creative risks

A Quick One While I'm Running Late . . .

Mark Laskowski — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:48:16 -0400

With Dennis Haarsager's Technology 360 perhaps slowly emerging from hiatus (most recent post was this Monday, but it's the first one since April 6th), we can be sure that there are many public media professionals hungry for the provocative and cutting edge opinions he so often relays.

For example, Mr. Haarsager usually faithfully passed on the wit, wisdom and musings of new media thought leader Diane Mermigas. Read her latest post about how "Nonprofit public media–and most especially public broadcasting will embrace interactive web tools . . . in ways they once considered 'commercial.'" Her three little words of advice and admonition to this development? "Get over it."

New Pledge Program Coming Your Way for ... Well, Soon.

Mark Laskowski — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:35:34 -0400

Larry Winget posted this on his blog yesterday:

"It’s official. The taping for the PBS special will happen on July 19th in Phoenix, Arizona. I will be doing a speech entitled, Success Is Your Own Fault."

Mr. Winget is a best-selling author, self-proclaimed "Pitbull of personal development®" (yes, he has apparently officially registered this self proclamation) and host of A&E's weekly series, Big Spender. Think Wayne Dyer injected with a combination of DNA from Suze Orman (similar subject material) and the closest available professional wrestler (from which he derives his super powers).

PBS has made no official announcement about any of the pledge titles coming to stations for August/September (although I heard an unconfirmed rumor that there will be at least four new shows offered), so it's hard to say whether this will be a late summer or December offering. With the show being shot July 19th, turning around post editing in time for a summer release seems unlikely.

The main purpose of Mr. Winget's post is to get in-studio audience butts in seats for the shooting of show at The Living Word facility in Phoenix. Concerned that this sounds like there might be some inappropriate connection to a specific denomination or faith? Fear not. The shoot will take place within a day-long event hosted by Business Mentorship International and, as Mr. Winget writes in his post:

"Business Mentorship International holds their events at a church. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean that it is going to be all churchy! It is a great venue that holds a lot of people and has full television capabilities. It won’t inhibit me or my message, though the PBS part does reign me in slightly!"

The audio on Business Mentorship International's trailer for the event on their site (also a call to action for folks to sign up to be a part of the studio audience for free) mentions that Mr. Winget will be giving a lecture entitled, Your Broke Because You Want to Be. Although in Winget's post and in the text on BMI's site, the lecture is billed as Success is Your Own Fault. So it would seem that the project is in somewhat of a working title zone . . . but if history is any indicator (as well as being a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken), it seems that the slightly reigned in but not at all churchy Larry Winget will likely be a pledge success.

"a shame the networks aren't covering tonight. . .

Mark Laskowski — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:49:28 -0400

. . . because they just missed a bit of history." Thus spake New York Times columnist David Brooks four years ago during the PBS coverage and analysis of the Democratic National Convention.

You can check out the YouTube clip here.

Not so much a shame, Mr. Brooks, as what you'd expect from commercial television. They are, after all, more often than not in the business of distracting people from history for the sake of selling soap rather than covering it.

This clip was recently Digged because of historian Richard Norton Smith's now potentially prophetic comment "people talk about him quite openly as the first black president of the United States."

We'll see.

O'Reilly green with envy over Moyers' "ambush" abilities?

Mark Laskowski — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:24:56 -0400

In the tables-turned department, check out Bill Moyers on this footage recorded by Uptake correspondent Noah Kunin at this weekend's National Conference for Media Reform.

As a reward for tolerating the shaky audio, you will witness a somewhat surreal combination of journalism and commentary on journalism by way of guerilla theater. Porter Barry, one of Bill O'Reilly's producers, has apparently planned to confront Bill Moyers to ask him why he won’t appear on The O’Reilly Factor. Moyers stands his ground, pushes back and leaves Mr. Barry looking a bit wilted. After their conversation is over, other journalists jump in and give Barry, as the site Crooks and Liars put it, "a little taste of the FOX News-style ambush journalism."

Allow me to be completely biased, in those rare moments when I can work up the energy to even recognize that the cosmos contains this thing called Bill O'Reilly (or when that reality is thrust upon me), he makes me sick. But just like the cliché about suddenly coming upon a fresh and grisly automobile accident, despite the horror and carnage I cannot look away. This exchange demonstrates that, deprived of his own element and shown in unedited real-time, O'Reilly's producer is no verbal sparring mate match for someone as intelligent and articulate as Bill Moyers. It's even more fun to watch a consummate on-camera personality show that this is also so true about Bill O'Reilly. Phil Donahue demonstrated this quite nicely (of course Phil knows exactly what he's doing when he consistently refers to O'Reilly as "Billy", but it's still hilarious).

David Letterman does a nice job, too. Highlight: O'Reilly: ". . . it's an easy question . . . " Letterman: "it's not easy for me because I'm thoughtful." Displaying one of the trademark traits of his sophistry, O'Reilly attempts a return quip, "that was great, Dave, you get paid for those." As if O'Reilly doesn't get paid for his shtick!?! Was this entire exchange somewhat choreographed as much of the banter on the Letterman show is reputed to be? Maybe so, but at least David Letterman knows that he's merely an entertainer. I'm not quite sure O'Reilly understands that's all he is.

