I arrived home late Monday afternoon and so have had about 72 hours to the time of publication of this post to switch back to British Summer Time and the chill British spring. It's not so much the difference in temperatures (up into the 90s for a couple of days in Las Vegas, although a perfect mid-70s when I left and I suppose mid-50s today) that I notice so much; it's the chill, damp air of England in comparison with the Nevada desert. Las Vegas claims to have sunshine 361 days a year, whereas here it sometimes seems like the same number of days of rain. Still, we don't have to import all our water from miles away I suppose and even compared with southern Europe I always notice with delight the wonderful greenery of the countryside here -- and, indeed, the different shades of green. Anyway, enough with ramblings on climate and soil!
Before I talk more about the Convention/Festival, a quick note about a visit to public radio station KNPR in the outskirts of Las Vegas, kindly arranged by Andrew David of University of Lincoln and community radio station Siren FM. A well-equipped, well-managed service, with diverse output, including chunks of the BBC World Service. Well-resourced, too: budget of around $4.5 million, only $300,000 or so of which comes form the national body – the rest raised themselves. They have two big fund-raising events a year; the usual spring one delayed this year because of an extra campaign for people to pledge time to volunteer on various projects. The Director of Programming, Dave Becker, and President/Station Manager Flo' Rogers – who has spent some time in radio in the UK, so there was a lot o: "oh, do you know?..." and had a poster of the famous 1970 Isle of Wight Festival in her office – were very generous with their time; a return visit is a cert. I heard them both on-air early on Saturday morning. One of the lovely things about such stations is that everyone gets stuck in. In fact, there are two services; one primarily news and talk, the other classical music. Both are, as you might expect, in sharp contrast to the vast bulk of the other, commercial stations in the area, in both tone and content. They are allowed to run sponsorship-type messages but must be informational, rather than making claims for the product or service. An important distinction.
This being Vegas, even the radio station receiver in the foyer is in the form of a slot machine.
As usual, as soon as the Broadcast Education Association conference and festival got under way I was too mad busy to even do any "tweats", let alone a blog post, so this is, as it were, recollected in tranquillity. To give you an example of how it goes, Friday ran like this:
0800 Working/networking' breakfast
0900 First session: a team to choose from; I selected (and as chair of the International Division felt I should support) one called International Production Collaborations: Learning Across Borders - a fascinating session about production and student exchanges and how they learn from each other, between the USA, Mexico and South Korea.
1030 - The first of two panels in which I'm making presentations. This is one that I was asked, or offered, to join (I can't honestly remember which way round it happened) called Radio's Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated. I was with scholars from San Francisco, as well as the imitable Valerie Geller, who has trained broadcasters and producers in news and general programmes in the USA and UK (including BBC networks) and many other places. My paper presentation was about how the BBC had more than maintained its radio audience share, despite greatly increased commercial competition, and the survival of public service values in British broadcasting. I included some audio and there were the inevitable technical worries but the superb team of technical assistance helped everyone set up in my little Netbook worked a treat. Best of all was the very gratifyingly large audience, which I'm sure had nothing to do with my 'billing' but was still enormously encouraging; it was literally standing room only and indeed people hanging off the walls. We kept the presentations short to allow time for the respondent from Furman University to round things up and to draw comparisons and contrasts between the presentations and even still time for a couple of questions. A young professor came up afterwards and asked to copy of my paper/presentation, which in fact I sent him today after his 'prompt' e-mail. It is obviously gratifying to receive interest and one of the great things about such conventions is of course the bringing together people with mutual interests.
1200 The international juried paper competition presentations. This is when the scholars with first and second placed papers in both the opening and debut sections present a summary of their research and then receive verbal feedback (they already have written feedback) from the paper jury. The Division has some small financial prizes and I been given the checks the previous day at the pre-convention division leaders' breakfast (yes, everything is a working breakfast on these occasions). However, it was agreed that we would, as in previous years, make the actual cheque presentations at the next session:
1330 International Division meeting. This is where I chair the meeting and we had some formal and informal business to do. My main concern is to increase communication and co-operation between scholars in the division, and in particular encourage young scholars from the developing world. It went well and we did manage to make the cheque presentations, apart from one scholar who has gone back home to Darfur. The precedent of the BEA had already 'lunched' me (on Monday) during the RTNDA, to outline what is to anyone else quite a boring development, but quite interesting if you're involved in the Division and the organisation- that is, to create a new geographical division, as well as interest division. As I say, this is rather boring and technical, so will skip the details, but it essentially means we will have another representative at the main BEA board representing all non-US countries, although it transpired at the post-convention chairs' meeting on Saturday afternoon that, at the moment, Canada would prefer to stay with the USA. So be it!
