All the Respect in the World

That is what I give the sports radio - and all talk radio show hosts. It's not as easy as it appears and that the good ones make it look so easy is a testament to their hard work. The amount of hours that it takes me to get ready to fill a half hour on Blog Talk Radio has been staggering. Once I get better at it, it may take me less, but as of right now to produce a half hour show once a week takes about nine hours of research and writing time. This includes re-writes as well as possible tangents in case callers take me a certain way, but those are hard to predict. Besides, with only a single caller each week, the tangent is not that far!! I realize that the 'big time' have production assistants and others to help gather the information I do it as a one-man band, but they still need to pull it together and make it coherent. The days of thinking that "These guys only work four hours a day" is over! It's job - plain and simple.

What it also has been is a lot of fun. The hours spent researching have given me much more insight into topics than I could have ever hoped to have had otherwise. I had pages of information that I didn't even get to last night - which is a good thing - that may end up being a separate show or a blog post in the next few days. But I feel the need to be over prepared rather than stumbling around trying to fill air.

I also told myself that if we didn't make it the full half hour, that I wasn't going to sweat it. If I only went 20 minutes, then 20 minutes it was going to be. That didn't happen, but it was a very liberating thought. Of course I don't have to worry about advertisers and other things that the 'mainstream' folks need to - which is ALSO very liberating!

I do worry about the audio quality, however. I've heard from several people over the past 12 hours that the audio has ranged from "just fine" to "God awful". For next week I'm going to go off the wireless feed and hard wire my PC into the router to see if that makes any difference. It certainly is supposed to according to the BTR support team. There is no sense turning folks off because of audio issues. Hell, I can do that all by myself, I don't need technical assistance! Besides, next week I have my first guests on the show and I want to make sure that their message comes through loud and clear.

Next Wednesday night at 10 PM Central Time, Darla Jeffery, Founder, and Leslie Morley, Vice President, of Standing in the Gap will be joining me. These ladies are fighting the good fight here locally in Minnesota to help rehabilitate injured racehorses for future careers helping returning veterans through their newly created non-profit group. It should be an interesting half hour and I hope you'll join us.

Until then, please feel free to listen to the show above left and send me your comments and questions - especially ideas for future shows.