Posts Tagged ‘Pledge Drive’
Kill Your Darlings
A programming genius I know is helping me crunch data that I’ve been collecting for this book I’m writing about the public radio pledge drive. The plan is that tranche A, after it’s washed and tumble dried, will be a template for tranche B; using one as a control for the other to find patterns that aren’t obvious.
I know a little about spreadsheets, and that’s how I gave my programmer friend the data I’d gathered. But they weren’t exactly in love with it. “You need to reformat this”, they said. “Otherwise, I need to write a whole language subset (whatever that means) before you can see this data the way you want to see it.” In other words, they didn’t like my spreadsheet.
I like to think I’m a smart person. I like to think I’ve been around enough to know a little about a lot, but that little bit I know is really good. Turns out, spreadsheets are high school level data collection to graduate level people writing programming in languages like Perl. So, here I am, reformatting my spreadsheet in a way that my programming friend’s program can better search it, parce it, slice and dice it.
And you know, their way is better.
There isn’t as much ambiguity. There’s much more consistency. And I’m finding mistakes, not in the original data, but how I notated it. It’s like when writers are taught to read their copy backwards as a way to catch mistakes because reading it forward makes it too easy to miss them. Rearranging my twenty columns into their three is a brutal exercise in utility. But it’s exactly the kind of brute force utilitarianism that a programming language needs to create elegant results.
“Kill your darlings” is what editors tell writers too in love with what they’re written.
I can tell you, programmers are even worse.
The Batphone is Red
That’s the first thought that hit my brain when I saw the preliminary artwork for my book from the terrific graphic artist who created it. Ren (short for Karen) and I worked on the front and back cover for no more than a week after the phone cover art was finished. But we haggled for months over that cover art, which we both knew would have to be definitive and signature.
I wanted something boring. I just didn’t know it was boring. I knew I wanted a phone on the cover, since what better exemplifies a public radio pledge drive than a phone? But I wanted a generic, black, 1950ish version. And I wanted it on a white cover because I thought it would draw the viewers eye..
Ren liked the basic idea. “I can work with that”, she told me. But it was by no means a finished idea. For weeks, we went back and forth about design. She developed a version of the phone that was more stylized and interesting than what I was thinking. Big body, big dial, big handset. You hear pledge drive phones during pitch breaks because the ring is supposed to conjure up in your mind the icon of telephone – a thing that equals the noise it makes and the attention it garners. Think Peter Sellers as the US President in “Dr Strangelove” pleading with his Russian counterpart on a big clunky phone that the bomb heading his way isn’t intentional. It wouldn’t do to have Androids vibrating on tabletops as the sound that you’re supposed to associate with the dynamism of giving.
Likewise, Ren felt the image needed to draw on that association to power and formality but at the same time, not be that. So when she completed my black phone on a white cover, I was thrilled. She, not so much. “White covers are death”, she said. “But I love it” I whined, even as I felt I had already lost the argument.
I mumbled something about white space, but Ren pressed on. “I’m sending you a variation I’ve been playing with”, she said. “Keep an open mind”. Her variation was a halting fire engine red phone on a black background. I stared at it, not wanting to be that guy who couldn’t swallow ideas not his own. “Waddya think?”
I deferred. It was attention getting. Still, I clung to my boring black and white version. “Well, since we’re experimenting, can you give me some color combinations for the phone and the covers?” She did, handily, as if to say, “You know this design is the best one. Just admit it.”
And, she was right. The more I looked at it, the more it grabbed my attention. It made me think of urgency. It made me think of the pressure to reach a goal by a deadline. It made me think of disappointment and defeat if the goal is missed and the crime of the consequences that could follow. And it made me think of valiant efforts to not let that happen by public radio crusaders.
Caped crusaders.
P.S. To learn more about the coming book, visit @pledgethebook & http://www.pledgethebook.com. To see more work from Karen Green, visit https://rengreen.wordpress.com/ and linkedin page? https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-green-102579b9
Bye Bye Q
It is interesting that John Sepulvado of OPB, who was one of two fund drive pitchers for OPB’s one-day, end of year drive early this week, talked up the interviews of “Q”, the Canadian radio variety program that was airing at the same time. But OPB is dropping Q as of January 4, 2016. And nowhere in any of the pitches during that hour of Q was that mentioned. Also, nowhere in any of the announcements from OPB that “All Things Considered” is moving from 4 p.m. to 3 p.m. PST was it said that as PRI’s “The World” moves from 3 p.m. to 2 p.m., that Q is disappearing completely. They have been announcing the coming change for about two weeks.
It’s reasonable for Q’s loyal listeners to think that if ATC is moving, and PRI is moving, Q must also be moving. Why not just say it’s not?
They will no doubt meet the disappearance with first, confusion. Then anger and then, possibly, resignation. But I wonder what kind of explanation they will get. They may never know why Q has gone away. That public radio stations regularly do this is not unusual but it is, at the very least, insensitive to the people who support their favorite programs as a demonstration of trust in the stations which air them. They deserve more than that.
The omission of the future of Q shows how public radio is so afraid of criticism that it talks up the positive while avoiding anything that could possibly stir up bad feelings from listeners and jeopardize future giving. This is an example of much I’ve read about the need for greater transparency in public radio. I mean, if an opportunity to say something so logically obvious and appropriate was so purposely avoided, listeners might reasonably wonder what else isn’t being told especially when openness is the supposed currency of public radio.