Part 2: Response to a request for help with a local NPR station tele campaign request

R,

Many years ago, before KUHF even had a website, one day I was visiting with Deb and I basically stated to her that I was very sorry (and hoped I was wrong), but sadly radio is dead. This was when Compuserve was still around, Netscape was a new "browser", and I'm not even sure Google had done its first search. I'm not good with predictions and this still hasn't exactly come to pass, but rather than excoriate Lisa further, or be confused by the gloss of Stephanie (we're talking S B? Heck I don't even know who your boss IS!), let's look at the bigger picture.

First of all, a media channel (radio, tv, website) that doesn't deliver content unavailable elsewhere, is redundant. It's simple market economics. The fact is, as online as the world is, any compelling content the station has that can be accessed more quickly and more efficiently will be accessed elsewhere. Further, any content that doesn't appeal to a consumer (viewer, listener, etc), is going to be disregarded. At one time, KUHF was an aggregation point for a local, regional, national, and international news of a particular variety and slant. Paul said it best once in his hatred of the sort of soundbite news broadcasting that had cropped up. He said that what KUHF offered was in depth information delivered on a radio. However, that same information is now available online from a plethora of voices, many in as much depth, and aggregated elsewhere. Fact is, most of it was created elsewhere. Boiled down, I can listen to, or read NPR copy from a huge number of sources. It is almost a totally linear collection of Stuff Found Elsewhere. Dumbing down the system by demoralizing or axing the reporting staff, or making everyone shoot their own videos probably only makes it worse. The future is online content, and hiring a lot of administrative people from another dinosaur industry (as in the crowd from the Chronicle), isn't going to save it. And I don't even care who the manager is.

As such, membership, fundraising, and underwriting, can only wither away as fewer listeners means fewer corporations are going to cough up the real bucks to pay for the expanded staff which reaches less ears and eyes. Membership largely meant a local community of people on a two way street of getting and giving back. That transaction is spoiled when the station feels less community oriented because of the piped in programming and disregard for the unique voice those announcers offered. As spending mounts, and funding falls, it's even more of a disjoint between the inside of that building and the outside world, and even the best administration spin artists eventually won't be believable.

If I were a media person today with unlimited resources, I would start looking at what the folks who have opted out of traditional broadcast media have done. Folks like Bob Edwards, or Howard Stern. Guys like Jerry Seinfeld even. All of these people have a significant following and provide unique content that consumers want and can easily bookmark.  A company created that valued those unique offerings would be able to find funding for this. And while no one in management there seems to say that Elaine's voice and choice of materials is an art form, or what Deb did either in material or editorial choice is an artistic statement, I think it is. Eliminating the bureaucracy of what exists where you are today would free up an organization to do not only what it was intended, but to do it where this was the only place you could find that artistry.

I happen to like Jonathan Schwartz. He is a octogenarian who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the American songbook. He's also probably the most well versed man on Sinatra there is. He held sway at a mainstream NYC private station for decades (I remember being able to tune that in when growing up in PA). As you might expect, at some point that station switched formats and he was dumped. I believe there was a period where he was silent. WNYC, the flagship public station in New York took him on because of his former popularity. He does his shows for them twice a week. On the other hand, he has an online channel, which is the only way I would hear him. It will play 24 hours a day, and at certain times, play his most recently created shows. Now, there's any number of ways I could probably find those songs he plays (forgive if it's not your style), but his is a very unique voice attached to a very unique brain which not only enlightens me to the what and why of pieces I am listening to, but knows insightfully how to arrange that playlist in a more meaningful way. Perhaps it's too cliched to call him a brand, but I believe he is, and I think Elaine is, and I think Deb is as well as the others. I mean this in the most soulful and respectful way.  Eliminating a brand is boarding up a room in your house (with a family member still in it).

I am sorry that you and I happened to be present when the world changed. In fact, in another era, I don't think the regents would have hired an on air personality to run one of the largest public broadcasting enterprises in the country. But this happened and we can't really go back. The fool's money is on thinking that things haven't changed, or that we can spin it to make consumers not notice this. Biting the local hand that feeds might just hasten the process. Not considering the enterprise as a collection of artists in their own right, is a senseless squander

Response about someone starting in recruiting

If I haven't, my gut feeling on her is that she's never going to be a top biller. Not saying she couldn't be, or shouldn't be. My own experience is that the environment you work in makes a huge difference in your billings and earnings.

After being away from staffing for about 7 years, I came back to the loosest recruiting firm you've ever seen. Sure the owner was the definition of a Crisis Manager, but she offered 50% of the placement fee (100% contingency practice with a no draw, all commission). And while I didn't work my discipline alone, the process control field is clearly large enough to handle two recruiters working at it. Fact is, I failed even though I could have continued working there for years. No one ever got fired from that place.

Following that disaster I talked myself into a job at Bruce Whitaker's. He didn't even like to take on existing recruiters. Further, the turnover there was not cruel, just astonishing. Bruce largely didn't fire anyone whimsically, instead most would simply pack their stuff up and be gone, sometimes during a lunch in the latter part of the first week. That said, and no one was hired at that firm without a canonical interviewing process, those that would listen, work, and learn from him, made money even though he paid at most about 30% of the fee.

