RE: broadcasters

**"Jeff Ball" j*@starband.net**

Lon,
While maybe others have a brighter vision of the television world for garden
writers, mine is pretty grim.  Television has become very splintered with
the dozens of cable companies significantly reducing the audience for the
four big networks and their affiliates.  Local budgets are incredibly tight.
Few local news broadcasts even have camera persons any more; it is all done
with robots.  If one is lucky enough to convince a local channel to give you
a 3 or 4 minute slot once a week, they are very unlikely to want to pay for
it at all.  Even if the slot brings in new advertisers, which it usually
does, there is little thought about paying talent for a gardening slot.
Most of the folks I knew in the 90's with tv gigs all lost them when the
station came to them and said we can't pay you any longer, do you want to
continue?  Now maybe there is some creative way to get a gig by having the
advertiser pay you instead of the station.  You would have to be real
careful giving a balanced story without giving special attention to the
advertiser, but a sophisticated garden center might understand.  I know of
few companies except Scotts with a national advertising budget for local tv.
And Scotts has their own material to broadcast.  Nancy Szerlag, my partner,
had a weekly gig with a local affiliate for about 3 years; 4 minutes a week;
they would do two or three segments at a time.  She did all the production.
They told her they could no longer pay her, so she stopped doing it.  It's a
lot of work to produce a good 4 minute segment.  I figured that for the 4
minute segments I did on the NBC Today Show for 8 years, I spent almost a
full day talking to companies for props and writing an outline for the
show's producer to review.  Then another part of a day is lost in doing the
shoot. If you do a weekly gig, that's 5 or 6 days a month you lose for other
work.  I was paid well in those days, but today the local affiliate wants
the same quality for no pay.  I don't know if the Today Show has a gardening
slot under contract.  I do know that they get people to come in and do it
for free.
On the other hand, if a garden writer wants to develop some communications
skills in tv and maybe radio, it might be worth it to offer free service for
six months to a year and look at it as a training experience; like going to
school.  The conundrum of course is after someone gets some tv skills there
is little market for them to sell those skills for any reasonable return on
investment of time and expertise.

Nancy and I were approached a few weeks ago by a PR firm looking to find
some talent to use in packaging a proposal to a local affiliate.  It was
clear to me that the PR person had no clue about the history of gardening
slots on local television.  She thought that she could just walk in and show
she had a good segment and it would be accepted.  Maybe in 1990; but not
today.  We'll sit back a wait.
The other hard reality to address is that most writers can't do television.
It is a very small percentage of professional writers who can "walk and
talk" in front of a camera and not look silly.  I started out doing weekly
segments for our local community channel in our town.  It was a great
opportunity to get some real valuable experience while I made a fool of
myself from time to time.  It didn't matter since I was not paid, and only
five people watched the show; nevertheless, if anyone has aspirations for
becoming a television talent, they need to get some experience in front of a
camera somehow to find out if in fact they might be able to do it.
Sorry to be so negative.  Hopefully, I am so far out of the picture I don't
know about lots of great opportunities out there that other members of this
list can offer.
Later,
Jeff Ball

-----Original Message-----
From: gardenwriters-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[g*@lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Lon J. Rombough
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2003 1:53 PM
To: GWL
Subject: [GWL] broadcasters

   Do we have any members who do regular t.v. shows?  That's an area that
has been discussed very little on the list.  Things like how to write and
sell scripts.  Where and how to get shows produced, etc.  Something on the
ins and outs of the process.   At very least, there have to be some good
stories out there.  As well as some sites, books, etc. that tell how to do
it.
-Lon Rombough
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For GWL website and Wiki, go to
http://www.ibiblio.org/gardenwriters