Little Things - Showing Appreciation for Your Staff

One of the trophies

It's amazing how much the littlest things can have such a big impact on student volunteers. Two years now at WHWS I've given our student volunteers...the ones who have done more than "just" been an on-air DJ...little trophies. I've meant to get around to holding real "superlative" contests where all the students can vote on fake titles for each trophy, but never really did. Still, I just make up silly titles, run them past a few folks for input, and order up the trophies from an online custom trophy maker. I won't name it because you can Google it and find a dozen that'll work.

The trophies aren't terribly fancy; they just have a little plastic microphone or a clear plastic "star" with a mic logo. They cost about $3 or $4 each, and the name plate is fully customized. You can use real titles but I thought "Ambulance Chaser (Newscaster)" and "Master of All She Surveys (Program Director)" added the appropriate level of cheekiness and so far all the recipients have agreed.

What's really remarkable is the impact they have. To a one, all the recipients (and there's about 15 to 20 each year) have LOVED the trophies and thanked us profusely. Perhaps they're just all really good actors, but I prefer to believe that little gestures of appreciation can go a long way.

One of the trophies, as
modeled by WHWS PD
Vienna Farlow

It also helps a great deal because, at a volunteer radio station, the primary driving factor for most of your station's volunteers is ego. They're feeding their ego by "ruling the airwaves", and little recognitions of that feed it even more. This is a good thing! It confirms that they should remain involved and sets an example for others.

It doesn't have to be big, although big is certainly good...going for an MTV "Woodie" award is something that your station and its volunteers can be proud of, but it's also a nice line on a resume for your graduating seniors, too! But even little things like trophies, certificates of recognition, custom t-shirts/hats, and like, are all good...and can be done quickly and cheaply!

World Cafe Live...Austin?

Upon seeing this news about the Cactus Club potentially being taken over by KUT, I find myself wondering how could it possibly NOT be an awesome idea to "franchise" the World Cafe Live venue that operates adjacent to, and in conjunction with, WXPN in Philadelphia.

I've long hoped that the first "franchise" of WCL would be in Ithaca, NY...even though extensive discussions with WCL manager Hal Real have convinced me that it would be a VERY dicey proposition to make something like that work as a viable business. (mostly b/c Ithaca's too small a market)

But Austin, with it's vibrant music scene (not to mention SXSW), would seem a natural fit for WCL, all the moreso given KUT's strong music background.

The Curse of Celebrity

Does anyone really think that Jenna Bush Hager would be getting a job as correspondent for NBC's Today show if she weren't the daughter of a former US President?

Anyone? Anyone at all?

Yeah, didn't think so.

And actually, that could well be a horribly unfair judgment. Having done a little work on both sides of this particular aisle, I know there are lots of young newshounds out there that are quite skilled and capable. Many have little experience because this is a tough business to get work in... competition is perennially fierce in journalism...but are nonetheless have inborn talent. Talent that can refined nicely with a little seasoning.

That said, I don't buy for one second that Jenna has that talent. The reason why is that Jenna is essentially starting out at the top...the Today show...but is given a lousy monthly gig so that even when (not if) she sucks the air out of the room, she's only doing it once per month.

And she will suck, count on that. Everyone does, no matter how talented, when they get started. Even journalists experienced in other media almost always suck big-time for the first several rounds when they start on radio or TV. The good ones get better after a half-dozen tries, and then gradually get better and better until they hit the limit of their talent - whatever that is.

A prime example is Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report. Despite his long experience with TV, and several years essentially playing the same character on The Daily Show, the first month or two of TCR was riddled with screwups and flat takes. But pretty soon Colbert found a rhythm and, you know, started winning Emmys and Peabody Awards.

If Bush Hager were really talented (not to mention serious about TV journalism) they'd started her on a smaller scale where she could be more free to screw up and learn from it. If she had the talent, I'm sure within a year she'd be ready enough for a monthly segment, certainly.

But the fact that she's getting the brass ring from day one says she's a political appointment meant to suck up to some funder or politico somewhere. And Today viewers are the ones paying for it.

Shameless Commerical Plugs

Okay, so I will reserve a little judgment on this, since all I know is what the Boston Globe reported. But this story about how McDonald's "tricked" a class of Boston University students into being in a coffee commercial just gets my blood boiling. Here's the money shot, almost literally:

After the commercial was taped, students featured in the ad signed a release so that their images could be used. For their participation, the students were each given a $10 gift card for Apple iTunes. Typically, a union actor featured as a principal in such an ad could earn $592 a day while an extra can get $323, according to Boston Casting Inc.

