Marketplace Midday Report

In case you’re not aware, Marketplace is a business news show on NPR. It airs for me at 5:00 and 5:30pm CST, but those are Sirius Radio times, so it may air at slightly different times in your area.

In addition to their regular show, they also produce several mini-updates on business news throughout the day (a Morning Report, a Midday Report, and perhaps others). They’re each a couple minutes long, and NPR member stations generally air them between other shows.

I typically listen to all of them on the web, out of convenience if nothing else. Ideally, I’d listen to Marketplace on my way home from work, but that only works when I’m able to leave work at a reasonable time (there always seems to be just something that appears at 5:00pm, eh?).

Anyhow, during Friday’s Midday Report, producer David Brown asked listeners whether they’d like to hear some music in the background of the report and to write to (letters (at) marketplace.org) about their opinions. I figured that a little music couldn’t hurt, so I sent off a short e-mail and thought little of it.

Well, during today’s Marketplace Midday Report, host Tess Vigeland was chiding David that they only received one letter about his idea for background music. At this point, I’m thinking “Nah, they must be kidding around. It was probably a few letters, at least…”.

Then, David breaks into “CQ DX CQ DX, we hear your request sir!” and Tess quips back, “What? What are you doing?”. David then explains that “the guy is a ham radio operator” and that CQ DX CQ DX is a request from one ham operator to another for a long-distance contact (in hamspeak, “CQ” is “I Seek You”, while “DX” stands for “distance”).

At that point, I knew that there really must have been just one letter and that they must have been talking about me ;). And, yeah, I am a licensed ham with my call sign (KB3BZG) in my sig.