But there I go, getting sucked in . . . it's too easy to rebut Bill O'Reilly when really he's not worth taking seriously. Perhaps Snoop says it best (this clip contains strong language, but no wardrobe malfunctions).

When will Soundstage kick it old school? (scroll down for juicy YouTube clips)

Mark Laskowski — Thu, 29 May 2008 11:57:20 -0400

WTTW National has apparently partnered with KOCH Vision on a DVD distribution deal for at least one past episode of their music performance series Soundstage.

This July you'll be able to pull the Sheryl Crow concert originally telecast as a Soundstage in 2004 right off the shelf and go home to watch and listen in glorious high-definition and 5.1 surround sound. Stevie Nicks plans to release a DVD of her 2007 Soundstage appearance later this year and it could be part of the same deal.

What confuses me is that starpulse.com (perhaps picking up on a press release from KOCH Vision) is busy crowing that this is a first, even though many Soundstage episodes have been available through Shop PBS for some time now.

This dubious news trickling through the interweb fails to motivate me to sort out the confusion for myself (or for you dear reader). Instead, I am moved to reminisce about the former power and faded glory that once was Soundstage.

WTTW first produced and distributed the series from 1974 to 1985. Then it was gone until a revival in 2003, a revival seemingly spurred as much by HD's potential to make sweet and easily monetized ear/eye candy from live pop concert performances than by a desire to bring original and meaningful music to the public. I say this because the past five seasons have given us the likes of Michael McDonald, Alanis Morissette, America (with special guest Christopher Cross, no less) Train and Jewel.

To be fair and balanced and to give credit where credit is due, Soundstage has lightly peppered their seasons with some creative risks by featuring some off the beaten path artists who are at home in more than one hipster's pantheon—from a Wilco and Sonic Youth doubleheader in 2003 to what's left of the New York Dolls three seasons ago.

Continuing in the fair vein, I should confess my own musical tastes can be as twisted as they are eclectic, nevertheless I would fear I had fallen too far into what Martha Bayles calls perverse postmodernism if I didn't get some kicks from both the 2003 and more recent Soundstage episodes showcasing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. But Daughtry? C'mon . . . Daughtry?

If memory serves, one of Bob Dylan's first major public performances after his reclusive recovery from a motorcycle accident was on Soundstage. One of my few vivid television childhood memories (along with the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz) is Leon Russell and the Shelter People just bringing down the house on Soundstage. And while I think it may have been a WNET one-off rather than a WTTW Soundstage, one of the few televised performances of the Doors was courtesy of PBS (they performed Soft Parade material not too long after the Dade County public indecency bust as Mr. Mojo Risin' began his slide into the bearded, bloated, I'm-gonna-die-in-a-bathtub soon phase of his short life).

Decades later this is the sort of stuff that seems like meaty slices of American cultural history. Will Christopher Cross and Daughtry look that way thirty years from now or will they still seem like the Velveeta I believe them to be today?

Perhaps my criticisms and laments are really more about the art, entertainment and culture of today as reflected by Soundstage than they are about the production itself, but I can't help but wonder if Soundstage, specifically, and other PBS music vehicles, in general, couldn't get a bit more edgy.

Looking ahead, could the series play it a little less safe? Could aging gracefully icons such as Van Morrison, Lou Reed or Ray Davies be convinced to perform? Could Eminem be persuaded to give a bleepless performance sans misogyny and abusive allusions and imagery? Has anyone called the agent for emo whiz kids Say Anything? Does any one else think that the average series lineup (admittedly much like my own extemporaneous list of suggestions) seems a bit too white?

Looking back, I wonder who owns the rights to the old school Soundstage stuff? Who has the tapes? I am sure ownership of much of it is scattered here and there and that the content itself is available on various DVDs featuring the artists in question. But couldn't some of that stuff be brought back in the form of some Nick at Nightesque nostalgia trip episodes? Living in the internet-fueled United States of Amnesia (to use Gore Vidal's term), it's tough to even find any solid info about the first eleven year run of Soundstage.

But if you recall those days yourself (or don't and would like to get a taste of them), it's YouTube to the rescue.

The aforementioned Leon Russell looking Bantam-spry and telling it like it is.

A before-the-graying Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen duet on Cohen's Suzanne's Song.

And then Chick Corea with the rest of Return to Forever take us Beyond the 7th Galaxy and out . . .

PS—From the too interesting to pass up (at least to me) department, way before Journey was just another faded stadium act lucky enough to have one of their hits picked to underscore the cryptic ending to The Sopranos, they didn't suck (and, of course, didn't sell either). In my humble opinion, the sucking started when Steve Perry was recruited for lead vocals and, of course, then they began to sell quite nicely. To hear a Journey you might not recognize, check out the albums (or downloads from) Look Into the Future and Next. Journey had a moment or two circa 1978 in the Soundstage spotlight in the series' first run.

". . . and you can listen to it while you play video games!"

