DJ Fink, a host on the new Absolut Soulful Sundays syndicated radio show and host of the award-winning ClubbinTV television show, produces both shows on an iBook.
Absolut Soulful Sundays can be heard in, among other places, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. It has a “genre-less” format that plays hip hop, R&B, jazz, disco, rock, funk and all styles in between. ClubbinTV was named by Billboard magazine as Best Rap/Hip TV Show.
“I use iMovie to produce the TV show and iTunes to produce the radio show,” Fink told MacCentral. “The radio show is done live in Chicago, then it is fed via an ISDN line to New York and Los Angeles. The creation of iTunes, the iPod and other music-engineered software programs allow an independent producer like myself to compete against the big radio corporations.”
He said that the television show itself attracts around eight million viewers in the Chicago area. Absolut Soulful Sundays has an estimated reach of 22 million listeners. Fink and company also augment the radio and TV demographic by hosting parties in the various markets.
Finks uses almost all Apple software — the only third party software he uses is Adobe Illustrator, Quark and Toast. He has a LaCie 100GB hard drive for backup, and a LaCie DVD burner. Macally’s iVoice USB digital microphone is used to get sound in and out of the iBook.
“I use the iBook instead of the PowerBook because, in doing research, I found that it would do everything that I wanted to do for a cheaper price,” Fink said. “Also, I’d worry less if my US$1,749 iBook crashed or was damaged than if a $3,700 PowerBook went down.”
Fink has been using Macs since 1987 and still has a PowerMac 8500 AV. He’s a self-described “huge Mac advocate.”
“I promote Macs while I interview celebrities,” Fink said. “I usually use the Mac as the camera monitor, while hooked up to the Canon GL camera. That way I can record directly to the laptop — and the celebrities are impressed.”
He made the switch to Mac OS X when he bought the iBook last March. Fink had some issues with the new operating system, especially with Quark, but calls the move to Mac OS X “one of my greatest decisions ever.”