I ran a marathon today. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Except that a marathon is running 26 miles in pretty much a single direction, with nothing too serious in your path. What I ran was more like a 26-mile route that was also a high hurdles course. That’s what it felt like, anyway, although it was a mental and emotional battering rather than a physical battering. . . although as I walked into the house tonight I felt the more profound sort of exhaustion I have felt in a long long time. Pull up a chair if you’re curious. . .
What made Monday such a long and ultimately rough day was that it was the day I had to complete and mail my entry in the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association 2009 Awards. My boss at the radio station, Dave Cole, asked me to submit the Morning Show … although believe it or not among the 25 different categories in which one could enter, there was no category about interviews- and not even a category in which my program really belonged. So we had to enter it in a miscellaneous category called (literally) “If it Doesn’t Fit, This is It.” One never knows what sorts of things might be entered in this category – for all I know, I’m going to be up against a Girls Gone Wild expose, a weekly polka show from Rhinelander, and The Rev. Sun Myung Moon Inspiration Hour. But that was the only place to enter it, so that’s what we did.
Job #1 was for me to put together a CD with excerpts from the show, so the judges could get a taste of what the program is like. I was at the studios for three hours Sunday afternoon and another two and a half hours Sunday evening going through old programs and trying to find worthwhile excerpts to play. It was fun but also maddening because it really needed to be right around 15 minutes, and Dave Cole had advised me to pick quick, snappy, highlights – but the conversations on the Morning Show just don’t unfold like that. I have long, thorough conversations with people- just the opposite of the sound bytes you hear in other formats- and while I completely agreed that short excerpts with a lot of impact were preferable, it was not easy to find them. And on top of that, there was also the matter of just choosing what interviews from which to draw excerpts. It was only when I had all of my CD wallets spread out on the counter that I started to realize that when it comes to the morning show, I am like one of those insufferably proud parents who thinks every one of their children is very special in every way. Choosing a handful of programs out of 250 was painful – like cutting athletes in order to whittle down your team roster. But I ultimately came up with what I thought was a good array of interview excerpts- author interviews about Lincoln, communication between sisters, Woodstock, and racisim- plus interviews with local guests talking about depression among clergy, death from anorexia nervosa, and the challenge of marketing telescopes overseas. It felt like a healthy mix of heavy and light and a pretty good sampling of the show.
Except that my boss was rather underwhelmed. I think his exact words were “these excerpts don’t knock my socks off.” And as we talked a bit further, I realized that I had put this entry CD together as though it was going to be heard and critiqued by “public radio types” – but in fact the W.B.A. is made up mostly of commercial stations. . . and while I could hope that at least one of the judges would be a serious journalist who would immediately and easily appreciate what I do, I was being terribly naive to think that the typical commercial radio person would trip over themselves rushing to put a crown on my head. And the fact is that what might seem like short and snappy excerpts to me and the typical public radio listener could be as entertaining as a big glass of warm milk to some people out of the commerical world.
So at 9:00 Monday morning (I signed on that day, so I had been there since 5 a.m.) I got to work assembling some different excerpts – playing around with their sequence – and redid all of my spoken introductions with an eye towards sounding more energetic and breezier and a little less like Moses speaking from Mount Sinai. I discarded one Lincoln interview for another, discarded the sisters conversation for one about child birth, and trimmed up the excerpts that remained, snipping out unnecessary pauses and even a few um’s and uh’s.
But after all that came the matter of bringing the technical polish up to snuff. I’d put it together very simply, not bothering to get fancy with how the various elements blended together- which Dave also regarded (and quite rightly) as a serious miscalculation. If my entry was going to be taken seriously, it couldn’t sound like some junior high kid put it together in his basement. Fortunately, a colleague of mine at the station, Steve Brown, picked a very opportune moment to stop by the studio, and almost before I knew it he had planted himself in the production room to help me get things put together in much more polished fashion. It was much more time-consuming but was absolutely the right way to do it. . . except that five hours after I had started the “re-boot,” I had to get to Carthage for rehearsal and we were nowhere close to being done. But Steve promised to keep working and to leave me instructions with whatever I would need to do to complete the finishing touches. And with a grateful wave, I ran out of the studios and off to Carthage for three hours of Magic Flute rehearsals.
When I finished with that, I drove back to the station with no idea of how many more hours of work lay ahead for me – and if I would even have the technical know-how to finish up what had been started. But lo and behold, when I walked in at 5:15, there were two CD’s sitting on the counter – complete and ready to go. Amazing! (I felt like the bedraggled shoemaker who awoke in the morning to find that elves had finished all the shoes during the night.) Steve had done a great job, and even managed to make sense of what ultimately became a tangled, complicated script. (Because I had redone so many things and ultimately shuffled the order, he had to follow a list of sound files that made no sense: 1, 2, 9, 10, 3, 4, 11 … etc. But he got everything in the right order, blended the cuts seamlessly, balanced the audio levels expertly, and even threw in a couple of added touches that gave it even more snap.
But the cover letter still had to be written. And although I know something about putting two words together and expected the cover letter to practically write itself, it was actually very challenging. I was trying to explain the nature of the Morning Show to people who had no idea what it was – while also trying to make them understand that even though it’s called “the morning show” this was not a morning show as that term is used in radio lingo (I had to explain that because otherwise the judges would have believed that I was entered in the wrong category and would have disqualified me.) Mostly what was hard was tooting my own horn…. listing best-selling authors I had talked to… weaving in a lovely compliment from a listener… and otherwise trying to make these complete strangers believe that I was one step below Walter Cronkite – while not sounding pompous about it. By the time I finished that letter (which could only be one page long) I was emotionally ready for the glue factory.
Needless to say, after all that I was way too late to visit my friendly neighborhood post office, so I had to drive up to the post office next to Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee, which is open until midnight. Kathy very kindly offered to ride up there with me and we decided to bring the dogs along as well- so it sounded like this little adventure was going to end very pleasantly. But when I walked into the post office, I found a line of customers that stretched from the counter all the way to the outer door. . . 12 customers. . . most of whom were carrying an armload of packages or envelops. I was in that line for 35 minutes – without a book to read to pass the time – horrors! – and of course Kathy was stuck in the car with the two dogs, trying to keep herself entertained with the cigarette lighter and whatever else was close at hand. But I finally got the thing mailed with the proper postmark and as we drove away, at long last, I felt like I had just endured the longest and hardest day of my professional life. And for what? Very likely, for no tangible benefit since my show is entered in a wild card category that is likely to be a chaotic free-for-all and I somehow find it unlikely that my measured, thorough conversations about anorexia nervosa, depression among clergy, and abraham lincoln will rise to the surface.
But even if there is no W.B.A. trophy in my future, I find myself profoundly glad that I did this – because the undertaking took me way outside of my zone of comfort, humbled me thoroughly, and forced me to rely on the help of others. I am indebted to my boss, Dave Cole, for speaking frankly and for offering his insights. (His own background in commercial radio was invaluable in helping me retool the entry for more “commercial ears”.) I am indebted to Steve Brown for going way above and beyond his duty as my colleague. And I am grateful to my wife, at the end of a long day of her own, who came up with the notion of piling into the car with our two dogs and joining me in my late night jaunt to the Milwaukee post office. With teammates like that, I’m already a winner, even if I end up losing out to the Rhinelander Polka Hour.