Tuesday was an insanely busy day. Quite a few of us holed up for the better part of the morning to begin working on next year's budget. Minnesota Public Radio's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30, so we are nearing the end of the current year and we're looking ahead. As the senior manager in the division, I am the one who sits at the table to help make budget decisions for the entire organization, having worked with everyone in the Cultural Programming division on their individual department budgets. It's an iterative process, discussing goals and considering which among competing priorities are the most important.

In the case of 89.3, we're still in start-up mode, so it's not that easy to anticipate all of the financial needs we may have next year. We have to make our best guess though. We'll be working on this for the next several weeks (at least until the end of April), so I may be writing about the process from time to time. If you have any ideas for how 89.3 and MPR should or shouldn't be spending money, you can write about it here.

Tuesday afternoon, Thorn put together our first weekly industry newsletter. This is an electronic mailing to venues, artist managers and agents, record labels, stores, radio stations, the media, and others we deal with. It tells the industry what artists we're playing, who has been in the studio, and what new music has been added, and is meant to keep everyone in the business up-to-date on all things 89.3. Thorn hit the "send" key while I was standing at his desk, and while we were chatting, responses to his e-mail started pouring it. It was amazing.