First day, no time to play

This morning, the general manager Mark Simmons picked me up at my hotel, and I went to the station for the first time.

It’s amazing how small KEDM is, and I mean that in only the nicest way! KCUR probably has some two dozen full time employees; KEDM has five. Despite this, they manage to get a lot of programming on the air. They have quite a bit of local music programming produced mostly by part timers. The station seems to have a pretty good network of these people, but there are so many people in and out each day that I’m always meeting someone new.


Right off the bat, I was on something called the Lagniappe (sounds like lan-YAP). It’s basically a nine-minute interview segment that’s thrown a few times a week in place of a newscast for a little something extra. I guess, as the person who came in all the way from Kansas City, today that was me. Due to some technical difficulties, only the first two minutes of the Lagniappe were recorded and most of that was theme music. Otherwise, I would post it up here for everyone to share in.


I felt weird being on the other side of the microphone, especially when I was asked about how people reacted in Kansas City to Hurricane Katrina. The only thing I could think about were some of the awful pictures of people struggling through murky, black water, stranded on rooftops, or worst of all in my mind waving a hand for rescuers out of a window. No one deserves to go through such an awful situation, and I was grateful to be sitting safely at home. At the same time, I was deeply grateful that it wasn’t me.

That’s enough for now. I had to come back to the station this evening to help run the board for the Governor's address. Day one wore me out, and I’ve got to get up early tomorrow morning.