|
Bob Whitaker's Weekly Articles –
May 14, 2005
|
May 14, 2005 –
"It’s Very Simple, Bob."
May 14, 2005 –
A Comedy of Errors
May 14, 2005 –
Intro and Guests
May 14, 2005 –
The Dull Cutting Edge
Fun Quote:
Just before I hosted my first Internet radio show this week, someone wrote me:
"Break a leg, Bob!"
My reply was:
"Gladly. Whose?"
I now have a Saturday Internet broadcast, 6 pm EDT for an hour or so. You can find it at:
WhitakerOnline Townhall Archive: "THE UNTRAINED EYE"
or at: Stormfront Townhall Saturdays
David Duke’s outfit set it up. James Kelso there said it was "very simple."
I am going to get him for that.
Let me describe this "simple" setup.
I have a headset on. In the 1960s, a "headset" meant an entirely different thing which included a bong and some marijuana. The headset I mean here is a combination earphone and microphone. You adjust the sound and turn the headset off and on with a button on the headset.
But you ALSO do the program through Shoutcast, software which sends whatever you do on the headset to the central office of Dukeradio, which then puts it on the Internet. So you have to look at the "output" box on the Shoutcast diagram that is on your desktop.
Meanwhile, you have to keep the AIM monitor open. AIM is a direct link, just like Instant Messages on AOL, to Kelso and Company, so they can tell you if you are doing something wrong. If you are, you get a bell on your earphone.
I got a lot of bells.
For one thing, I accidentally turned off my headset.
Then you also monitor the Stormfront Townhall for comments. I thought I wasn’t getting any, BECAUSE:
You also have to hit the refresh button regularly.
All this time you are supposed to be doing the talking.
I have been a ham radio operator for decades, and I did a short stint as a radio announcer "doing my own board," so I know I will catch up on this, but there is nothing simple about it.
I am going to get Kelso for this.
I turned the mike off in the middle of the program. Kelso notified me, and I finally found out what this "technical" problem was.
One person said I sounded like I was on "downers," meaning tranquillizers like Valium. Unfortunately, I was perfectly clean and sober. What happens is that, with all you have to say, when that mike is suddenly open and under your nose, even the pros speak haltingly.
That is why professional announcers are so energetic. When you listen to the replay, you keep telling yourself, "For Heaven’s sake, get to the POINT!" The words don’t come to you, and every break for thought sounds very, very long on the listener’s end.
It also doesn’t help if you turn off the mike in the middle of the program.
When I didn’t see any comments on Stormfront and my blog was dead in the water, I closed out the program at 6:58 instead of 7.
The reason I had none of the many comments on Stormfront was because I had not hit the "Refresh" button.
When, once again, I found out what this complicated technical problem was, I got back on the show and dealt with the comments on Stormfront.
The blog stayed dead. Whitakeronline.org has the least responsive audience on Planet Earth, but the ideas get out, which is what I am after.
Also, I am not used to a headset. In ham radio and back when I did my stint as a radio announcer, there was a separate set of earphones and a separate microphone (or a code key, or tom-toms -- this was a LONG time ago). Any motion you make with this microphone attached to the headphones can result in a sound like an explosion.
I have no intro for my show yet. The intro is where music comes on and someone announces, "This is the Bob Whitaker Show" and so forth. A young professional announcer has volunteered to do my intro and I plan to take him up on it.
But that will require another piece of equipment. I need to learn to use what I’ve got first.
I would also love to have guests. They could talk while I am trying to turn my mike back on.
When I was guest on James Edwards's "The Political Cesspool" a couple of times, I seem to have done well. James is another young pro who has his own radio station in Memphis and his show is on the internet at Listen to the Political Cesspool live.
James tells me he had his second best audience with Bay Buchanan. But his audience when I was his guest the second time doubled even her numbers.
James has volunteered to be a guest on my show anytime I want him, and I will want him a lot.
So what's holding me up?
The intro requires more equipment. Having a guest requires even more equipment, all of which I must learn to handle during the show. New equipment will have to wait until I learn to handle this stuff.
Add to all that James Kelso tells me having a guest on is "very simple."
That statement alone scares the hell out of me.
My staff told me that WOL readers want information, not my life story. They have also told me in the past that radio interviewers have had to pull information about my life out of me like they were pulling my teeth.
I guess some folks are never satisfied.
But my point here, besides getting you to listen to the program, is to outline how much simpler it is becoming to get out information. ANYONE can do what I'm doing technically.
Not just anyone can say what I have to say like I can say it.
The left has maintained control by restricting access to the media. When you had the "big three" TV networks and local radio, there wasn't much chance of hearing anything they didn't want you to. The growth of cable TV created more channels, which resulted in a bigger market for Respectable Conservatives to try and appease the "unwashed yahoos" as the New York liberals call us.
Now we have satellite radio, cable and satellite TV, and the internet. Soon local radio stations will be digital, allowing several program streams over a single frequency. The information channels are opening up exponentially. There is no way they can keep them filled with the same narrow spectrum of crap we have today.
The radio industry sees the future as centering on what they call "podcasting." That is, people like me running programs that can be downloaded into an "iPod" or similar device and listened to any time and anywhere. An almost infinite variety of programming will be available -- at virtually no cost -- and almost as easy as sending email.
This will kill the left. As much as they rant about "freedom of speech," everybody knows that is the last thing they want. They want to be in control. Since their ideas never work, they can't allow alternative views and ever survive.
No one recognizes the import of something when it is just in its infancy. It is just a curiosity or fad. When, and it is a matter of when, not if, the left is destroyed, it will be because people finally got to hear something different. Something that makes sense.
Something that works.
|