Mark Laskowski — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:19:25 -0400

That's not exactly the sort of testimonial that you'd expect to hear (or use) when extolling the virtues of NPR's Morning Edition during your next on-air fundraiser, but it's exactly the way SNL head writer Seth Meyers expressed his appreciation for the public radio program in a recent interview on mediabistro.com.

"I listen to NPR in the morning because it's a news source you can listen to while you play video games. So I can merge two of my worlds in one awesome newsgathering and entertainment-playing moment," reads one of the interview's billboard quotes.

Meyers, who confesses to the "guilty pleasure" of FIFA 2008 on Xbox in the story, was answering mediabistro.com's questions about what sources the SNL Weekend Update writers use in gathering material for the show and about his own media consumption.

With his slacker-not-quite-spoiled-by-success persona (or is it his personality?), it's hard to know how much of Meyers' tongue was in his cheek when he made the statement. Still, it seems to me to be a great talking point to demonstrate to younger listeners that, yes, NPR is more hip than stodgy and they don't need to consider or confess it as a "guilty pleasure" when they're hanging out with the cool kids.

Mr. Smits Goes to Washington (again)

Mark Laskowski — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:03:55 -0400

His last big inside-the-beltway role was as victorious presidential candidate Matt Santos, during the lame duck days of President Bartlett and the swan song episodes of The West Wing. Now Jimmy Smits will return to the USA's Capital to host PBS's 28th annual telecast of A Capitol Fourth live from Washington, D.C.

Performances include the very best of the tepid and predictable with acts such as Huey Lewis and the News and American Idol winner who went nowhere Taylor Hicks.

Hayley Westerna, of Celtic Woman fame, will also perform along with fellow soprano Harolyn Blackwell, Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell and America's favorite don't-worry-I-won't-shoot-you-I'm-only-the-piano-player Jerry Lee Lewis.

Throw in the NSO with Erich Kunzel on the baton, live cannon fire from the US Army's Presidential Salute Battery during the 1812 Overture and fireworks and you have the makings of yet another great production that has become a tradition for public television stations coast to coast.

And you were going to go to a picnic? Check local listings!

Fundraising Auctions with High Ideals . . .

Mark Laskowski — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:05:23 -0400

I know of several public media colleagues (and of numerous other stations with which I have no personal or professional connections) who use fundraising auctions as an important source of their annual operating revenue. And so it was with interest I read Seth Godin's blog post today. He does not often focus directly on the marketing activities of NPOs, but when he does it's usually worth reading (especially since as a blogger he has mastered brevity . . . a quality that eludes me in my own blog escapades as much as does posting on a regular basis).

I know, I know . . . if you're up to your eyebrows in an actual auction right now (or preparing for one or doing post mortem meetings for one), what Godin suggests here will sound a bit far-fetched if not Utopian. And he admits that the paradigm shift he suggests "is not the easy path." Nor am I suggesting that anyone should throw away their current auction baby with their auction bathwater in trying to achieve what The Robin Hood Foundation has, according to Godin, pulled off.

But it may be interesting for anyone who is looking for ways to improve and innovate to consider where, how and when the paradigm suggested by Godin could be implemented, or at least insinuated, into their current auction models and strategies.

Monday, Monday!

Mark Laskowski — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:29:35 -0500

Proudly proclaiming its Silicon Valley locale in the masthead, you can always count on The Mercury News (registration required) to closely cover the tech sector, so I anticipate much of my reading about the Consumer Electronics Show this week will come from this MediaNews Group owned paper/site and live blogging from the PMD.

Both sources have reported on a partnership of NPR, Harris Group and Towson University to use HD radio to deliver transcription of NPR radio broadcasts for the hearing and visually impaired. The PMD article (registration required) goes into more detail about this service and HD radio overall (unlike The Mercury News article which has to give equal time to talking BBQ thermometers and customized massage chairs). A post from PC Magazine yesterday also discussed the new development.

But I still feel like I'm missing something about this technology by not being at the CES. I mean, I understand that the technology renders NPR broadcasts "so that the hearing impaired can read them," but what does The Mercury News reporter mean when he writes that the HD radio device will also render NPR's content so that "the visually impaired can hear?" I thought we already had a technology that the visually impaired can hear, it's called "radio".

StoryCorps visits Orlando this month and the Orlando Sentinel's pop music critic covered David Islay's project in a recent article.

In an oversimplification that perhaps misses the point of public media, the critic Jim Abbott explained that "as a business model, StoryCorps is a loser—at least on paper. It costs $250 to do each of the 40-minute interviews offered for $10—or for free." He goes on to explain that, "from its beginnings with 7 employees and a $500,000 budget, StoryCorps has swelled to an 80-member staff and a budget of $6 million, largely funded by donations," which explains why StoryCorps is reviewing résumés for a Development Coordinator position (posted November 7th and apparently no longer open).

Everyone from CNN to bloggers like living read girl . . . from PBS itself to The New York Times (registration required) last month has been trumpeting Gillian Anderson as the new Masterpiece Theatre host (her debut was last night).

