The Weekly Grind – Omaha's Young Professionals Radio Show

Nothing new here that we haven’t said on our show (about 10,000 times), nor is it any sort of groundbreaking missive on the virtues of a later closing time for the City.  But, we thought we would share our viewpoint one last time and the letter we sent along to the Omaha City Council.

Here you go…

Dear Council Members,

We are the co-hosts of The Weekly Grind, a weekly radio program on KOIL AM 1180 that is known as Omaha’s only young professionals radio show.

While we do not think so highly of ourselves that we think we exclusively speak for Omaha’s young professionals, we do believe that we have a strong insight into this part of our population, and have learned a lot on this topic in our year and a half researching and preparing for our radio show every week.

You all have an important issue coming in front of you next week, and that is of whether or not Omaha should allow bars, restaurants, and taverns to stay open until 2:00 am.

We all believe that this is a “no-brainer:”  Omaha’s closing time should extend to 2am.

As a city with so much opportunity to recruit young professionals to Omaha, we–as a city–should be doing everything we can to align ourselves with the other top 50 metros of the U.S. so we can sell this vibrant metro area to young professionals and companies on the wonderful ways we differentiate ourselves from similar-sized cities.  By extending our closing time, it is one less way that we potentially negatively differentiate ourselves currently.

We also believe this would be another positive step in gaining commitments from major organizations to hold their conferences and meetings here.  Because, let’s face it:  companies do not select meeting places just because there is a nice room available.  They want somewhere their people will be excited about going to.  The extended closing time adds to this.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly:  this gives business owners further freedom to run their businesses as they see fit.  It gives them the OPTION to keep their establishments open until 2am–it does not force them to do so.

We hope that you take this opportunity to further enable us to recruit exciting events, new businesses, and young professionals to our great city.

Additionally:  should any of you want to share your viewpoint on this subject on the air, we would absolutely welcome you on to our program this Saturday either over the phone or in person.  We broadcast from 10am-11am from NRG Media, 50th and Capitol.