169 minutes and 39 seconds

That's how long the Garth episode of ShortCuts is - without the 3 unreleased songs which we don't yet have. And it took me at least that long to put it together in the evil GROUP function. For a typical, 12 song episode of ShortCuts it's probably about 8 hours of work that goes into it. This show was easily twice that. Part of it was the fact that there are 34 songs in it, and part of it was the hoops we had to jump through with the structure of the show, because Garth wanted to be sure that there couldn't be any clean recordings of the music made.

Y'all will recall I warned you that his Garthness was concerned that people would be recording and file swapping radio shows. Told ya nicely not to post around the internet if you were planning to do such a thing.

I hate to say I told ya so, but by golly, I tried to tell you so. And unfortunately, I was proven right.

Today we were told - along with everyone else that has album programming set to launch this weekend - that no one is getting the 3 new songs until the cd hits stores. No one. Not AM. Not FM. Not XM. Not Sirius. Not syndication. He's changed his mind - 2 weeks after cutting all this programming. There's a continent full of album premiere specials being advertised that are going to have nothing but old music. Believe me, had we not had promos on the air and our newsletter gone out to 8 million subscribers, I'd have flip flopped his show with his wife's.

Our one saving grace is that our content outside of the new music, completely rocks. You're still going to hear him talk about the videos - and yes the reports out of Germany are true - the KC shows, his songwriting, his kids, his wife, George Jones, Steve Wariner, etc. etc. etc. You'll even hear him talk in depth about these new songs. I stand behind our content completely KICKING ASS.

However, on this weekend's run, you're only going to hear snippets of the new songs. We haven't quite figured out how to explain that since the show has already been cut. Fortunately - another benefit to XM over FM - we'll re-run the show Thanksgiving weekend - and undoubtably beyond - with the complete songs. Poor FM guys don't get a second chance.

I don't have a clue about how this is going to affect our 3 part series, which is not completed yet, because 3 songs out of an hour long show is a big huge chunk. And the dominoes continue to fall -- Jon and I were supposed to go to KC on the 5th for Opening Night and be reporting live from the Sprint Center - we have plane tickets and hotel reservations.

However, that means I'd on a plane coming home Tuesday at the time the CD would allegedly be arriving at the studio, and even under the best of circumstances, it would be a tight turnaround to get it on the air. I think I'll stalk the WalMarts here and make sure they didn't mistakenly put it out early. If y'all see one in the states, do let me know, ok?

I'm trying not to stress about all this. (My husband meeting me at the door with a mixed drink tonight helped...) Gotta BELIEVE. It's gotten me this far.

Did you hear the Faith Artist Confidential? There were a couple of things that tickled me. One of which was hearing my name in the credits, a first for me on AC. The other was hearing our very own Paula get a question asked via email during the show -- she sent one in response to my blog posting. Yay Paula! That led to a really good bit of info!

Tomorrow, after dealing with the Garth mess, my mission is to finish that mysterious Carrie Underwood Show #7. And then I'll come tell y'all about it. Probably with another drink in hand.