From a Creative Risks perspective, the more intriguing news is that the PBS icon series now comes in three distinct program packages: Masterpiece Classic (of which Gillian is the host), Masterpiece Mystery! (which shrewdly saves the similar PBS icon series, Mystery!, by absorbing it under the Masterpiece brand) and Masterpiece Contemporary which will "will show dramas set in modern times," according to PBS (White Teeth from the '02-'03 season is the best, most recent example that comes to my mind).

Far more creative than risky, here's a strategy that will allow for more specific national media buys and station promotion to drive viewers to the series (I imagine a—dare I say it—younger audience might thrill to Masterpiece Contemporary but would see Masterpiece Classic as too staid and stuffy). And the three way split would seem to open up more focused national underwriting opportunities, too (I hope so, anyway, since the series has not been underwritten nationally since ExxonMobil dropped out after decades of support in 2004). Similarly, stations will have local underwriting opportunities that didn't exist before. As the PBS local underwriting folks suggested in a conference call last month, stations can now seek corporate support for "(the) sub-brands or as one big MASTERPIECE package".

Easy enough to chant a mantra like "keep the best, reinvent the rest." A bit tougher row to hoe is to actually innovate for optimized potential without screwing up a well-established brand (or as Jim Collins put it in Good to Great, "preserve the core/stimulate progress").

Speaking of WGBH productions, Antiques Roadshow has just announced their summer tour which will result in new episodes for their 13th season airing in 2009. The ARS crew will visit Palm Springs and Dallas in June, Wichita and Chattanooga in July and Grand Rapids and Hartford in August.

And since I promised myself that I'd post this by half past noon (EST), I'll close by offering a link to a decent though not deep opinion piece from Beverly Kelley in the Ventura County Star who fondly remembers Newton Minow, his famous T.S. Eliot allusion and juxtaposes Minow's impact to that of current FCC chairman Kevin J. Martin. Is Martin working hard to be nominated for the Kenneth Tomlinson Service to the American People award or what? Who knows? Perhaps the best answer is:

"You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water."

That's hardly adequate as anyone's daily recommended dose of good poetry, but it will have to do for now because I must get on with the rest of my day.

Thanks for your time and attention.

###

Plan now for next holiday season?

Mark Laskowski — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:43:29 -0500

Last month I passed along Seth Godin's keen observations about the gift cards phenomenon.

He explained that money from gift card fees and breakage, unused by the recipients and going back to the retailers, came to $8 billion last year.

Godin pointed out the irony of how many of us view giving gift cards as proof we engaged in the thought that counts whereas cold hard cash, a better deal for giver and recipient, is somehow gauche. Godin neatly solved this mystery by reminding us of these twin truths:

(1) Human beings are not rational.

(2) No one ever lost a buck by telling a story that takes root in the consumers' minds strongly enough to supplant the facts.

He suggested that retailers or even entrepreneurial NPOs could tell a better story. The idea intrigued me. Taking Godin's cue, I suggested that NPOs could partner with retailers to take advantage of the gift card phenomenon and get some of that $8 billion flowing into their coffers rather than back to the retailers. But last week, Morning Edition reported how some NPOs are using charity gift card providers to go one step better, cut out the retail transaction middle man and put the kitten right under the cow.

TisBest was the charity gift card provider featured in the story. The concept is simple. To quote their website, "it works like any other gift card, except that instead of buying stuff in a store, the recipient spends it to support a charity of their choice." As Wendy Kauffman reported, "the 200 plus choices on TisBest.org range from Amnesty International and autism research to the Special Olympics and the YMCA." Some one at NPR was a bit sleepy on the full disclosure front, though, because the story failed to mention that NPR is also among the TisBest options.

While Pacifica Radio and PBS are options as well, no individual NPR or PBS member-stations—even of the large market variety—are listed on the site. Perhaps none have yet bothered to learn how to join in all the reindeer games, so to speak. Maybe they have and decided there are bigger fish to fry. Perhaps they found the price of admission prohibitive to testing, although I would imagine sweat equity (i.e. effort) is more of a factor than actual dollars.

I know of no stations, nor have I ever worked at or for one, that has been able to lift the "gift membership" offer high enough off the ground to make a real difference. But the charity gift card concept seems easier and, in a way that may at first seem counter-intuitive, more purely philanthropic.

What might make it seem less than appealing is that the card purchaser does not select the charity in question, but gives that option to the recipient. So an NPO could spend time and energy marketing the purchase of charity gift cards with no good way of being reasonably sure that the people getting the cards as gifts would use them to contribute to their organization. Any station participating on the TisBest site would put itself side by side with many worthwhile "competitors" for share of wallet.

In the NPR story, CharityNavigator's President Trent Stamp says that charity gift cards have "exploded in the last couple of years" and reporter Kauffman relays that Stamp believes this has "been driven by those wanting to make a charitable gift on behalf of family or friends but who didn't want to be so presumptuous as to chose the charity—a gift card solves the problem." That seems reasonable, but does it hold true for all of the gift giving that a site like TisBest could leverage to an NPO's advantage? After all, if I know you well enough to be sure you'd appreciate a gift card from Barnes and Noble more than one from Sephora, don't I also know you well enough to be sure you'd want a gift of support to go to Pacifica Radio instead of Amnesty International?