I went to BU, graduated class of 1998. At the time, tuition, room and board were $30,000 a year, on average. If I'm paying THAT MUCH to go lectures, I sure as wouldn't sell out for a lousy $10 iTunes gift card. My god these kids are dumb. At the very least they should've demanded scale.

Personally I like to think that had I been sitting in that lecture hall, I would've outraged that my likeness would be co-opted by an entity like McDonald's, and even more outraged that my time (for which I was paying BU approximately $25/hr for the experience) was wasted in such a way.

And mind you, BU costs over $50,000 today, so those kids are paying over $40/hr to be in class.

Here's my math: Approximately 7 months of the year is spent in session. Times 22 "business" days per month, times approximately 8 hours per day spent in class or otherwise on schoolwork. That equals1232. Divide that into the annual tuition, room and board costs.

Speed Limits are Proof that People are Stupid

Okay, I'm intentionally just being a jerk with that title. I admit it. Unfortunately, the residents of Ashley Drive in Brighton are apparently in denial of their jerkiness.

So here's the deal: as reported by the Democrat & Chronicle, the residents of Ashley Drive are pissed because people are speeding down the street. The speed limit is 30 MPH. They want to lower it to 25 MPH because they think that'll make people speed less...but they can't because there's state rules about local communities lowering speed limits below 30 MPH. It can be done, but there's a long and expensive process to do it.

Now granted, it's not just Ashley Drive that wants to lower speed limits; other areas/towns are supposedly wanting to do the same thing...but the D&C story is all about Ashley Drive.

Check out a Google Maps satellite view of the area. Ashley Drive is essentially a small subdivision of housing that branches off of Elmwood Road, a major thoroughfare in Brighton, NY (just south of Rochester proper). There's one way in or out, and I counted the houses in the satellite photo, it's about 120 of them, plus something that looks commercial/office-like...but the office thing isn't off Ashley Drive proper. There's nothing else on that little cluster of streets that I can see; it's presumably all single-family homes (I used to live about a mile away and I'm pretty sure it's all SFH in there).

The upshot here is that if people are speeding down Ashley Drive...it's not random drivers; it's the residents of Ashley Drive that are doing the speeding! So these residents are essentially complaining about themselves. Or perhaps more accurately, they're bitching about their neighbors...an activity that's been in fashion since the Stone Age and isn't going to go away anytime soon. Nor will lowering an already-artificial* "speed limit" from 30 to 25 MPH actually prevent neighbor squabbles. Uh-nuh, not gonna happen.

I could buy it if it were a stealth revenue generator for the Town via speeding tickets. But I'm pretty sure it's not, because it's a no-outlet housing development-ish area with insufficient traffic to justify putting a cop there to nail speeders.

So in other words, we COULD have neighbors actually, you know, going and talking to their neighbors and asking them to please slow down because it's dangerous to everyone. Or if you had to be nasty about it: setting up a video camera to record license plates, walking around the development until you find the offenders (remember, it's only 120 houses, nothing you couldn't cover in an afternoon) and then flyering the neighborhood to shame them into slowing down.

Instead we've got people potentially wasting many thousands of dollars in everyone's tax money and annoying everyone in a vain attempt to punish a minority that won't give a damn about the difference between 25 MPH speed limits and 30 MPH speed limits. In other words, people so selfish and cowardly, that they're hurting everyone...including themselves...to be nasty to their fellow man. In short, you've got...well...stupid people.

And that's my "Proof for why Speed Limits are Proof that People are Stupid".

* Technically it's not "arbitrary"...there is supposed to be the "85 percentile rule", that states that a speed limit should correlate to the speed that 85% of drivers naturally travel at on a given stretch of road. Often speed limits are 5 MPH below the 85 percentile speed anyways, but I challenge any driver on a non-dirt, non-super-curvy or non-super-narrow road to naturally drive at less than 35 or 40 MPH.

Go Away Kid, Yer Botherin' Me...

So Jesse Thorn, host of The Sound of Young America, has some uncomfortable truths and he's not afraid to say them pretty bluntly. The "hot tape" in those transcripts? Check this out:

My situation is that if I had to choose between losing my (public radio affiliate) stations and losing my direct podcast fundraising, I’d pick the one that would allow me to continue to pay my rent and I would lose the stations.

Ouch.

Well, I'll get the disclosure out of the way, first. I run a public radio station, and maybe a year ago someone (I think my PRI rep) sent me a TSOYA demo CD and asked if I'd run it on WEOS. Well, since I'm 32, and thus in the demo that NPR is, allegedly, so desperate to attract, I figured I'd give it a serious listen and see if it was any good.

