Good morning, or whatever it is where you are. I'm Damien Soderquist, and every weekday morning from 5:30 to 10 I'm the voice on AM 1340, the only radio station in our town, out here in the Nebraska Panhandle. We play country, give you the markets and the weather, and tell you who's having a birthday. If you live within forty miles you've probably heard me read your aunt's obituary or sell your neighbor's pickup on Swap Shop.

I grew up here. I ran the scoreboard at football games in junior high, started running the board here on weekends when I was sixteen, went off to a two-year broadcasting program at a community college, and came home with a certificate and a tape of my best breaks in 1996. When the morning man retired in 1997, I got the chair. I also read the noon farm markets, and on fall Friday nights I'm up in the press box calling the high school football game.

Since May 3, 1999, there's been a camera on the shelf above the cart machines, at the end of the board. It takes a picture every minute, day and night, and sends it here. On a weekday morning between 5:30 and 10 you'll see me. The rest of the time, you'll see the room, minding itself. Feel free to wave. I can't see you, but it's the thought that counts, and about a dozen of you have e-mailed to tell me you did it.

■ WHY IS NOBODY THERE?
If it's a weeknight or a weekend, we're on the satellite. A computer to the right of the board (that's its blue screen glowing) plays a country format that comes in from a satellite dish out back, and drops in our station breaks and commercials right on time. All night and all weekend, nobody's in the building. The meters keep bouncing anyway. I find that a little spooky, honestly, when I come in at 4:45 on a Monday and they've been dancing all by themselves since Friday.

■ THE MORNING SHOW BY THE CLOCK
Weekdays, Mountain time. Set your coffee pot by it.

Noon markets are me again, live. Friday nights in the fall, from 6:45 until the last whistle, it's football.

■ FROM THE ARCHIVE

Friday, September 24, 1999, 6:10 a.m.

This is what a weekday looks like. Five minutes to the markets, so the market sheet is in my hand and I'm running my mouth over the end of a song. The tall stack of CDs is the morning's music, pulled the night before. The mug is the second pot of coffee. Della Koster, who owns the station, says I'm the only person she's ever hired who talks louder off the air than on it.

■ WHAT'S IN THE PICTURE
People ask, so here's the tour, left to right.

1. The CD players and cart machines (the beige boxes on the left). The carts are tape cartridges, like big eight-tracks, and that wire rack holds a couple hundred of them: every commercial, station ID and jingle we play. Stick one in, push the button, and it plays and cues itself back up for next time.
2. The board, which is what radio people call the mixing console. Eight channels, eight big knobs, one for each thing that can go on the air: my mic, two CD players, two cart machines, the phone, the satellite, the network. The two amber meters on top show how loud we are. They should bounce. If they stop bouncing, something's wrong, and you'll hear about it from the owner before I can find it.
3. The mic, on the swinging arm. It's older than I am and it's the best one in the building.
4. The phone, beige, with a row of line buttons. During Swap Shop all of them blink at once.
5. The automation computer with the blue screen, and next to it the rack with the satellite receiver. All the little green and red lights are the satellite and the transmitter remote telling us they're alive.
6. The EAS box, in that same rack. That's the Emergency Alert System, which replaced the old emergency broadcast tones a couple of years ago. It runs a test once a week and it will scare you to death if you're not expecting it.
7. The clock, which is the most important thing in the room. Network news comes at the top of the hour whether I'm ready or not.

■ THIS WEEK'S SWAP SHOP
Listings from Monday the 20th through Friday the 24th. Call the station during Swap Shop and we'll put you in touch. No phone numbers on the Internet; I'm told that's how you get calls from Florida.

■ SOMEDAY
I'll be honest with you, since you're watching me through a camera anyway. I want to try a bigger market someday. I've got an air-check tape (that's the best fifteen minutes of my show, with the songs cut out) going out to stations in Cheyenne and Rapid City this winter, and someday I'd like to be on in Denver. But I'll tell you what I tell my mother: not before football season, not before the beet harvest's in, and not before somebody comes along who'll read the obituaries the way people around here deserve to have them read. Slow, and getting the names right.

Until then, it's 5:30 every weekday. Bring your own coffee.

Listeners on the Internet since May 3, 1999:

Requests, birthdays and hello-from-far-away: [email protected]

Last updated Saturday, September 25, 1999