It has been a long time since any of the three of us have taken the time to come up with a blog entry, but a lot of things have been happening in that time. In fact, to follow up on the title of this particular blog, I feel like I predicted what seems to be coming to fruition for this show that had oh so humble beginnings.
So, the beginning. When the show began, it wasn’t really anything much but a segment on a Saturday hour-long show I was hosting on one of our former host stations, and it was all NASCAR related news. I chose to do that as, first, it was a Saturday show, so I didn’t feel like we needed to be political at all, and two, I know NASCAR, having been the lead tower PA announcer at Talladega for two years already, having done race calls and commentary for ARCA races and garage and pit road reports for an Anniston-Talladega station in what I termed “MRN Lite”, and have long had a fascination with the sport anyway.
From there I got moved into a two-hour evening show, and during that time I had two hours set aside to totally get away from politics and hard news, as I have little patience for the lunacy of the world and don’t want to wade too deep into those waters lest I lose my own sanity in the process, so came up with an early version of “Entertainment Roundtable”, just to talk TV and movies and such, and then created what became “The Fastest Hour in Radio”, a quite appropriate name since we were talking about racing, and let’s face, we all want to go fast, with respect to Ricky Bobby.
When that two-hour show was unceremoniously ripped out from under me for some less than adequate replacement (paid) programming, I was invited to take both shows and do them on the weekends so we had a full line-up of original Saturday programming. Most of those shows were also paid programming, so as they came and went, “ER” remained an hour, but we found the chance to expand “Fastest Hour” into a two-hour program, after having been asked to expand our race series coverage to Formula 1. I felt like if we were going to add F1, let’s add IndyCar as well. Then we added the curiosity known as Formula E and then the NHRA too. We remain the only show that we can find anywhere in America that covers the breadth of racing series that we do.
When things came to an end there, we moved to another station group, but then moved again, and finally one more time before landing at our current home, 95.1 The Mountain in east-central Alabama. If you can’t get it on your radio, you can download the app for the station as well.
But, Producer John also got us on YouTube, and we invite you to search “CRN Live”, and subscribe to the page – it’s free – and that way you learn about all postings we have.
That brings me to our final live show of 2023, where, just before we took the two-week break for Christmas and New Year’s, I said that there would be big things for Matt, Producer John and myself, and the show, in 2024, and wow, has that begun to come to fruition.
Cumulus Media, where I work Monday through Friday, offered us the chance to christen their new podcast studio, as we debuted “Crossed Flags: A Racing Podcast – presented by CRN”, which is recorded on Wednesday afternoons, about midway through the week leading to our two-hour Saturday show. This had been added to not only “CRN Live” on YouTube, but the social media and YouTube channel for Birmingham’s sports radio station WJOX, and we can’t be happier or more thrilled. So, stick with us as we grow, because we feel like this is just the beginning and bigger things are coming…quickly, like a high-speed run down a mile-long front straight.