I can't lie, I thought it was boring as hell. I forced myself to listen to the entire hour, and couldn't really find anything worth listening to again. At first I thought maybe I'd try and find a second hour, just in case this hour was a dud. But I figured that they'd put the best show out there on the demo, so theoretically the other shows weren't likely to be any better. (shrugs)

Am I being a little harsh? Perhaps, but you could argue I'm just practicing Thorn's own form of "honesty". (evil grin)

In all seriousness, though...reading Thorn's missive about the virtues of going small / Do-It-Yourself / shoestring budgets brought a few things to mind:

FIRST: It's all well and good that Thorn does practically every aspect of the show: host, producer, technical director, marketer, fundraiser, accountant, etc etc etc. But what happens when Thorn can't produce a show? It's not really a question of "if", only "when". At some point he'll be unable to produce the podcast for an extended period...and his entire business model comes apart. And I don't just mean getting old and sick, what if he gets married and has a kid? I don't think he'll have quite the oft-celebrated "studio in his bedroom" access anymore.

Thorn makes no bones about how he's pretty young (27) and this really strikes as an "ignorance of youth" attitude. It's great to have that enthusiasm and time to devote to it...but as one gets older (not much older than 27, either) usually devoting your entire life to a project starts getting unpleasant and, in some cases, physiologically impossible.

These are the sorts of worries that make Program Directors refuse to carry a show. They don't want to take a risk on a show that has an awful lot riding on the current health and life situation of one man.


SECOND: Thorn seems to have a lot of disdain for public radio affiliate stations. I'm sure they appreciate paying him for his disdain, but we'll put that aside for a moment. My point is that if TSOYA had a lot of affiliates, I don't think he'd be nearly so disdainful...because it's not just about the paltry affiliation fees that stations pay. It's about the access you have when you've got a ton of radio listeners to your show...and, lemme tell ya, there are lots of folks that are quite willing to pay you nicely for that access.

By Thorn's own admission, he thinks his show probably has at least 30,000 listeners on WNYC alone (and he's got WHYY in Philadelphia, too, not to mention a half-dozen or so other affiliates) but that his regular podcast audience is perhaps 12,000. I know that it's certainly possible to monetize podcast listeners more than radio listeners, but it strikes me as a little odd that he'd be so dismissive of his radio audience given how much larger it is.


THIRD: I mentioned before that I thought TSOYA was pretty boring. One thing that immediately comes to mind is that since Thorn has to do all the business work involved with producing a show, by definition he's got less time to devote to producing the show. Now obviously one man's opinion of whether a show is boring/interesting is not statistically significant...but as a station manager, my thought process immediately assumes that it's because he's not putting enough time into producing a quality product. Right or wrong, that's going to be a hard image to shake in the minds of many Program Directors.


I should point out that while I'm being mostly critical of Thorn, I'm being that way about specific points in that interview. There's a lot Thorn says that I wholeheartedly agree with. There's stuff that I don't agree with, too...but that doesn't mean it's not probably correct. (no doubt to my ultimate chagrin)

I Must Promise To Use this Power Only for Good

Off and on, I've been trying to find the blog post where I first suggested that Boston University ought to buy the Boston Globe, and turn it into a giant mentorship/curriculum. Let the pros stay and do their jobs, but they're all required to take on one or two journalism students as mentors for the semester...maybe for a year (or longer if the student desires).

The Globe gets an owner that won't pimp it out like a cheap whore, and BU gets enormous prestige and a fabulous real-world learning environment for its students. Everyone wins.

Of course, despite the same hit to its endowment that all colleges are feeling, I think that BU could afford to drop the dime and buy the Globe, especially if we're talking $200 million...or even just the oft-quoted but hard-to-substaniate $20 million. However, I agree that if the Globe is losing $85 million a year, then even BU can't afford to float that boat.

Still, drastic changes are necessary at the Globe, no matter who owns it or when. I would argue that despite BU's, ehem, "checkered past" with unions, I'd still trust it to "do right" by journalism than I would The New York Times Co. at this point...or most other owners.

Anyways, I originally wrote down the idea as a comment to a May 2006 blog post at Dan Kennedy's Media Nation. If BU does end up buying the Globe, I will expect a modest finder's fee. 5% would do nicely. :-) Hey, at least it'd be going to an alum! (BU College of Arts & Sciences, Class of 1998)

For what it's worth, I said it again in September 2006, and have been mentioning it off and on...including in an e-mail to BU's Dean of the College of Communication, Tom Fiedler, in December 2008. At the time, it was a side note to Mr. Fiedler's quote in the Daily Free Press about the old COM Tower being taken down. But, interestingly, that was right before I noticed the New England Center for Investigative Reporting...which seems to have been launched on January 16, 2009. Coincidence? I think NOT! :-)

I wish I could've had the foresight in 2006 to see the stock market crash of 2008. Oh well.

