What does a city block sound like? Aaron Henkin of WYPR-Baltimore and electronic/hip hop musician Wendel Patrick hit the sidewalk, spending several months documenting the stories, voices, and people who populate the 3300 block of Greenmount Avenue, in Baltimore. We go inside the hair salon, the tattoo parlor, and the check cashing business. We talk to a street preacher and homeless street people. This is a community of different nationalities, ethnicities, and religions; in other words: an All American block.
Both producers are Baltimore-based. Aaron Henkin produced the program for the WYPR series he works on, The Signal. This HV hour also features music from co-producer Wendel Patrick’s 2011 album Forthcoming. His 2007 collection is called Sound:.
If you build it, they will buy… ‘least when “it” is PRX. The org had a great “Q2 2011: Public Radio Exchange,” with wild-ass growth in pieces and purchases, meaning more stories for stations and semolians for producers:
Q2 2011 is our biggest yet, lead by a record number of pieces purchased by stations, 4,363 (35% growth over Q2 2010). Over the coming weeks we’ll be sending out over $70,000 in royalty checks to producers and stations across the country for this quarter’s activity.
Want an interview w/ Jay Thunderbolt, At-Home Strip Club Manager? Well, bring money. If you can’t, bring booze. But not beer: Jay drinks Tequila. And he’ll drink the whole bottle with you in a couple hours, while unleashing The Wisdom of Jay Thunderbolt.
His face looks like that b/c he was shot in the head and left for dead — at 11yo. How much is a dance? “$10 with the g-string on; $20 with it off. No licking, sticking, biting or slapping.”
The piece is a Love + Radio podcast (28min) with some wonderful moments. Jay’s “Things I do know…” is pure poetry, as is the original music score by Brendan Baker — love that “Doberman” mix near the top.
CPB’s Ted Coltman sent some pubcasting audience/contributer figures to the Pubradio maillist. It’s the first time I saw this data so concisely assembled. So, with his permission:
In FY 2009, TV and radio station grantees reported to CPB (on their Annual Financial Reports) a total of 5.6 million individual contributors (either to stations or to their associated “Friends” groups). There is undoubtedly some double-counting of individuals in that number (because some individuals give to more than one station), but CPB has no way of “de-duping” these data.
In validating a rule-of-thumb such as “only about one listener in 10 is a member/contributor,” it makes a big difference whom you count as a “listener” — anyone, for example, who listens at least once a month?… or only someone who listens at least once a week?
Public radio’s weekly cume audience is about 30.6 million persons, so the roughly 2.5 million contributors reported by public radio stations would be about 8 percent of the weekly cume listeners (roughly 1 in 12). Its monthly cume audience is estimated at about 64.7 million persons, so the reported contributors would represent about 4 percent of the monthly cume listeners (about 1 in 25).
Similarly, public television’s weekly cume audience is about 60.4 million persons, so the roughly 3.2 million contributors reported by public TV stations would be about 5 percent of the weekly cume viewers (1 in 20). And public TV’s monthly cume audience is about 121.9 million persons, so the reported contributors would constitute about 2.6 percent of the monthly cume audience (1 in 40).
Of course, the “unit of giving” is often a family or household, and the “units of listening or viewing” I just cited are individual persons (aged 12+ in the case of radio, or 2+ in the case of TV), so these ratios shouldn’t be considered very precise or reliable… but then neither are most “rules of thumb.”
Data sources: CPB’s ISIS database, RRC, Arbitron, PBS Research, Nielsen.
See 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting: The Numbers.
Pasquale Spensieri spends his days driving around Brooklyn looking for dull blades. When he rings the bell on his truck, the owners of upholstery shops, restaurants and pizza parlors come out with knives and scissors to sharpen. Pasquale’s father first started sharpening knives during the Depression, with a pedal-operated grinding machine strapped to his back. At that time, there were hundreds of door-to-door grinders in New York. Today, at the age of 71, Pasquale is one of the last. Produced by Joe Richman and Emily Botein (WNYC) for their series New York Works.
