Where in the World is Carson Daly?
And how can he be in 11 places at once, when he's really nowhere at all? 

The technology of creating local radio on a national basis has progressed to the point that state-of-the-art digital editing can give his show, "Carson Daly Most Requested," a local feel without Mr. Daly himself having any awareness of the local content.

The daily program appears on almost 150 radio stations around the country.  In around 10 of those markets, however, listeners get a digitally customized version of the show.  Phoned-in requests from local listeners determine the countdown list for those markets, and Mr. Daly counts down the list, dropping in local call letters and phone numbers amid his DJ patter and song introductions.  His local presence is an illusion created by proprietary digital editing technologies used by parent company, Clear Channel Communications.

Mr. Daly has only a few hours each week to work on his radio show, and he spends that time recording scripted clips in the studio in his Manhattan apartment. Show engineers digitally manipulate the new snippets -- along with a recycled library of past recordings -- to create a seamless set of Daly appearances on each new countdown show.

David Gallagher's New York Times article (Feb. 3, 2003) points out that before Daly can go on vacation, he must build up an inventory of sound clips for countdown lists that haven't been compiled yet.  He also relates a story of how engineers once had to splice together unrelated snippets to create a song introduction for a Michael Jackson song that had unexpectedly appeared on the charts.

Link to the New York Times article

Link to the Carson Daly show website