Good morning, Sydney

Tomorrow I’m going to co-host the morning show on 790 KABC with Doug McIntyre from 7-9. I’ve done morning shows from time to time during my less-than-celebrated radio career. They’re always fun. Morning drive is radio’s version of primetime. Folks are going to work or school, checking to see the day’s weather, catching up on overnight news and the listening audience is higher than any other time of the day.

Morning hosts generally have more freedom to be creative, there’s always stuff going on, and the money is way better than any other day part. You can actually support a family on morning show wages!

The only minor downside is that it destroys your health and shortens your life.  You have to get up at 3 AM and your entire existence becomes a losing battle to catch up on lost sleep. There’s not a Michael Bay explosion fest Transformer movie you can’t nod off in. You drink 5 Hour Energy as if it were Gatorade. Your idea of porn is a nap.

So although I enjoy actually doing the morning show I’ve turned down a few offers to do one permanently.

Still, I’d love to do one if I could just get up at 9. Now that might sound impossible, but in thinking it through I discovered it is very doable. You just have to be in a different time zone. With ISDN lines it’s possible to broadcast from your home anywhere in the world and sound like you’re in the studio. A number of radio personalities are already doing that. Bean from Kevin & Bean co-hosts the morning show for KROQ, Los Angeles from his home in Seattle. You listen to the byplay between Bean and his partner and you’d swear they were in the same room… or that Kevin was in Seattle and Bean was in LA.

So I did some figuring. If I were to the morning show for a station say in Honolulu I could just move to New York and the 6 AM show would start for me at 11 AM. I could awake at my leisure. Sweet!

Upon more careful examination however, I thought, why the hell am I braving snowstorms and hurricanes and oppressive heat when I’m on the radio in Honolulu? Wouldn’t I rather actually be in Hawaii?

But then I’d face the same sleep deprivation problem.

Unless…

I consulted my time zone converter and discovered when it’s 10 AM in Hawaii it’s 6 AM in Sydney. That’s the answer! Live in Hawaii and do the morning show for Australia. I could be the guy who has that delightful American accent. As long as I don’t have any personal appearances at local Sydney supermarkets I think I can pull this off. I should probably know Australian politics, but I’m sure if I just said the government was a collection of idiots I could pass for knowledgeable, maybe even expert. I’d have to keep my Outback Steakhouse jokes to a minimum and make no more cracks about Nicole Kidman’s face work, but I think I can manage that.

Maybe what I should do tomorrow morning is very slyly audition for Australia a little bit. Doug will be asking me about Syria and I can slip in that Hugh Jackman is a great actor. We can discuss congress trying to unfund Obamacare and I can casually mention that RSVP is Australia’s number one dating site. I'll give the temperature in Celsius.  Doug will never know what I’m doing.

Clear some space you Sydney stations.  Crocodile Kenny is coming!