The difference here was that it was a focused and determined learning environment that rigorously scrutinized and measured everything. And what gets measured, gets done. I've told you plenty about how things were there, and perhaps it sounds remarkably like a sweatshop. However, none of us minded and we were seriously some of the best professionals in this industry working for someone who would rip us apart for thinking any less of ourselves.

So, J___. Well, my own opinion doesn't count. Your boss' does. In the right place, she would either hunker down and do the work necessary to make it her profession, or she would give up (soon typically), because it's "too hard", or the rewards aren't soon enough. I have seen a lot of people enter recruiting this way only to jump right back out again. My guess is these same people might jump into a series of ill informed sales type positions, only to realize that it's not easy and it's not quick. The ones I have seen who made it refused to capitulate so quickly.

And to be specific about money, Bruce started a woman whose background was largely as a housewife. She never made evening calls, and she didn't work on weekends at all. However, she did show up early and worked nonstop with short breaks for lunch. She placed environmental and safety people. This was 1991. She made roughly two placements a month, and typically had 3-5 sendouts per week. Her billings for her first year in the industry were over $185,000. She probably took home a little less than a third of that. It is certainly doable.

Response on intellectual property

From a good car friend of mine who has a unique fiberglass car that his Dad created in the '50s. He's done a phenomenal job of restoring the car, and given his relationship with it, not only does everything about the car, but everything about what went into it.

He wrote:

 

I was casually looking around EBay this morning, searching for a replacement battery for a scooter I need to sell. On a whim, I typed "Venus Fiberglass Car" in the search box. I scrolled down and ran across this "auction". Apparently, this company (or guys) copy articles from Wikipedia and then publish paperback versions, and they did so on the Venus…I guess I shouldn't be surprised. 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Venus-Automobile-by-Paperback-Book-English-Free-Shipping-/380694315015?pt=US_Nonfiction_Book&hash=item58a3264007

"High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Venus Automobile is a one-piece fiberglass-bodied custom car produced in the early to mid-1950s in the USA. The prototype was mounted on a 1949 Ford chassis, and powered by a Ford flathead V8 motor with high-performance heads and intake manifold. The car's designer, Kenneth McLoad, was granted a US Design Patent, number 177,499 in April 1956. The Venus also appeared on the cover of the May 1953 issue of Motor Trend Magazine. Less than a 10 of these car bodies were ever produced, and only two are currently known to be in existence (in Texas)."

What's puzzling is that the item description shows 146 pages. There's no way the Venus article in Wiki (which I wrote years ago) can span 146 pages. Interesting.

Not sure I'll buy this thing since I pretty much know the story of the Venus, but might still be interesting to see what's in it. Just goes to show that nothing on the web is sacred, and forget about any copyrights.

I guess any publicity is good publicity, though they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel!

P

PS: No need to respond; this is just an FYI.

And here is my response:

I am thinking about this. On one side of me, it's obvious that this Cut N Paste Character is trying to make a living by collecting free articles, printing them (I guess) and selling them to people who (I guess) don't have the capacity to look online for this information (and presumably can't print it out on paper for themselves). That you wrote the Wiki for it is great, I mean I've never written anything on Wikipedia since I never felt like I was a definitive source on much of anything. The Venus. You. Yes.

But the larger issue is copyright protection or more largely, intellectual property protection. Now we all know the Asians are turning out a remarkably similar cellphone to the Iphone, and that's just a simple for instance. There are probably billions more. And as far as written protection, well the schools have gotten so used to it, that teachers pretty much state (and check on) that essays and papers aren't simply taken from one of the top Google results. What actually DOES pass for original thought, or for that matter original action?

I can be considered guilty of this myself. I mean, ok, the Allied. Fact is, Bill Burke simply poured plaster of paris all over Bob Petersen's little Italian sports coupe in order to make a copy he could take to Bonneville and not ruin his boss' car. I'm sure getting the fiberglass exactly like the Cisitalia, there might have been compromises (I've only ever seen one of them in NYC and honestly it might not be exact but it's pretty close). And while Jud bought this one (nothing has his name on it, and there's no record of a sale, I just traced the ownership back), and I'd like to restore it to what his vision was, there's a little part of me that wishes I had ANOTHER Allied body to play with. One that I could put on a bit more modern chassis with a bit more modern components. And honestly that could be done by using this body as a mold to make another body from. In fact some folks have told me that I'd be better off recreating the body for this chassis than trying to fill in all of those crazings and cracks. And just like using a scanner to copy the Venus body to make a plastic model (that accidentally got thrown away), that's right there on the edge of  intellectual property limits.

