Cruising and Streaming

Monday night, for the first time in years, I hosted a radio station event. The Lake (93.1/106.7) does a series of sunset cruises on Madison's lakes--a listener and three friends get the ride on a top-of-the-line powerboat plus a wine-and-cigar tasting and some fabulous views of Madison, all hosted by a station personality. This time, said personality was me. (If the winners were disappointed at being hosted by the weekend guy who's only been at the station a couple of months, they didn't show it.)

That we don't do traditional contests is part of The Lake's identity. We have a Listener Advisory Panel people sign up for online, then we draw names from the list of members to award prizes. In the past, the station has run promotions allowing panel members to build up points, which they could use to bid on various perks, from cruises to concert tickets to station swag. So there's no "be caller number 11"--and I have to say I don't miss it.

On the way to the event (at the wheel of the station van, no less), I tried to remember the last time I did a public appearance on behalf of a radio station. In 1995, the AC station at which I worked part-time went to classic rock. They fired the full-timers, but kept the part-timers--and I was tapped to do a car-dealer remote that had been sold before the format change. (It may have been the very first remote under the station's new identity.) There was no remote broadcast on Monday--I just had to be Your Cordial Host, which meant I could drink as much wine as propriety would allow. The guy from the boat dealership said to me at one point, "I'll bet this makes up for all those times you had to broadcast from a steaming-hot parking lot." Well, not all of them, because there were a lot of them--but yeah, it was better than most.

However: The truly big news from The Lake is that the station is now streaming online. Visit the station's website and go from there. I'll be on the air from 3 to 7PM this Saturday and 7 to 10PM this Sunday. (All times U.S. Central.) So please . . . fill out those diaries correctly.