Disruptive Conversations

As listeners to FIR #542 on Monday, April 12th, have already heard, there are a number of changes happening to the "For Immediate Release" podcast hosted by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson and to which I have been a "weekly correspondent" for now most of 5 years.

The largest change is, of course, moving from "twice weekly" to simply "weekly" and dropping the Thursday show. For reasons Shel and Neville explain, they really had to do this because of their schedules. Personally, I've been absolutely amazed that they have been able to keep the twice-weekly format going for as long as they have - and so the change wasn't a big surprise.

So what does this change mean for me and the weekly reports I've been sending in since 2005 for the Thursday show?

On one level... not much. I'm still sending in reports... just now for the Monday show. There are, though, some tweaks you'll hear to tighten up the show a bit given that ALL correspondent reports will now be in the single show. These include:

• The RadioDaddy intro to my segments has been dropped ("From the serene and picturesque hills...")
  
  
• My reports will no longer have the intro/outro music. (MANY thanks to FIR listener and composer Joseph Fosco who gave me that music to use many years ago!)
  
  
• My reports will not appear at the beginning as they have in recent times but will rather be simply mixed in with all the other news items and other correspondent reports.
  
  
• I'll be sticking to a hard limit of 5 minutes for each report. (In the past they've ranged but typically have been 5-8 minutes.)

I don't have an issue with any of the changes. I actually really don't mind the RadioDaddy intro going away - I've gotten kind of tired of being labeled as "from the technologist's point-of-view" given that these days most of my time is spent much more in a pure communications/PR/marketing viewpoint (admittedly, though, I'll always be a "technologist" at heart). Like I said, I'm surprised Shel & Neville kept going with the twice-weekly format as long as they did.

The big challenge for me is just going to be to remember to send in my reports on Monday! That will take some getting used to...

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