However, and I think you'll agree, there's some sort of huge effort that's going to be required to copy the Venus or the Allied. I mean, it might take a lot of money, and we know it'd take a lot of time. Shouldn't that account for something? And if you did make that model, or I did drop a late model 302 in the front of an Allied body with Brembo brakes and a nice six speed gearbox, rack and pinion, coil over struts, etc, etc, well we know that it wouldn't be cheap or easy. I have to think I might get the advantage of low wages if I did this in China, but I'm not sure really if it would be anymore "right" if I were in Beijing or Baytown.

But I'm reminded of something I read a few years back on Ben Franklin. I'm an enormous fan of Ben. Yale Press has produced 48 volumes of all of the known letters he wrote and received (and it's really only a fraction of what once existed). He was an amazing guy by almost anyone's standards in a lot of different areas. One of the things he's best known for is Poor Richard's Almanac, and the main reason's that he's known for that were all of the pithy sayings found there. The fact is, he didn't actually make up those sayings. He simply copied or printed sayings he'd heard, or read someplace else. Yea, intellectual theft plain and simple (some of these things were actually found in other almanacs that were currently in print!). But he printed them, and he made them famous. My guess would be that, if Ben were alive today, and in a similar sort of publishing business, he'd be kiting stuff wherever he could find it, and just hoping no one tracked it down (which perhaps is where we've really gotten smarter in the past 200 years). Truth is, I'd bet Bill figured since no one had ever actually seen a Cisi at B-ville, let alone very many Italians, no one would care whether he'd copy it and got a speed record. And that clown hawking Wiki articles probably never even knew you existed, let alone might randomly type those words into an Ebay search.

Finally, I'm a fan of the Beatles. You probably liked them too. With all of the charades these performers go through with the RIAA and Napster and music ripoffs, well, it's a wonder anyone ever makes any money in the music business. However, there's two songs that the Fab Four produced (after they split up), you might know. One of them is George Harrison's My Sweet Lord and the other is John Lennon's So This Is Christmas. In the case of the former, the '50s group (I can't remember their names which is somehow important I think), sued him for simply copying the music and sticking new lyrics on it (ok, so I'm not crazy about George's Hinduism, but whatever). He MADE that song an enormous success, a success it would never ever have been had he not simply copied the tune. He lost the suit and paid an unspecified amount in damages. In the latter, John simply copied an old English ballad about a horse which was called Stewball. I'll spare you the dreary lyrics, but frankly every Christmas I hear John's version (and while I might not be quite as much of a pacifist as he and Yoko were), I do love the song. He wasn't sued (the tune was too old and the composer was long dead), so he didn't have to ever pay for his theft. Frankly, I wouldn't want to hear about Stewball anyway so I think he improved it. There's a ton of other examples (and even a long list of hymns!), where about the only maxim is "don't get caught".

And in the end, isn't that sort of what laws really mean? 

Response to a request for help with a local NPR station tele campaign request

R,

...I think I'll have to pass on this campaign. Frankly, I'm sort of torn up about it. That place has been like a wonderful resort to me for nearly 20 years. However, the new management is dedicated to making it into a Holiday Inn. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with Holiday Inns, but they've fired some of the best and brightest from it, and demoralized the remaining folks who I feel are compromised with what was and what is. Supporting this new direction largely means supporting the decision to axe people like Deb, Chris, Bob, and Elaine (and who knows who is on the chopping block next?). I'm distraught that an institution that has been an enormously successful force in both news and classical music has, by the effect of one person, been reduced to a lot of game shows and piped in programming while tossing the talent that got them to be that force in the beginning. Of course I'm preaching to the choir here, and you know more the evils of the standing situation than I'll ever know. Remember when we just worried about V? I mean, really!

My hope is that at some point she will have overreached, and somehow the ship will right itself before what remains of KUHF is reduced to being another common format at the left end of the dial (KUHA having been liquidated to Lakewood Church).  I'd like to think that you and Paul and Capella and a few others will take what's left and somehow return this organization to the sort of institution that I first fell in love with.

I guess until then, I need to stay quiet.

bill

Hey Bill,

How are you?

Things are ok up here. We start our camp-pain next week. April 3-11^th. Do you want to come up and volunteer one morning?

First Post

I tend to be loquacious. Well at least that's what one person has told me (and they were being nice), over the course of time I've had the opportunity to write lengthy emails that frankly were appreciated, but probably read once and deleted or save to an archive. Recently I read Scott Hanselman's blog post on productivity tips, and one of them was his approach to emails as being no longer than four to five sentences. Scott's a programmer as well as a whole lot of other things, but he realizes his limits. And one of those limits, like heartbeats, is that he's only got so many keystrokes in him. While a ton of emails have specific, time dated, and sensitive material, like the rest of us, he sometimes is communicating something greater than an item that will be read by one person and die. Or he's finding himself writing the SAME email to a bunch of people that could be optimized, and referred to in a single sentence email.

So, basically, this is my effort to avoid sending my friends, work associates, and relatives, long winded emails. Instead, if it's a topic I think should be addressed in a larger way, or should perhaps be something a bunch of people might want to read, it's going here. And like maybe most bloggers, if it's not a topic you're truly interested in, you have the ability to avoid it by closing the tab, or moving along to the next item.

We'll see.