In The Zone

~ bonwag

I’d forgotten how long an hour lasts on radio.
Good to be back in the radio studio today – after a 10 year break – with Rodney for the first edition of Tech Zone. I’ve put a writeup on the official site, and you might even be able to listen to it on-demand one day.
I went in there armed with bucketloads of interesting background information about blogging, but ended up getting distracted talking to Rod and other folk on talk-back.
You see, I’ve been spoilt for air-time since leaving the radio announcer gig. As part of my current work, I’m called on to deliver hour-long presentations (and longer), which are basically one-man shows. Or one man and his PowerPoint. That’s a solid hour of techno-speak.
Sometimes, it’s in person. Mostimes it’s a virtual presentation to a room of as many as a hundred people from around the world, which I normally do from home. Over the phone.
In the dead of night.
In my pyjamas.
So, when fronting up to the studio today, I was *well prepared*. I had facts and figures and press releases and backgrounders which I never got to talk about. In a conference call, it’s very rare to have an ad break. You seldom play the Newsboys. You don’t have news at the top of the hour.
I’m not disappointed; don’t get me wrong. I’d rather be over-prepared than under-prepared. (That’s the radio equivalent of showing up on stage in your underwear and forgetting your lines.) Very few people realise that in radio announcing, normally, you get to talk on-air for what – 3 minutes in a whole hour.
I’m actually privileged that Rod let me rabbit on for as long as I did. I’ll be more succinct next week. There are some cool topics coming up, so have a look, see if there’s one that interests you, and call up or email us with your perspective. It’ll be interesting to see what this enterprise turns out like.
And before you ask – no; I did not do today’s show in my pyjamas.
But I could. If I wanted to. Ah, technology.
UPDATE: April 2: The recording of the show is now available at the Sonshine FM website (link above).