The Problem with National-Level NPR Pledge Drives

So it was leaked by the Washington Post that NPR hosts Susan Stamberg and Melissa Block are strongly advocating that NPR conduct national-level fund drives. Soon after, NPR President Vivian Schiller downplayed the report...no doubt recognizing the tremendous anger that such a move would cause amongst NPR affiliate stations. Thanks to Current.org for calling attention to the amusingly brief and wholly accurate Twitter post by former Weekend America host John Moe: "NPR thinking of having its own network pledge drive. Stations thinking of taking up pitchforks, torches, battering rams, those peasant hats."

Speaking as a station manager of a NPR affiliate station, I'd say John Moe is spot on: while a fundraiser at the national level for NPR is not unprecedented (it happened once in 1983), it would be a giant slap in the face of every one of NPR's affiliates. Not to mention require a change of NPR's charter, a waiver from the FCC, and need approval by NPR's board...the majority of whom are, AFAIK, managers of NPR affiliate stations. So I don't think this idea will have much legs.

But I want to comment on why this is such a bad idea. It's not just because the rules prohibit it. Nor is it strictly because affiliate stations are, proportionally, struggling so much more with their finances than NPR is. I mean, at least NPR has a $200 million endowment to fall back on if things get really hairy...even though I fully recognize how "bad" that would be to do that.

No, the reason why it's so bad is A.I.G.

A.I.G.??? Yes, A.I.G. And I'll explain:

A.I.G.: AIG took our money and promised us that all their ridiculous amounts of growth would be good for everyone and have no downside. Instead, they set things up for the entire system to fail and take everyone down with them. Now the very people that make tons of money and are not answerable to any of the "real people" are demanding that not only should we continue to give them tons of money (bailout) but they want their bonuses, too! Hell, they're still whining about how much they've had to give up to the New York Times, ignoring how millions are being tossed out of their homes and into the street. Mind you, this is from a company that potentially has access to piles of cash from all the filthy rich people working there that could be used if really necessary.

NPR: NPR took our money (affiliate fees) and promised us that all their ridiculous amounts of growth (multiple foreign bureaus, NPR West facility, new NPR HQ building, Day to Day, Bryant Park Project, News & Notes, etc) would be good for all affiliate stations and was necessary to do. And we had to do it because the consequences were too big a downside to risk not doing it. (Sounds suspiciously like "too big to fail" to me) Now the very hosts that make a lot of money (I've heard that ATC host Robert Siegel makes over $300,000 annually. I don't know what Block and Stamberg make but I'll bet it's well over six figures.) and aren't answerable to us affiliate stations...we don't dare not carry the shows Stamberg (WESAT) and Block (ATC) are on, they're too popular with listeners...are demanding that not only should we continue to pay the expensive affiliate fees, but now we should have to give up our fundraising dollars to NPR as well?!?! Hell, they're still whining about how they had to cut Day 2 Day and News & Notes when many affiliate stations are facing 10, 20 or 50% cuts in their budget due to state legislature and parent college cutbacks. Mind you, this is from a company that technically has a $200 million dollar endowment from Joan Kroc to fall back on if really necessary.

See what I mean? It's not a perfect analogy by any means; many of my interpretations are very debatable. Hell even I don't agree with many of them. But I think that on a visceral level, that's what people are thinking...and thus the parallels are very strong.

And it rather drastically implies that Stamberg and Block (and God knows who else) just don't "get it"...that there's still a lot of populist anger out there. And they really need to understand that just because they work for NPR doesn't mean they're immune from becoming the broadcast equivalent of Leona Helmsley, who famously said "only the little people pay taxes." I don't begrudge any NPR host their salary (frankly, I think they all earn it and then some) but you can't deny that it smacks of imperialism when a host who makes five or six (or 10 or 20) times as much as most affiliate stations' employees is demanding they give up the goose that lays the golden eggs.

I'm well aware that the funding model that exists between NPR national and NPR affiliates does not work terribly well, and is likely in need of an overhaul. And maybe this starts a long-overdue dialogue on the subject. But talk about the wrong way to approach it! Yeesh. This guarantees that every affiliate is automatically going to be highly on the defensive.

UPDATE 04/02/09: I've also been posting related thoughts at John Sutton's RadioSutton blog, see here and here.

ATC = All Things Considered. WESAT = Weekend Edition, Saturday
Disclaimer: all opinions are my own, they do not necessarily reflect those of WEOS, Hobart & William Smith Colleges or affiliated persons.