I Did My First National Radio Show...

I did my first national radio show last week. I’ll cut to the chase: It was a disaster. Being a comic, I’m no stranger to radio. I’ve done a fair amount of it over the years and I’ve been doing some to promote the book. But this was a big national one and I was really excited about it.
I got up crazy early, did a Baltimore station which you can hear here:

http://wbal.com/apps/news/templates/story.aspx?articleid=29525&zoneid=9

Which was fun.

Then I did another one. I’m not even going to name it because I don’t want you to try and find an archive to hear how awful it was. But I was excited, and I had even taken a class about “Impact in Media” and I had my notes with me. I was in the garage by the phone ready to go.

So I was ready. Or so I thought. So my segment began and the host talked over me the whole time. I thought the whole point of having a guest on was to let him talk. So I was a little off guard and the few sentences I did get through sounded nervous and disjointed. Needless to say my message did NOT get out. I would be surprised if one person bought the book from that “interview.” It lasted less than two minutes.

But that wasn’t all. I wanted to know why the whole interview felt so off so I got an archive of the show from the website. Maybe it sounded better than I thought. Nope. It didn’t sound like anything at all. When I listened to my segment from the archive, I realized something even worse. I wasn’t being talked over. I was still on hold half the time I was talking. I wasn’t talking to an audience, I was talking to the equivalent of a very attentive dial tone. I had gotten up at 3:30 am to talk to myself which I could have and often do anyway in the privacy of my own bedroom. Quietly of course, as to not wake up the wife.

The thing is, as horrible as it was, would I do it again? Yes. It’s so hard to get your message out that even if you have less than 30 seconds MAYBE you can get it through. Advertisers do it all the time. And it’s difficult to get air time if you’re not a celebrity or a politician in the middle of a scandal. So you take what you can get and try and make the best of it.

So lesson learned. I think. It may have something to do with learning to talk faster or trying to psychically determine if you are on hold or not. Actually, I’m not really sure I learned anything. You know, I often think I’m learning a lesson even when I’m not. I think it’s some type of defense mechanism for being slightly detached from reality. I don’t know how useful it is, but it’s like having cool refreshing rationalization always on tap. Bartender…