Today's post comes to no hard, fast conclusion. Please file this under "we report, you decide (to do something useful with the information if you feel like it.)". But starting to think about this idea now, engaging in some conversations in your shop and also doing a little research when time allows in the month's ahead might best position you to make the smartest move when the 2008 holiday season looms into view.

By the way, Justgive.org and CharityChoice, although they have slightly different business models, are also players in this arena.

Happy Holiday Shopping!

Social Capital Redux

Mark Laskowski — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 07:05:50 -0500

If you were connected to the enterprise of public media circa 2001 (I believe we unabashedly called it "public broadcasting" back then), you may recall a great deal of fuss, however fleeting, made about the notion of Social Capital, as explained and espoused by Robert D. Putnam in his book Bowling Alone.

I was reminded of this a few months ago by a post Neal Hecker made to his blog on the PMD. Neal wrote about WPBT's work with The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation. This is part of the CPB funded Community Engagement Initiative that involves another half dozen or so stations that, according to CPB's business plan for this fiscal year, are being helped to "identify novel approaches for increasing their impact on community life."

The endeavor seems to have a social capital flavor to it, so it may be of interest to people involved in the initiative or who know of it (or who, like me, remember those adrenalin-paced forays into this territory in those heady days of 2001) to know that last year Putnam published a new and somewhat controversial article, which can be read as HTML or download in PDF format by selecting the links to the right on this page.

It's a relatively long but worthwhile read. If you bite, feel free to take cues on where to skip a bit from SSIR opinion blogger Albert Ruesga who wisely warns that "a dicey section on the multivariate analysis of data to control for the effect of certain variables" may not be "accessible to non-experts."

The controversial part of Putnam's conclusions in the article is that increasing ethnic diversity in most advanced countries, at least in the short term, "reduces social solidarity and social capital." Some misinterpretations of Putnam's points have angered academia's PC liberals and excited isolationist conservatives, but both camps are drawing their conclusions from the mere surface of the article (a risk which Putnam outlines toward the end).

A friend and former CPB colleague of mine told me that he had not read Putnam's article but had read several articles about the article. Ruesga predicts in his blog that the majority of people who know of the article have fallen into this same trap. So consider printing the PDF and putting it on your "to read" stack for this Sunday.

The increased ethnic diversity in this country can only continue to have impact on public media institutions and public media can perhaps play yet to be discovered roles in Putnam's ultimately optimistic view of our ability to "redraw more inclusive lines of social identity."

Happy reading!

Quirk Debunked

Mark Laskowski — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:31:59 -0500

Months have passed since the Current blogpost with a link to The Atlantic Monthly piece, Quirked Around, appeared on one of my feeds. Somehow the assertions Michael Hirschorn made in his content commentary kept nagging me for a rebuttal.

I began to fantasize a scene where I'd come upon Hirschorn discussing his ideas about Quirk, grab him by the shoulder and say, "Love to prove that wouldn't ya? Get your name into the National Geographic!" Only I like to think my indignation would be more well-founded than was that of Amity's greedy Mayor Vaughn.

Naturally, when I began to organize my thoughts for my own post detailing what bugged me about the piece, I googled the author's name . . . and the plot thickened. To be fair, on his interview with WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show Hirschorn seems less strident, at times apologetic, in his opinions (although even sketchier and more equivocating with his overall concept). But, as Adario Strange observed on one of his posts to Wired's Blog Network, Michael Hirschorn is the executive vice president of original programming and production at VH1—a Viacom organ responsible for some of the most tedious and trashy reality television programs imaginable. By what rights does he take on the likes of Wes Anderson and Ira Glass for failing to have "creative responsibility" or for not "construct(ing) a coherent universe that has something to say about contemporary life"? Where is the evidence of Mr. Hirschorn's "creative responsibility"? What does the not-all-that "coherent universe" constructed by Breaking Bonaduce tell me "about contemporary life"?

But, in the immortal words of William Seward Burroughs, who am I to be critical? Hirschon is no lout. Not only does he make more money than I'll likely ever see, he's damned smart—a Harvard man, a member of NYC's Generation X literati (he's 43)—and seems to have opinions about the media today that resonate with me ("I think people are interested in and increasingly savvy about the process of the creation of entertainment and are interested in understanding the way they are being manipulated." Thus spake Hirschorn when interviewed by The New York Times Magazine, along with former collaborator Kurt Andersen, about the now defunct online publication Inside.com). That hardly sounds like the sentiment of man who sees his Quirked Around position as a way to subtlety pimp VH1's dreck to Atlantic Monthly intellectuals. Besides, Hirschorn is clearly too clever to attempt such a ruse or believe that dreck would needs to be pimped at all.

So I suppose I'm more mystified than indignant. He could have at least made the disclaimer that a lot of what he does for a paycheck these days might be at odds with his content criticisms.

