ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

And Now a Word From a Marketer —

Date: 12 Sep 2005 16:09:13 -0400

From: Stefanie Koperniak

To: ascii@textfiles.com

Subject: WGBH Presents “Thinking Big”

Jason,
I just wanted to give you a heads-up about a new one-week science/technology series on WGBH. The week of Oct. 3-7, WGBH presents “Thinking Big,” a one-week television series that features notable men and women from the fields of science and technology. The program is hosted by Lisa Mullins, anchor and senior producer of the international news radio program The World. Guests include Peter Frumhoff, director of the Global Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists; Rebecca MacKinnon of the Harvard Law School Berkman Center; James McLurkin of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; historian of technology Rosalind Williams; and Marc Abrahams, founder of the IgNobel Prize. The program airs at 7-7:30pm on WGBH 2, Monday, Oct. 3 through Fri. Oct. 7. Feel free to contact me with any questions about the show.

Thanks,
Stefanie
—
Stefanie Koperniak
Publicist, Media Relations
WGBH
phone: 617-300-5317
fax: 617-300-1016
stefanie_koperniak@wgbh.org

Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 23:31:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jason Scott
To: Stefanie Koperniak
Cc: ascii@textfiles.com
Subject: Re: WGBH Presents “Thinking Big”

OK! Are you looking for me to blog this, or what? 🙂

Date: 15 Sep 2005 12:43:49 -0400
From: Stefanie Koperniak
To: Jason Scott
Subject: Re: WGBH Presents Thinking Big

Hi Jason,
Yes, if you’d like to include it in your blog, that would be great.
Stefanie

So, why include this whole conversation on this weblog? This is the first time I’ve had any sort of organization specifically target me as a promotional outlet for their information. If they didn’t respond after that, I wouldn’t have put it up, but what the hey, I’m feeling frisky.

It’s interesting how times have changed, where an organization like WGBH would never waste the time/manpower to tell me, with my little viewing audience, about a project, but now apparently it is. That’s something that intrigues me.

Note to any marketer: this will never work again.

Categorised as: Uncategorized

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2 Comments

  1. Anonymous says:
    September 20, 2005 at 10:07 pm

    I especially like the inclusion of the phone numbers.

    Also…when *aren’t* you feeling frisky.
  2. Mungojelly says:
    September 22, 2005 at 9:58 am

    It’s true of course that blogs have a tremendous power of recommendation. I’d check out just about anything you recommended, even if it didn’t seem to interest me at first blush, just because I trust your judgement. But of course you’re not actually recommending that program, and so I’m not impressed at all.

    The TV model has always been weird. It doesn’t accomodate word-of-mouth nearly as well as a video-on-demand model. You can’t say, “Hey, I saw this great show last night; you should check it out.” All you can say is, “Hey, I saw this great show last night; it’s too bad you missed it.”

    That’s just one reason why they’re going to go down. But TV and other preexisting mass media have been mainlined constantly by whole generations of Consumers, so they have the inertia to make sure that they go down very slowly. I subscribe to a couple of NPR podcasts, even though they have a little advertising, just because they already have the radio model down, & dibs on some of the best talent.

    Maintaining the public’s interest in television is going to be an increasingly challenging & frantic activity in the next few years, I predict. I never even noticed when I was growing up how the main product advertised on television is television– the other shows that are on, the next show (please please please stay tuned), the very concept of sitting in front of a TV. That powerful collective trance state is going to start to show cracks, and they’ll have no choice but to come over here to the internet and try to point the way back to TV, to shepherd us poor little lost sheep.

    <3