Popped Culture

While home this past summer, I spent some time at my favourite campus/community radio station, CKDU. On more than one occasion, I happened upon meetings for the CKDU Pop Culture Collective. I could tell that something exctiting was brewing. And for the past few weeks, I've been enjoying the fruits of the collective's labour: Popped Culture. Hosted by a cast of CKDU celebs, each half-hour episode is an examination of "all things pop and culture - movies and television, music and videogames, books and magazines and everything else that has an impact on popular - and unpopular - culture." It's a blast. So far, I've listened to programs on Jonathan Torrens, J-Pop, Jem and the Holograms, and tonight, the Surveillance Camera Players. I've set my copy of Audio Hijack to record CKDU's live stream each and every week at 5:30 ADT. "But Dan," you say, "I don't live in Halifax, and I don't have any fancy stream-recording software." No fear friends! The miraculous Stephen Kelly has set up an MP3 archive of recent CKDU programming. You can stream or download Popped Culture (plus many other quality programs) at http://ckdu.dal.ca. For instance, here's a link to the episode I listened to tonight. The CKDU Popped Culture Collective -- is it any wonder Troy Richter called it his "new favourite posse in the world"?

The Future of Radio

From NPR's Day to Day, a report on "two new products for radio listeners" -- portable satellite radio and podcasting. You can listen to it here.

Staying up late listening to radio

Up way too late tonight. Listened to Invisible Ink Radio #67: Subservience, the latest Listening Lounge, and both hour one and hour two of October 23rd's Weekend America. The last three, plus a heads up that both the Listening Lounge and Weekend America are looking for pitches, came via Tod Maffin's I Love Radio.org. Thanks Tod.

Outfront

Poking around the Outfront website, I came across their Pitch section. I remember looking at this section sometime last year, but I don't remember seeing all this. It's got helpful hints, a guide to the pitching process, and some basic recording techniques. The material seems to be culled mostly from their old Tell section.

Conflict of Interest

Phoned Joe Mahoney and Stuart Einer at the CBC today to set up meetings. Voicemail on both counts. Why? Because I'm in class during the ideal times to call. For the past two days, I haven't been able to get that last 1/2 hour of tape reviewed for the Sean Ward piece, because I've been working on my MIDI assignment and Ian McGettigan record analysis for Audio Theory class. I haven't been in touch with my producer at Metro Morning since he initially gave me the thumbs up, because I really don't have anything to show him at this point, aside from a lot of tape and several pages of notes on canary yellow paper (not unlike this). I need to hurry up and finish my notes and write a script. Then I'll have a reason to call again, other than to say, "Recording went well. Got some great stuff." But to do all of this, I need time. Which schoolwork isn't affording me right now. I'm worried this thing is dragging on, and I don't want Mr. Producer to forget about me. To that end on the polka front, I emailed Nick Purdon to let him know I haven't fallen off the edge of the earth. Don't get me wrong. I like my classes. For the most part, they're interesting and enjoyable, and I usually feel like I'm learning something. It's cool that I get to program MIDI, and listen to records and research podcasting and call it all "homework." I like school. But it just seems like lately it's been getting in the way of the real world. Useful link of the day: Pitches that Work Less useful (but maybe more entertaining) link of the day: Mario LeCraig is selling out

Lists! Lists! Lists!

Progress:

• Only an hour of tape left to make notes on for the Sean Ward piece
• Got some halfway decent Silver Snail tape
• Heard back from Brian from the polka band. He thinks the idea is "a blast," and I'm tentatively scheduled to sit in on a polka jam in early November
• Lost a Polka Dot Door contact; will have to find another
• Gary Gould's CBC friend Joe Mahoney returned my email. Will call him tomorrow to arrange for a coffee meeting.
• I will be job shadowing CBL's Geoff Ellwand sometime soon
• I will be having coffee with Joe Cummings this coming Tuesday

To do:

• Contact someone from 680 re: job shadowing
• Start/finish this McGettigan paper
• Get my Hey Jude MIDI assignment done

Exciting product accouncements:

• XM Radio's MyFi: "wearable" satellite radio with HDD for recording
• Apple's iPod Photo: still no decent recording capabilities. Plus, Canadian ITMS by early November.

Error 404

Was looking through some old bookmarks and came across a link to the CBC Freelancer's FAQ, which I remembered as a nice little resource. But for some reason, they took it offline. Probably because most of the contact names and phone numbers listed are out-of-date. Nevertheless, there's some good info, and through the miracle of the Wayback machine, you can still view it here.

More Sawatsky on interviewing

American Journalism Review:

Leave the values out, he says, and problems solve themselves. Instead of asking Sarah Ferguson, for example, 'Is it hard being a duchess?' ask: 'What's it like being a duchess?' Instead of asking Ronald Reagan, 'Were you scared when you were shot?' ask: 'What's it like to be shot?'

The Way We Ask

An interesting article from Poynter.org. John Sawatsky, whose "off the shelf" questions came up in conversation over the weekend, is discussed. Apparently Sawatsky has been working for years on a book about interviewing. If it ever comes out, I'd love to read it. I know he did training seminars with the CBC. Maybe he'll do lectures at their new Canadian Institute for Training in Public Broadcasting

Things I should do

Monday is my day off. Last night, I started to make notes on my Sean Ward tape, listening to the stuff I collected when I spent the afternoon with him as he sold his comic books on Queen Street. Today, the plan is to listen to the two hours I recorded in his his studio, and make a couple more pages of notes. I'm also going to call the Silver Snail to see if someone will talk to me about "how to become a successful comic book artist." I should also call Richard, my polka music guy. I should also start my BRD303 paper. I'm comparing two CDs recorded by Ian McGettigan: Rick of the Skins' Here Comes the Weekend and Plaskett's Truthfully, Truthfully. According to their answering machine, Ian is living in Toronto with Rob Benvie. He was nice enough to do a phone interview with me last week, so I'll have a shiny interview disc to hand in with my paper. Now I just have to write the thing. Gary Gould from the Ryerson Journalism school gave me the name of a friend of his at CBC Radio. I should email him. And set up lunch with Gary. Got a call on Friday afternoon from The Arts Report's Joe Cummings. Returned his call this morning, left voicemail. Lots of things on the go.

Starting a new blog. A radio blog.

So I’ve started a new blog. Starting is always the hardest part. Posts, I suppose, will fall into one of three main categories.

1. What I’m listening to
2. What I’m working on
3. How the hell I’m going to get work once I graduate

This first entry fits under #2. Consider it a backgrounder. I am working on two projects for the CBC. Hooray! One is for Metro Morning: a profile piece about Sean Ward, an autobiographical comic book artist who sells his work on Queen Street. I’ve got all my tape dubbed. I have about three and a half hours, which has to be boiled down to maybe five minutes. I don’t think I’ll be transcribing everything. At this point, I just need to find the time to listen back, write a script, and get it vetted. Piece of cake. Another is for DNTO: a little feature about what I’ve been calling “trend piggybacking.” Basically, I’m going to go out and figure out what polka dots have to do with polka music. I already know the answer, but the fun is in the finding. I’ve heard back from folks at the Polka Dot Door, a polka band, and I have the numbers for a couple textile/fashion people from school. Progress reports to follow.