In the event that you have not yet read the commentary (and are not inclined to), you probably wonder what exactly Quirk, as defined by Hirschorn, is. I think an earnest attempt to summarize reveals one of the weaknesses in Hirschorn's premise. He mostly defines and discusses Quirk through examples (or as he says " territorially") rather than by providing an overarching conceptual construct that would allow any of us to determine what is or isn't Quirk by ourselves. The closest he comes is this:

As an aesthetic principle, quirk is an embrace of the odd against the blandly mainstream. It features mannered ingenuousness, an embrace of small moments, narrative randomness, situationally amusing but not hilarious character juxtapositions . . . and unexplainable but nonetheless charming character traits. Quirk takes not mattering very seriously.

I don't want to pretend that I don't know what Hirschorn is talking about or that there isn't something to what he says. My criticism/questions about his coinage of Quirk fall into three categories.

His premise lacks rigor. Isn't this much like the wine of some of Susan Sontag's Notes on "Camp" put into updated jars (and damned watered down in the process)? Even Martha Bayles's concept of "perverse modernism" seems to have more specific and objective teeth than Hirschorn's Quirk. In the Brian Lehrer interview, he allows (or agrees) that there is "good quirk" and "bad quirk" but he seems unable to give us the criteria by which he would distinguish one from the other.
He seems motivated to identify Quirk to shine a light on the aesthetic, if not moral, higher ground that float in some content Valhalla above it. Yet he doesn't explain why he is not currently occupying that higher ground. The best example of content that he thinks does? Judd Apatow's comedy from this summer, Knocked Up. Don't get me wrong; I thought Knocked Up was—like a lot of great comedic cinema—funny yet disposable. I'm just having a little bit of trouble adjusting to a world where Judd Apatow is more of a responsible artist with something meaningful to say about contemporary life than is Ira Glass or Wes Andersen.
Which brings my final gripe with Hirschorn's Quirk: Why pick on Ira Glass and This American Life so much? Call me naive, but when Ira Glass says in an Entertainment Weekly interview (which Hirschorn quotes) that TAL "really is a ministry of love," I think it's more reasonable to take Glass's words at face value than to assume he made the statement, as Hirschorn accuses, in "that non-ironic ironic way favored by the self-styledly quirky,". What hopes can any artist or entertainer have of transcending an ironic stance if we can say their sincerity really is just a very clever way of creating irony? And if Quirk is nothing more than irony (as Hirschorn seems to suggest in the Brian Lehrer interview), why not just call it irony and be done with it? If it's more complicated, explain the variation.

Then there's the ever popular question, "what does this have to do with public media?" What Hirschorn is talking about here—although in a disorganized manner and as a man living in a glass house yet throwing stones—is a lack of authenticity, whether the content strives for art, journalism or entertainment (or all of the above). What people expect from public media content is the kind of authenticity that never takes the easy way out by falling back on previously established poses to attain credibility. I think Ira Glass and company have managed to do this very well and aren't done trying to improve upon their model.

Perhaps to foreshadow another front of this subject that I'll deal with in a later post or perhaps just to close by pointing to something really cool, I think either some counter arguments or maybe even common ground to Hirschorn's points can be found in Jesse Thorn's manifesto of The New Sincerity (or is this just more of "that non-ironic ironic way"?). The best new slice of authentic public media I've encountered lately has to be The Sound of Young America—hosted by Thorn—which was recently picked up by PRI for distribution. And even though it's the kind of program that hits the bull's eye of pubradio's current target demographic du jour (that Holy Grail known as—gasp!—the younger demographic) without alienating old farts like me, only a handful of stations are carrying it. It will be interesting to see if this changes any time soon.

Cheers!

an intriguing idea at the approach of the holidays

Mark Laskowski — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:11:43 -0500

Seth Godin's most recent post to his main blog contains an intriguing, perhaps even tempting, idea for any enterprising nonprofit organization.

Imagine partnering with a gift card company or targeted retailer to create gift cards that could be marketed from a "proceeds from sale and use of card benefit <insert name and mission of your NPO here>" angle? The giver would be making her gift more personal, therefore more thoughtful, by making sure they gave a card related to an organization or cause that the recepient believed in.

And who doesn't want a piece of $8 million?

Regardless of how applicable the notion may be for you, Godin once again demonstrates the power the story has to affect human behavior. If you read the post, you may find yourself wondering (as I did), "why do I think it's somehow better to give a gift card than cold hard cash?"

If we can reach our goal of $850,000 . . .

Mark Laskowski — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:02:07 -0500

Newspaper reporters and columnists in both their dead tree media incarnations and their online mutations love to use public media's on-air fundraising as a no doubt audience-pleasing punching bag (when they could use their bully-pulpits in far more constructive ways).

But this Boston Globe political reporter (in covering the somewhat unrelated matter of a new element of the Obama campaign's fundraising) goes beyond railing against pledge drives to refer to the pledge free or buyback tactic as a "trick"--one that is "oft-used" by public radio. Interesting and worth noting that in this pundit's view, the approach is somehow inauthentic. You can always count on your critics to pay close attention.

Avant moi, le déluge or . . .

Mark Laskowski — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:16:22 -0400

. . . the name for the blog to which I'd rather be posting.

Why reverse the hauntingly poetic French phrase, après moi, le déluge (after me, the flood)? And why do I consider such a cheeky mutation of this historic phrase to be an apt title for the blog I'd rather host?

