[title type="h5"]Thursday, January 22, 2015.
Good News Is Confirmed. I Am Interviewed.[/title]
I am called into the program director's office at the radio station, where Diane Newman says that my show will move back to its sweetest spot on the schedule: three until six in the afternoon. All that's left to finalize is whether it will happen this coming Monday or a week after. A lot of the automated parts of the program--notably the commercials--need to be adjusted. (Since I write these diary entries a week after the fact, I can step into the time machine and reveal that the big day will be February 2.)
This is the best news I've heard in a year. It was about a year ago I was moved to the noon-till-three slot, where the audience is much less primed for the kind of information I put out. Late afternoon is perfect. Parents picking up kids, then stopping at the store to buy food for dinner. Workers on their way home, thinking about the evening meal. People actually on their way to a restaurant they haven't yet decided upon. These are my people, and I miss them sorely.
[caption id="attachment_46389" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Check tomorrow's dining diary for the report on what this thing is.[/caption]
An added bonus is that I will have a nice, long open time in the morning and early afternoon to write and assemble the NOMenu Daily and to do other writing. The schedule I am escaping now truncated the time I can spend on those projects badly.
So I say, "Yippee! Hurrah! Who Is That?"
After today's show, a young woman studying mass communications came by to interview me. Like yesterday's interview with a different person, this one had a very specific topic. She wants my take on the expansion of Dat Dogs, the phenomenal hot dog stand that seems to be on the move locally. I don't have much to say beyond that Dat Dogs has achieved something unique: it made hot dogs popular in New Orleans for the first time.
I was in her shoes when I attended UNO forty years ago. Whenever I get a chance to give such a student any kind of assistance with their careers, I do so. It's a tough business to work oneself into. It was very frustrating for me.
After the interview, I give her a tour of our facilities and introduce her to our top programming execs, who encourage her to let them know when she's ready to apply for a job. She is more thrilled, however, to meet T-Pot, who with her husband Stevie G. does the afternoon show on B-97. That duo has a lot of young-adult fans.
