The Magic win again, and are now up 3-1! I pray they don't pull another series loss like they did when they were up on the Pistons a few years ago, and were also up 3-1. I don't see that happening, since they have completely overhauled their lineup, and the squad just looks amazing! I think they'll have a harder time with whoever they play next, but they still need to win one more game. Alright, let's close out the Chosen One, and get on to the Finals!
On another note, today at work we had what we dubbed "The KSBJ Open House". Our "campus" has three buildings...a small shack of an office space where our ticketing company and our special events crew work...our bigger building that has the studios, the technology team, and the on-air staff...and then the newest building that was built five years ago. The big building may have been built five years ago, but only the bottom floor was built out, leaving the upstairs looking like a home up north when they don't finish the basement. It was barren concrete and windows. Last year, after many prayer sessions, we felt God telling us it was time to built out that upper floor so that most of the staff could finally all work in the same building, thus creating a more cohesive staff. With three buildings holding staff, each building and it's inhabitants seemed to have their own personalities, and there were continual pleas that if we could all work together, there would be less feelings of division among staff. Today we finally unveiled the newly built out upstairs (pics will be coming soon), and we invited listeners to come tour the upstairs, watch the morning show team broadcast out of the auditorium downstairs, as well as listen to a free concert by up and coming artist Francesca Batistelli. I set up the stage, and ran the sound for the morning show and mini-concert, and if I must say so myself, with having literally NO time to soundcheck the dj's or artist, it sounded pretty good. Not awesome, but good. It was a fun day, even though I think I ran a literal mile after all the times I ran back and forth from the stage to the sound booth in the back, but again, it was for an awesome reason of showing our giving listeners what they have been giving for, and to interact with them and show them a good time. We had nothing but positive responses.
Francesca gave an amazing three song set (x2) during the Open House, and her first two songs were ones we're currently playing on the radio, but the last song was one that really hit me. I knew the song some how, but could not place where I had heard it, and didn't know that she had done it. I didn't remember hearing it at the station, and I don't have her cd, so I didn't hear it there. I was thinking I had heard it on tv somewhere, but didn't know where I would hear a song from a relatively new and not well known Christian singer on tv. After I heard it the first time, it ate at me for an hour until her second set where she sang it again.
But then she said where we might have heard it.
THE BIGGEST LOSER FINALE!!!
When she said that, I screamed from the back "YES! THAT'S WHERE I HEARD IT FROM!" It was hilarious, because all 200 people sitting and listening to her turned and looked at me like "Uhhh...what's your problem!" That's when I realized that I said that out loud! Seriously...it came out so fast I couldn't have stopped myself! Anyway, it's such a great song, and such a great message...here's the chorus of the song "It's Your Life (Whatcha Gonna Do) by Francesca Batistelli:
<>"It’s your lifeWhat you gonna do?
The world is watching you
Every day the choices you make
Say what you are and who
Your heart beats for
It’s an open door
It’s your life"
(complete lyrics here)
Like I said earlier, I don't have her cd, but I LOVE the three songs I've heard from her, so I plan to add that to my "get" list. Hopefully there will be some staff comp cd's tomorrow waiting for us, as their usually are if the artist doesn't sell out of them at their concert when they come to town (at least the smaller artists). She did the KSBJ Open House, and then we had her do her full set at what we call our "KSBJ Brown Bag Concert Series". For one of the Brown Bags, we usually have the B or C level artists (sometimes an A like Michael W Smith, etc) do a concert set equal to about 75% of what their real one is, and it's put on by us and sponsored by Chik-Fil-A (which also means FREE CHIK-FIL-A for lunch for staff those days, WOO HOO!). If you're ever down here in Houston, you gotta go to them...they're great and the price can't be beat. I usually can't go to them because the kids or wife wouldn't be into it and I wouldn't want to go alone, so I usually only go to the ones I JUST CAN'T MISS, which are few and far between.
One more note, legislation is being passed to considerably raise the online rates for streaming music, so as of June 1st, KSBJ will no longer be streaming music online. We're praying (please join with us) that legislators will see what it's doing to us (as we're the one it's affecting the most out of ALL the stations in the US - including secular radio). Basically the rates are so high that no Christian stations will be able to do online streaming unless they want to pay crazy fees. How the rates are calculated is that usually when a song is played on the radio, we pay a fee for every time we play that song. On the web, since they can know how many connections are listening to a song at any time, we pay for that song, and multiply that by how many people are listening during that song. So if 1o people are listening to that one song, we pay that song fee times ten. Horrible business model, because it drives away smaller companies. We're the largest Christian radio station in the world, with our 600,000 listeners in Houston, but it's all the emails/stories/testimonies we get EVERY day from people listening on the internet stream that we are really hurting to take away this from. We have heard from people all over the world. We have many former Houstonians who have moved away and listen online who email us all the time. We have many people who work downtown or in buildings where the metal won't allow a radio signal to penetrate, so they listen online. We have many people across the world who stumble across our stream, in many various ways. And we have many soldiers that say how they stream our station and it just gives the soldiers a sense of hope and peace, and it just pains us to do this, but the money we were spending was just not the right way to spend our 100% listener supported dollars. Like I said though, we're asking you to pray with us that the people in DC and the other music people who make these decisions, to realize what they're doing to smaller stations (and stations like us who are non-profit), and to lighten the load so we can continue to minister. The devil tries many ways to get in our way, to not allow God's Word and Message to pass to His children. Well, I can't wait to see what the Father has in store for us now! It's going to be awesome as always!
Good night kiddos. Time for this guy to hit the sack.
PS. One last quick note...pray for my cousin Colyn. He's on a 40 day missions trip where he will have no pc or phone and will be living off the land at this farm in Southern Iowa. I'll post a link to his blog that shows more info, but it sounds like an amazing experience he'll look back at long after he leaves.
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