Despite some recent good news from iTunes, you cannot yet download George Harrison's rendition of the song that offers the best answer to these questions: because "it's all too much."

Men such as King Louis XV, Pope Pius XII and even Jack Kerouac have invoked après moi, le déluge to observe that their life's arc had ushered in a time of grievous sweeping change.

But for me (perhaps for you as well) here at the opening bars of the 21st century, imagining any flood that may come after any of us can hardly distract me from the deluge before me now . . . the one that I'm already awash in and that will only grow greater tomorrow: the rate and amount of change, the unstoppable torrent of information, the acceleration of technology . . . it's all too much, indeed.

But as my Comp 101 professor always chided--"topic too broad." What is a more narrow and current manifestation of these phenomena? One answer: the blogosphere. If anywhere in the known world there exists a bigger flood of intriguing gems bobbing on mundane currents, it would have to be humanity itself. Yet, like an idiot unable to stop myself, I attempted entry to the blogosphere 5 months ago and I've learned at least five things:

I can be very lazy. Writing the great American novel--or even just a good one--should take more than a year, probably much more. Blogging is more like going to the gym, if you are not diligent about a regular schedule, why bother?
My mind wanders easily and it's very difficult for me to stay on topic. Witness that in this post so far, I've really not said anything about Public Service Media (although the post is arguably a "creative risk").
In the blogosphere, the perfect can becomes the enemy of the good more quickly than usual. Again, I need to save the prose polished flawless for my good American novel in progress and resolve to tweak no more so I can get into the shower and get on with my day.
If you're aim is a blog that's more about your own thoughts than relaying topic-specific content from other sources with some contextualization, it's damned tough to post regularly and still be relevant (a hard won quality in the blogosphere).
Many a fine blog is of the relaying with context variety, but if you decide to go there, you immediately begin to feel the pressures of le déluge. Good topic-specific content abounds (again, it's all too much) and due to the numbing proliferation of bloggers (or diggers or StumbleUponers or redditers), no matter what great blog post or site article you find to share with the world, you get the sinking feeling that someone has probably already been here and done that.

So with renewed determination, I accept the lumps from these lessons learned and look ahead to a tomorrow where I'll post more regularly, focus better on the topic and fuss with my stuff less. When the main point of my post is to link to another article, I'll try hard to make it both off the beaten path and relevant (failing that, at least fun).

You know, I feel like a weight has been lifted off my chest. Much better. Maybe the more appropriate name for the blog to which I'd rather be posting would be autour de nous tous, le déluge. On any given day any and all of us can feel like we've found a raft that will serve us well in the flood or like we're barely managing to hang ten on Rimbaud's Bateau Ivre. Either way, we're all in it together with no apparent escape from platitudes.

Gwyneth Paltrow's comeback plans include co-hosting PBS cooking show

Mark Laskowski — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 09:57:05 -0400

Google the hitherto unlikely phrase pairing "Gwyneth Paltrow" and "cooking show" to discover that online entertainment news sites and the celebrity obsessed terrain of blogosphere abound with the news that Gwyneth Paltrow and her pal Mario Batali will be road tripping their way through Spain and its colorful cuisine this October and November for an upcoming PBS cooking show. Details such as who is producing, presenting, etc. are not as easy to find at this point. But stay tuned.

The Ur source for all the various posts about these program plans seems to be an article about Paltrow from the September issue of W magazine that can be read online here. Go to the bottom of the article for the bit about the cooking show.

Chantal Chamandy, your March Drive's Chanteuse?

Mark Laskowski — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:10:36 -0400

A somewhat clunky press release just hit prnewswire.com announcing that Montreal singer-songwriter Chantal Chamandy will give a live concert early next month in Cairo, Egypt. She will perform in front of the pyramids of the Giza plateau and be backed by the Cairo Symphony Orchestra.

The press release states that her performance will be captured on video and "distributed to all the stations of the PBS (Public Broadcast System [sic]) network (sic) in the United States" and that "the show will be available to begin airing in March of 2008." Sounds like a pledge show to me.

Read the full press release here and find out more about Ms. Chamandy here.

This was released by Ninemuse Entertainment and so who knows if the ink on a contract for the show is dry or has even yet to be applied by the party's involved.

When Critical Thinking Risks Job Security . . .

Mark Laskowski — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:39:00 -0400

I was quite taken by a Joel Achenback piece in The Washington Post Sunday, July 1st. You might have to subscribe to the Post's site for that link to be functional.

I'm the kind of guy whose opinions and observations often causes the feeble-hearted to wrinkle up their noses and say, "ooooooh, but that's so negative!" I don't think I'm a naturally negative person. I just often see doubt as a quicker road to truth than belief. So when I encountered a headline kicker in the Post's Outlook section with the headline kicker In Doubt We Trust, no question I'm going to read on . . .

Achenbach's point, in a nutshell, is that in today's national policy making nerve center (Washington D.C.), nothing is a more easy target for scorn than changing one's position, changing one's mind, reflecting on the issue in question in earnest before stating what one believes, etc. Instead our leaders and policy makers are expected to be resolute members of the cult of certainty--ignoring the value of some healthy doubt and reflection

What does this have to do with public media? OK . . . I'm getting to that . . .

