"My Ambition's Eyes Were Bigger Than Its Stomach"

Last summer (it's always hard to believe there is a summer when, as right now, the city is covered in snow, but there is, & so there may yet be), when I left WMUL, I had no idea that we'd be relocating to Lexington as quickly as we did. I left the station, as I might or might not have said, because, as far as I could tell, no one was listening to my show. Now, there's always a possibility that no one is listening to anything I do exclusively online ("podcasts") either, but at least it's not time-dependent. I would take the time, in good weather & bad, to travel to the station - often I had to visit the "department of public safety" (ie, campus cops) first, to get a key, as the station was usually locked up by four pm, broadcasting a majority of the time automated programming - & then I would spend three hours in a lonesome studio with no feedback from anyone, putting on the best damn show I could. Then, in the middle of the night, I'd lock up, return keys to the cops, & drive home with the drunks (bars closed at 3am in Huntington, so there were always a smattering of cars on the road - what radio station were they listening to?), usually feeling empty & forlorn, wondering why the hell I bothered.

By the way, I don't really know why no one listened to or seemed to respond to my show in Huntington. I don't mean to cast aspersions on the radio station itself. The Station Manager had plenty of anecdotal evidence of listeners for various shows. The management of WMUL simply didn't appear to care whether they had listeners nor did they do anything to actively increase listeners. For my part, I would completely understand if there was simply no one in Huntington who liked the sort of show I do. It was a bit unusual, however - in Austin, I did get calls from people who didn't like my show - so why not there? I did roughly fifty shows at WMUL - some of them, it's true, together in three- or four-hour blocks - in ten months there, & I got about three phone calls total from listeners who were not people associated with the station. I'm not entirely sure that my experience there wasn't the same as other deejays - certainly every semester, among the students at least, the station seemed to hemorrhage about a third of the on-air programmers who weren't somehow associated with the station's news & sports programming.

That's the main reason I left. I had given a great deal of myself to the station, not just in radio programming, & there was little to show for it besides an in-house award, & my name on a plague in the station's usually-empty halls. When I left, I fully expected that I would stay in Huntington for the time being, as my wife had a job there & we owned a house. I knew I would never want to return to WMUL, & I thought I'd be without a radio station for a year or perhaps longer. I announced, in this blog post, that I would continue Self Help Radio as a podcast (as I had done the year before in Austin) & also continue the shows I did on WMUL - Dickenbock Electronics & Sugar Substitute - as podcasts as well. I'd also add jazz & old-timey country blues shows into a rotation to keep myself busy. & I have. I've been doing them since June.

Suddenly! Though! The wife & I decided in July to relocate Lexington! We had travelled here a lot to escape Huntington - we also found ourselves visiting Athens, Ohio, & Columbus, Ohio, when we could. My wife had a job interview here - she actually got the job so she'll be working at the University of Kentucky starting in January - & on our visits we would listen to WRFL. I really liked it, far more than anything I ever heard on WMUL. For one thing, there were actual deejays on the air. You could call them & talk to them. Another is that they truly "owned" their shows - on WMUL, you had to play music from the station's library, & that library was very limited. WRFL seemed, as I've said before, to combine the best of both KVRX & KOOP, my two alma maters, & if you've heard those stations, you know it's high praise indeed.

Not only that, but the folks were incredibly welcoming, & the listeners - again, maybe the fact that Lexington is six times larger than Huntington, & the broadcast area is so much wider than WMUL's - they responded to me. I got a show as soon as we moved here & (you might have noticed) I have availed myself of the opportunities of subbing other people's shows as well as doing my own regular shows - Self Help Radio & Sugar Substitute. Last week I subbed four shows for a total of nine extra hours; this week I subbed two shows for a total of five extra hours. It's way too much fun & I am as always extremely grateful for the chance. Plus, just this morning, I chatted on the phone with an awesome listener who had lots to say about what I was playing. To say that that never happened in Huntington is being coy about it - nothing close to that ever seemed even remotely possible in Huntington.

This is a long way of saying that I unfortunately have been just too busy to do my Saturday podcasts. It breaks my heart because I really like putting them together, gathering the jazz & country blues & electronica that I listen to during my days of musical exploration & education. But I subbed a show this morning very early & just didn't have the time to put the show together today. I feel like a lame-o but I also need to be realistic about it. It's not that I don't have the time per se - it's that when I do have the time, I put much more effort into extracurricular WRFL shows than my Saturday podcasts.

Plus, I'm never sure if anyone's listening. I have Google Analytics installed but it doesn't seem terribly reliable. I also miss the spontaneity of live radio. I don't record the podcasts in real time, as you probably have guessed. It's fun but it's not as fun as doing shows on WRFL.

I promise, when I do WRFL specialty shows, I'll put them up more regularly. But for the time being, there'll be no more Dickenbock Electronics or Tags & Tricks or The Zeke Moonshine Show. My apologies to anyone who'll miss them, if there are any, but mainly my apologies to me. I thought I could continue in this manner for an indeterminate length of time, but my ambition's eyes were bigger than its stomach.

If, you know, ambition ate radio shows. Or something.