I haven't written much about behind the scenes MPR stuff, but yesterday's State of the State broadcast is worthy of a couple of lines.

We've been broadcasting the speech for years, no matter who the governor is. When the governor gives the speech in the House chamber, as Tim Pawlenty did yesterday, we set up in the House gallery, which is actually one floor above the chamber. We have a line, i.e., a wire, which goes from the gallery on the third floor of the Capitol all the way down to our office in the basement press room. Once the signal goes down the wire we hook up on a digital line that connects to the studios in downtown St. Paul and then to the transmitter and your radio.

This is all pretty basic stuff. We've been doing it for more than 25 years. What's changed is the way we broadcast. A couple of months ago we switched to a digital format which will give you many more options as a listener in a few years when digital radio receivers become more popular. But in changing the way we broadcast, it added an eight second delay to the signal. So when Gary Eichten talks in the studio what he says comes out of your radio eight seconds later.

That might not seem like a big deal, but it creates all kinds of problems when you're trying to do a live broadcast. In the old days I could sit at the Capitol, plug my headphones into the radio, open up the mic and talk with Gary on the air.

Now imagine what it's like trying to do that with the delay. If you've ever tried to talk when hearing yourself on delay it's a... it's a little... it's a little like... it's a little like trying... it's a little like trying to read this sentence.

So what was the amazing high tech solution engineer Genaro Vasquez and I came up with? It was to have me listen to myself with one ear of the headphones and use a cell phone in the other ear to hear Gary, pre-delay. The only problem with that is as a cell phone signal bounces around there's still a delay. So every time I started talking I had to pull the phone away from my ear. All in all quite a comical sight of your humble correspondent crammed in between the TV camera tripods with a pair of headphones stuck over one ear and a cell phone in one hand and a microphone in the other.

And of course I had no idea what it was actually sounding like on the radio. Listen for yourself at the Midday archive and see if we pulled it off. Don't you just love technology? I hope we can come up with a better solution before the state conventions in June.

Now if anyone out there is still reading this, what about the speech itself? MPR's Laura McCallum had the story:

Pawlenty hasn't officially announced he's running for a second term, but the final State of the State of his first term certainly sounded like an election-year stump speech. He described the state as "strong, hopeful and prosperous", and he ticked off his achievements of the last three years, starting with the budget.

And the governor's opponents were quick to respond. The Pioneer Press had a nice roundup, starting with IP candidate Peter Hutchinson:

"He was asking the citizens to have the gumption that the Legislature and the governor don't have," Hutchinson said.

[Becky] Lourey, a DFL candidate for governor, said she liked many of the promises Pawlenty made in the first half of the speech, "and then in the last half of the speech, he said he wouldn't pay for it."

[Attorney General Mike] Hatch said the governor was "throwing crumbs at our problems."

Another DFL gubernatorial candidate, real estate developer Kelly Doran said Pawlenty was only "tinkering around the edges'' and not solving the state's health care and transportation problems.

But other than that they loved it.