Adventures in TV Land

Okay, I'm officially neglecting this blog.

Stuff happens at the tv station every day, I'm just generally so caught up in the moment that I forget to look back on the situation and laugh. And what good is working without laughing at my job? No fun in that.

I've mentioned before that our station features several weekly series, that play on the same days at the same times; just like real tv... only of a public access persuasion. Every six months we have what is called "series renewal". This is the time when I look over our current series and see if producers have met their minimum requirements to maintain a series spot, find out if anyone would like to change the times for their series, and encourage people to begin new series.

Most of our series have been on the channel for several years, and have gone through this every 6 months all along. It still never fails that only a small percentage of our producers manage to 1)know what's going on when they get a letter from me; 2) manage to respond to it in a timely manner 3) dont need any further assistance.

I think the letter I send out is pretty straight forward, it states why I'm sending a letter, covers what the minimum requirements for a series are, and then tells them whether or not they have met them. I give directions on what to do if they would like to continue their series both if they have met the requirements and if they have not. I include all necessary forms in the envelope. I include a deadline.

In the past I'll give people a couple of weeks to bring back the forms, hoping to keep things convenient... I averaged about one fifth of forms returned by the deadline, and about a quarter to a third of them turned in before I started calling and asking people to fill out the forms.

About half of the producers also give back my letter with the forms. I have no explanation for why people think this is logical. When responding to mail do you generally include the original message with your response? I would think this would make having a pen pal rather taxing as far as postage goes.... but when people get mail from me, some of them like to return it.

I then spend about two months getting the rest of the producers to fill out the paper work. Technically I can just stop running their series, but who does that help? so I cal and call and call and call and eventually they respond and act as if it's all news to them, why have I started this new policy?

So this time I tried a new tactic: send them the letter, but only give them a few days for the deadline. That way they have no room for procrastination! It did work better, I got a much better return rate than on any previous series renewal. It's only a week and 3 days since the deadline and I have about half of the forms! A whole 50%! Too bad that's still an F. Maybe I can grade myself on a curve...