As many of my rabid readers know, my hands are in everything. That can be an omen or a curse or it could be just the way I roll. One of my favorite projects that I am involved in is my radio show, Dog Works Radio Show and Mush! You Huskies.
I thought it was important to give the people of the great state of Alaska the opportunity to learn about my radio shows and to showcase them to a new audience. On Thursday I will be back with another tried and true tale of my mis-adventures in the quest to make a home and a name for myself 3200 miles away from my comfort zone.
Dog Works Radio Show stared in late January 2009 with an idea to bring cutting edge information to the world of dogs in a way that is not done (at least to my knowledge). We thought long and hard about doing a terrestrial (regular AM radio) station and then a pod cast. There were many limiting factors for the AM radio idea. First and foremost was the cost. In the Denver radio market it was close to $1500.00 for a hour show and that was a very early morning time slot when nobody would be listening. And second was the reach. While it has been said that Denver is the dog owning capital of America, I would tend to believe them, I think everyone owns at least one dog, an AM radio station only has a reach of so many miles.
We decided on a podcast but not your ordinary, nerd in the basement with a microphone plugged up to his Commodore 64 and his black and white TV in his P.J.’s. We went out and bought the best equipment we could afford: a mixing board, Bose headsets, boom microphones, a MacBook Pro running Garage Band, and a platform that could handle call-ins, chats, email, blogs, and more. We decided to go with Blog Talk Radio for obvious reasons. We knew we were going to be big!
Of course we had some issues at first and stumbled many times (we still do) talking on air but soon we started getting inquiries for guests all over North America. We have interviewed some big name authors and several CEO’s of large pet related companies, as well as many people interested in pet related causes such as breed bans and canine cancer. We even had an in-studio guest who’s dog was running for mayor of a small Colorado town. How’s that for politics!
Soon after we aired our first few shows the phone started ringing with people that had heard our show in Europe and other far off locales. The email started to come in and people were generally pleased with our show.
In March we changed production companies over disagreements with our producer and decided to venture out on our own. The show has continued to succeed. Our show is now a featured show on Blog Talk Radio and can be found on iTunes. While it is hard to calculate the number of listeners and downloads, it appears that we are getting bigger.
Starting on Wednesday I plan to record the audio version of my Future Home of Iditarod Dreams articles for others to enjoy. While my narration will not win me a Grammy for the spoken word, the story is quite compelling, if I do say so myself.
You can listen to the first show here and if you like what you here make sure you click that favorite button on the player and you can even be reminded by email when an new episode is released.
Tomorrow: Mush You Huskies profile
I welcome your comments and suggestions. Please comment below.
Robert Forto | Team Ineka | Alaska Dog Works | Mushing Radio
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Robert Forto is the host of The Dog Works Radio Show and is the training director of Alaska Dog Works. Robert Forto can be reached through his website at www.alaskadogworks.com