1500. Presenting a paper at the panels that I proposed and we have scholars from three continents represented -- one USA, one Canadian, one New Zealand and myself. The title of the panel is Integrity versus Good Radio, which I thought fitted well in with the 'spotlight theme' as it is called in the Convention overall, of "ethics and …"). My presentation looked at the various scandals involving the BBC, especially on radio and including of course Russell Brand affair. Ironically, it was the USA delegate who was late arriving, due to a combination of medical and family reasons, but he gave an excellent presentation and I was pleased with the way it all went -- again, some technical issues were overcome thanks to good friends at the Convention Centre and the audience was certainly a lot less than in the morning but that's the way it goes. As you may have noticed, there is no lunch on this day of the conference and I had sessions anyway over the normal lunchtime period. Fortunately, Deborah Wilson from Lincoln University – who was responsible for me going to the BEA in the first place four years ago, after she encouraged me to become part of a panel proposal - had half a sandwich to offer me just before the second panel which I gratefully accepted; supplementing my usual emergency rations of a packet fruit and nuts, and a banana!
After all that I thought that I had earned the right to skip the last of the formal sessions for the day, prior to the evening presentations to the BEA Media Festival winners and dashed back to the hotel to dump my bags and change. Debbie and her partner Andrew ("the voice of the East Midlands"!) rang to say it would be a good idea if they came to my hotel, as it is much near the convention centres than theirs, to dump their bags and then we go off to the evening to join two Kiwi friends, one of whom,, Brian, who was on my panel and 'pushed' me to go for nomination to succeed him as Vice-Chair/ Chair of the International Division (I have been very fortunate to have such great supporters). Before that, we had a couple of margaritas at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville -- our favourite watering hole (see blogs and pod's passim).
I think it fair to say we were therefore in quite a 'relaxed state' when we sauntered down The Strip to the Paris complex join our friends at an excellent 'eat as much as you want' (supposedly) French buffet. The inside of these complexes is absolutely amazing -- the lighting and effects make it seem as if you are actually in a street in -- in this case obviously Paris -- with the light in the sky changing and clouds moving across. Due to the brilliant use of perspective most of the time the sky looks as high as - well, the sky - and it's only when you see an odd bit where the light and shadow is not so well placed. or when you see that it's actually running at the top of some street furniture that in fact it is not as it appears.
There is a full morning of sessions on Saturday. indeed until 1330, when there is a post-conference chairs' division meeting, in which I have to give feedback on how things have gone in the perspective of "my" division and of course to hear and discuss others' viewpoints and any other vital information regarding next year. As the panel proposals have to be in mid August it is pretty much a 12 month cycle anyway.
My choice of which sessions to attend is dictated by three main considerations: those that I must attend (including those, obviously, that I am involved in as chair or panellists); those that I should attend (perhaps to support colleagues or because they involve my division) and those that I want to attend. The first take up most of the sessions on Thursday and Friday but on Saturday I managed to attend a session which is not directly related to my work or research but one which I always attend - on radio history, which was fabulous.
Anyhow, the day began with a slight and unexpected disruption to my plans as I arrived at the Monorail only to find it not be operating for a couple of hours due to 'technical reasons'. I have never known this happen -- the Monorail is usually as reliable as Swiss railways in my experience but in fact there had been some problems earlier in the week although they hadn't affected the times that I was using it, and someone whom I mentioned a previous blog post, who had been to 'Vegas two months ago, said it hadn't run for the entire week she was there! Anyhow, there were two students behind me when I got to the station and when I gave them the bad news they looked aghast. I said "don't worry -- it's not far we can get a taxi – I'll pay". So we went back through the hotel to the taxi rank and got one straight away and arrived at the Convention Centre in time. Even though I had offered to pay they had given the driver five dollars as their contribution which I thought was very sweet and of course I gave it back to them. They were extraordinary grateful: "we don't know what we have done otherwise -- we didn't have a plan B" said the girl. They are nice kids, just about to graduate and not sure about jobs. The girls is studying journalism but as there were few journalism jobs she had already worked out that she may have to do something else -- she a DJ on the college radio station and said she was going to go for that kind of a job if needs be. Of course, due to the proliferation of voice- tracking and the lack of the old-style tryout slots overnight, even that may be quite tough. I feel for them all -- it is a tough time to be going into the business and perhaps an even tougher one to survive in it.
OK, well I am over 2,000 words now so I'll stop even though there is much more I'd like to put down. More photo's and videos on my Facebook page, plus a Podcast on my, erm, Podcast site.
I'll probably just get over the 'red eyed flight' and the time difference for Sunday … when I have to be up at 0500, as yesterday I was booked to guest on the Sunday breakfast show on City Talk. I am SUCH a media tart!
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