“Walking High Steel” (12:15) Jamie York and the Kitchen Sisters
Since the 1880s, Mohawk Indian ironworkers have been known for their ability to work high steel. From the Empire State Building to the the World Trade Center, generations of Mohawks have helped shape New York City’s skyline. Each week, they commute to Manhattan from their reservation in Canada, framing the city’s skyscrapers and bridges. In September 2001, after the fall of the Trade Center Towers, the sons and nephews of these men returned to the site to dismantle what their elders had helped to build.
A 2-article rundown on distributing pubradio programs, and the $s involved, is published in AIRblast: Part I and Part II. Features lotsa intervus with producers and program directors. Evals who’s buying what for how long and how much. And it’s loaded w/ how-tos, data, and personal perspectives on PRSS and PRX.
Producer Nancy Solomon recently posted her first piece on PRX: “The interface works great; I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was. Their help desk was super helpful and easy to get a hold of. I like the way the page looks; I like the way it’s laid out and the flexibility the format gives you to put both segments and whole pieces up. I was also amazed and pleased at how accessible John Barth was to talk about how best to promote the show.”
So, if a radio piece falls in the PRX forest, will a PD hear the sound? Not always. “Producers putting stuff on PRX is like thousands of crack addicts selling their junk on street corners,” says Charles Lane, producer, WHSU News reporter, and former PRX election curator. “We’re just curious street exhibits with sad eyes hoping programmers might spot our wares, as they race to wherever they’re going.”
But what producers really want to know is: How’s it work? And: How rich will I get?
The producer, at age 2, sings “Silent Night” with her Dad. A woman homesteader remembers brutal North Dakota winters in the 1920s. Blues legend Brownie McGhee describes homemade Christmas presents. Adi Gevins’ father reveals that all New York Santas gain entry through the fire escape. And an Oroville grandfather uses a snow machine to make his plastic Christmas tree even more realistic. Produced for the series A Gathering of Days, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and KQED-San Francisco. Thanks to Adi Gevins, psychiatrist Ray Posie, John Langstaff: creator of Christmas Revels, and the late Peter Allison for the family recordings.
Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news.
—”Katie and Diane: The Wrong Questions” Columbia Journalism Review
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“…aims to examine the feasibility of implementing cargo bikes made of bamboo as a sustainable form of transportation in Africa…
The bicycle is the primary mode of mobility for millions of people throughout many poorer parts of the world. In addition to individual transport, they see a vast number of applications including moving goods to market, the sick to hospital, and even the distributing medicines.
In Africa, very few people can own cars or even motorcycles and people without bicycles have to rely on inadequate and relatively expensive buses…
In this project, we will examine the feasibility of employing native bamboo for the bicycle frames, instead of the expensive and technically demanding carbon fiber material, or even the less expensive but also technically demanding aluminum or chromium-molybdenum steel that is commonly used to build bicycle frames… One key to a sustainable business is that the bamboo grows locally.”
For those who track copyright law, fair use, and the evolution of rights re: appropriated-cultcha and re-creation, check this TED-lecture from Larry Lessig:
No expert has brought as much fresh thinking to the field of contemporary copyright law as has Lawrence Lessig. A Stanford professor and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society, he chairs Creative Commons, a nuanced, free licensing scheme for individual creators.
My friends sent this vid-tour of their bike store, the West Hill Shop in Putney, Vermont. What a place, down-home and damn inviting — makes me wanna pedal cross-country just to go there and buy somethin…
If you’re anywhere near Putney VT, stop in, ask for Jim & Diny Sweitzer: tell ’em HV sent ya.
We present a more realistic approach to spiritual awareness: how updated yogic breathing and stretching exercises might help relieve stress for office worker bees and corporate clones… or not. Audio by author  Rebecca Flowers from an NPR story she produced. Animation by Max Darham. “Office Yoga:”
Hearing Voices from NPR®
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A 2-article rundown on distributing pubradio programs, and the $s involved, is published in AIRblast: 
From CJR, another 
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We present a more realistic approach to spiritual awareness: how updated yogic breathing and stretching exercises might help relieve stress for office worker bees and corporate clones… or not. Audio by author Â