Saturday was the second week of the Northern Alliance Radio Show on local Twin Cities station AM 1280 - The Patriot and marked my debut behind the microphone. I was on the air for the first hour of the show with Hindrocket from Power Line, Ed from Captain's Quarters, with Mitch from Shot In The Dark running the board as usual. In the third hour I stepped in for the last few segments with Fraters own JB Doubtless and Saint Paul, after JB and Ed had gone mano a mano over the The Passion Of The Christ to start things off.
One of the biggest fears of doing a live broadcast is dead air, but I found that when you're on with three other intelligent, well spoken hosts the biggest problem is just trying to find an opening to get your words in. The first hour was a wrap up of the week in news and it flew by surprisingly fast. We had just started to get warmed up working over John F'in Kerry when Mitch was signaling that it was time to wrap up. Saint Paul had earlier opined that, in many ways, it was actually easier to be a host than a caller on talk radio and, especially after Saturday's show, I have to concur.
In between on air appearances I hung in the Patriot's "green room" with the other hosts and, as Ed pointed out, some of our off air discussions would have made for great show material. Look for an extended segment on use of the term "theses" in the near future.
To give you a behind the scenes peek at the making of the magic here's a couple of pics from Saturday's show:
JB (right) and Ed (left): the flannel shirt brigade
Mitch Berg: chairman of the board
Three faces of radio: Ed live blogs, JB ponders his talking points, Saint Paul smirks
Most of the feedback that we've received on the show so far has been positive. My favorite negative reaction was this anonymous e-mail sent to the NARN site:
you people are cowords, hiding behind your blog names and never telling us your real ones.
If you had any guts you would have names to go with your hateful opinions.
The subject of names did come up when we were preparing for the show. The fact of the matter is that the reason that all of us have been given the opportunity to appear on the Patriot (in addition to the fact that we're willing to literally work for peanuts-wait we had to pay for those didn't we?) is because of our blogs. And since we didn't want to create confusion between the blogs and the show we decided to stick with our blog names.
Here at Fraters Libertas we originally elected to go with pseudonyms because of concerns about how our employers might view our involvement in such an enterprise. But we've never really gone to any great length to completely hide our true identities. In fact I've posted a number of links to letters to the editor and articles that have appeared elsewhere bearing my name. Heck, in a recent post on a trip to London I divulged my last name and often respond to e-mails using my first name. If you really feel the burning need to know who I am, or who any of the other Fraters are for that matter, drop us an e-mail and we won't hesitate to name names.
But what does it really matter? You're not going to recognize any of our names. None of are celebrities, sports figures, journalists, professors, or community leaders, and, although some are actively involved in politics, none of us hold elective office. And we do provide outlets for those who wish to contact us. You can call in to the show or drop us an e-mail. Unless you want to look up our phone numbers and ring us at home (something that has happened to me after having letters to the editor at the Star Tribune published) or plan on dropping by our abodes for a face to face chat, why do you need to know anyway?
By the way, that anonymous e-mailer did have an interesting e-mail handle: Kerry04. No hateful opinions coming from that camp are there?
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