The article features a killer eight item list of the key elements of critcal thinking, courtesy of 1990 writings from psychologists Carol Wade and Carol Tavris (who clearly could tour as The Two Carols). I think it's a great blueprint for all public media organizations to bring to their next strategic planning effort, their next budget planning meeting . . . or to just be aware of in general. Here it is:

1) Ask questions; be willing to wonder.
2) Define your problems correctly.
3) Examine the evidence.
4) Analyze assumptions and biases.
5) Avoid emotional reasoning.
6) Don't oversimplify.
7) Consider other interpretations.
8) Tolerate uncertainty.

Immediately after the list, Achenbach offers "This would get you instantly fired from many jobs in Washington." Even if that's true, it would be a stretch to say the same for public media organizations. But are we employing these eight items to our thinking, planning and actions as much as we should?

James Brown Bobble Head Step Aside!

Mark Laskowski — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:19:31 -0400

I don't know whether this constitutes a creative risk or qualifies as an example of why it's so hard for Saturday Night Live to be really funny anymore (i.e. how can you effectively satirize American society when American society is such an effective satire of itself? Think self-cleaning oven).

During All Things Considered this week I heard an announcement that a limited number of Nina Totin' Bags were available at The NPR Shop.

It seems a cutesy (and arguably effective) small scale promotional strategy is the mother of this particular invention. Apparently Ms. Totenberg herself made an appearance on Capitol Hill this spring and NPR reps (knowing as well as any of us do that the way to at least capture the attention of a person's heart and mind is to give them stuff) distributed the limited edition Nina Totin' Bags to folks on the scene. The NPR Shop is currently sold out of the bag after a flurry of enthusiastic response. Whether any one us who would actually want one will able to get one soon remains to be seen. And will any of us who weren't there ever be able to hear Ms. Totenberg's rendition of My Girl?

Visit the May 2nd post of The Hill and scroll down for the details of what I'm talking about.

Will NPR churn out some more of these for member stations to use for premiums? Or is it shaping up to be too big of a hit on The NPR Shop for them to think about it?

We report. You decide.

Consumer vs. Citizen/Customer vs. Constituent

Mark Laskowski — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:39:04 -0400

I had an interesting email conversation with WPBT's Neal Hecker recently, started by my commenting on one of his blogposts in The Public Media Digest.

In a discussion about "audience versus community", I quibbled with Mr. Hecker calling people who use and benefit from public television and radio as "content consumers". My sensitivity comes from long time use of and belief in the "we treat people like citizens, not consumers" message. Mr. Hecker was solidly on the same page and said he was using the term in the most generic sense and only for the purposes of internal communication.

My distaste for "consumer" is related to my obsessive avoidance of the term "customer" in favor of "constituent". When describing the people who use, benefit from and perhaps support public service media, "customer" seems to connotatively trivialize both the public service we provide and the people who seek it. Do we first think of or refer to the people who avail themselves of universities, museums and theaters as "customers" of those institutions?

One risk here is that I invite the perception of indulgence in semantic hair-splitting instead of identification of a core values issue. Even though it was years ago, I still recall one of the CPB Future Fund panelists succinct observation about what he thought was one of public media's biggest, self-imposed obstacles: "I think we're afraid to use the word 'customer'."

Well, I've never been afraid, really, so much as reluctant--for all the reasons outlined above. But recent readings about Peter Drucker's application of the term to the public service sector have me downright comfortable using it. Drucker made the distinction between a nonprofit organization's “primary customers” (those whose lives are changed through the organization’s work) and its “supporting customers” (volunteers, members, partners, funders, referral sources, employees). These new vocabulary tools have enabled me to (hopefully) better articulate something I've always intuitively sensed about public service media.

Since public media's service and fundraising has most typically manifested itself through a mass medium (arguably this is rapidly becoming more our legacy than our destiny) that still has a power of reach exceeding what any museum, library or university could currently hope for, our fundraising messages often miss the opportunity to make the distinction between our primary customers and our supporting customers.

Too often our fundraising messages make us sound like we believe all of our primary customers should also be our supporting customers. In the long run, more emphasis on the service we provide to our primary customers might make us seem more worthy of philanthropy to donors who are motivated by opportunities to change lives. When you consider realities like the tenant of universal access outlined in the Public Broadcasting act (#9), the raison d'etre for Sesame Street's creation and continuation, Ready-to-Learn and a whole host of other national and local service models, there is no shortage of examples.

Would the following message seem out of place in medium rotation during your next on-air fundraising campaign?

You watch/listen to WXYZ's unique, quality programs and we’re gratified that you’ve made that choice. For one reason or another, you may not be in a position to consider giving to WXYZ even at the participatory amount of $XX. If that’s the case, you should know we’re honored to have you as a viewer/listener. One of the fundamental values of public service media is universal access. Anyone with a television/radio can and should benefit from our programming.

If you are, however, in a position to consider giving $XX or more, please know your contribution not only helps pay for the programming that you value and enjoy, but also helps pay for the programming that enriches the lives of people who are less economically fortunate than you. The number to call is . . .

Please steal this idea.