I realized, in hindsight, that the last posting was never spell checked. Seems a rather stupid thing for a guy to do when he himself often scrutinizes
the works of others.
!@#$
Tonight I finally got to see the big !@#$ fest on South Park. Mind you I haven’t watched South Park in quite some time. As a matter of fact I can’t even tell you the last new episode of South Park I actually watched (might have been the MechaStreisand one, I’m not sure). Needless to say, though, I am a total media and hype victim so I just had to watch it. I’ll probably also waste countless hours watching Big Brother on television as well as the nternet just to see the absolutely boring footage before it hits the air as less boring edited footage. Victim of hype, that’s me to a “T”.
First, I have to say that through all of this I admire one thing about South Parks creators: to have this episode’s content so overly hyped and to hIave that same type of hype the subject of the episodes ridicule is just too damn funny. It’s not often that you are able to make fun of your boss at work and get away with it, but Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker seem to freely get away with it. I appreciate the snubbing of the system.The thing that also gets me is that there was no real reason to make a big deal out of this when you know the inside story. Comedy Central is a Cable Network channel so the things that they do are actually at their discretion. What this means is that the loveable kids from South Park couldn’t have been cursing like long shore men since day one. Comedy Central, as a network, decided this wasn’t a path they wished to travel however (as a matter of fact, the movie Booty Call that was on before South Park was heavily edited down by CC). It wasn’t that this was any triumph over the FCC. The only accomplishment that happened here was that Stone & Parker were able to battle their way through the powers that be at Comedy Central to let this episode be aired the way that it was. Good for them.
It is better to have been a doer of deeds…
If you were around when Comedy World went down the toilet you know what the above references. Of all the things that happened during that dramatic and rather lame climax, the statement that the above captions was probably one of the smoothest.
Why the hell am I using it? Well, I guess you can say I’m kind of walking a similar path and wondering if it will be worth being a doer of deeds and failing without achieving greatness… sort of. Let me break it down for you.
I loved being on the radio. For some sick reason it is one of those things I have always wanted to do. When I turned 16 I heard the Alex Bennett Program on Live 105 the first time and I admit that it changed the way I listened to radio. Suddenly I didn’t care for music to get me going in the morning… I wanted to hear people talking about things. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t even listen to music in the morning any more. Music first thing in the morning would actually put me in a bad mood.
Suddenly I was listening to Talk Radio. I can honestly say I was the only one that I knew of that was doing it. I liked it. Most importantly I realized I wanted to do it. I won’t get in to how it took me another 18 years to become someone who might try to get others to call him an entertainer. I will say I have been very fortunate along the way and have met a lot of really cool people. Now I am looking at how to stay on radio.
There are two types of radio really. There is local and then there is national. You can make OK money doing local and you can start to build a reputation, gain listeners, become a success and hopefully get syndicated nationally. There are really only three choices for me locally. The first would be the pie in the sky for L.A. radio. 97.1 FM KLSX seems to not be running Kim Komando right now. If they wanted to have a computer help program of their own this would be the one to be on. 570AM KLAC has been slowly morphing back to a talk format. 870 AM KRLA runs The Earthlink Internet Show on Sundays, but this is more of a broad Internet/computer show. Those are really my choices since other stations already have their own guys. At this moment I actually have a way to donationally syndicated radio,but it is going to take money. Seeing as how I don’t have a job right now and am not in a position to take a financial risk I am at a point where I have to get creative.
One radio syndicator lost their computer help program and is looking for another one. They want something that can compete with the aforementioned Kim Komando(I would also like to interject at this point and say that prior to moving down to L.A. I never heard of Kim Komando). It also just so happens that this syndicators board of directors have decided that any new shows will be on a barter system. In other words, I pay money to be on their airwaves and I get a certain amount of air time I get to sell for national advertisers. For the number that I have to sell and the amount that I would have to pay I can tell you that if I get the minimum rate I would want to get and could sell only half my spots I could still turn a very small profit in order to do a show once a week. This wouldn’t be that bad at all because at least it wouldn’t cost me anything other then my time to sell advertising. I certainly wouldn’t be able to live off of it, but it wouldn’t cost me out of pocket once an advertising groove was achieved.Notice that last statement? I’m sure you could imagine that it is damn near impossible to sell advertising for a show that isn’t even on the air yet. Granted I have done some damn near impossible things, but that one would take the cake.
So, right now I’m exploring my other options for getting money to fund the project ahead of time. If I can pull that off then you’ll hear me on real radio soon if you are in the right markets. Cross your fingers for me because I’ll need all the help I can get.
That’s it for now I guess. More tomorrow (of course).
-WW
