are plenty happy just listening, you will get a little glimpse into how the whole thing gets put together. Spoiler: It's not that hard.



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One thing I failed to mention during the recording of this episode was how we got all those subscribers. One thing is certain, we got a lot of you folks through iTunes. Not only that, this show is listed in a number of podcast directories all over the world. I spread this thing around like a disease and all that work finally paid off. Yeah, it was a pain in the ass to do it and the results are never "overnight" but in the amount of time we are looking at here, our growth has been nothing short of remarkable.

NEXT WEEK: Yeah, about that. My conversation with Josh Robert Thompson. Don't know him? Like he says, "Google it." Aw hell, I'll do it for you.