Best ATC ever.

That was a HOOT!

Showed up around eleven. Puttered around the newsroom, accomplishing painfully little, and wandered back and forth a few dozen times between the control room and the phone room as needed, mostly ferrying papers. Helped Spencer Beckwith line up a phone interview for Performance New Mexico in the newsboth at one point 'cause Studio C was all discombobulated for reasons I never bothered to ask. (I assume, at this point, that when the Station Engineer is on his hands and knees beneath the console with a drill in one hand and a thousand wires in the other that we're simply having "technical difficulties", and that asking him "whatcha doin'?" is among the least helpful things on the face of the earth I could possibly do, even if I do wonder.)

Stuck around some more, drank too much coffee, had more than my share of volunteer food, and did some more editing on Barsamian's speech 'til I was totally worn out by his voice and just didn't know what else to cut. Got it down to under an hour with all the careful shaves that I could manage and am ready to hack out a big old chunk somewhere -- not sure where exactly -- but I've got several options. Probably will be some supporting examples and a few anecdotes. I approached it kinda "backwards" -- the expendable hundredths and tenths of seconds are gone, and now I've got to start hacking seconds and maybe even a few minutes. The most important thing to preserve is the overall message of his talk, and I have no doubt I can do that now -- I've heard the whole thing at least six times, end-to-end. I don't know how he does what he does on Alternative Radio -- I respect it completely, but that long-form kind of job takes a whole different *kind* of concentration.

By 4 PM I was completely, totally exhausted. "Why am I doing this?" I would ask myself. Basically because nobody asked me to leave, and there was nothing else better that I knew I could be doing right then. That, plus the fact was just kind of quietly hovering in the back of my brain that after this was over I'd be free to come and go and cover stories and host drivetime news more or less as I please.

At five Jim and Elaine and Linda and I all head into the control room for the final push "All Things Considered" (ATC) pledge drive. Same old story. I can't speak for them, but I for one am weary and tired and just want the week to be over. People have been coming and going all week and everything from "I'm here to get a cup of coffee" to "we've got a different system to tally pledges" takes negotiation. I'm pooped! Then Elaine says "STANDBY", we put on our headphones, mics get faded up. The control room goes silent, and the silence is heavy and thick.

We all seem to become different people. Again, I am possessed by a deep enthusiasm that I *must* communicate, and *urgently*, because tomorrow *will* just be too late! Tomorrow, the phone room will be disassembled and turned back into the calm and stately conference room it usually is. (It's not really "stately", but I like the sound of "calm and stately".) We've only got two hours to finally convince anyone holding out that this is their last chance to pledge for the next several months, and *if* they love the news, even enough to sit through us bantering back and forth trying to get them to pledge money, they *need* to call this number *now*. They need to understand, they *are* the reason we are there. By this point in the week everyone's worked the scripts to death. Everything has been said that *can* be said. The talking points are talked to death, and we've got nothing else to do but speak from the heart and try to get people to call and pledge. Right now. Please. Thank you for that call. Here's the number.

We whip ourselves into a crazy, happy froth. Normally pitches are politely laid-back. Casual. Conversational. The person talking will indicate through eye contact and gentle points who's getting handed off to next. The board op will make any number of gestures (the best are gentle "wrap it up" motions, typically at thirty and ten 'til the join, unlike the "frantic decapitation" gestures I found myself making on Sunday, since that was my first time mixing people live. I know that now! It's a wonder Steve and Tristan didn't decapitate *me*, after that!) With minutes ticking down, tonight, we start just volunteering to say things every time someone else says something that reminds us of something important, raising hands in the air, pointing at ourselves, jumping up and down in our seats like enthusiastic kindergarteners, and even just plain jumping in to say whatever comes to mind. It's a free for all, but it's *totally* fun, and it comes through over the air. Elaine's mixing five mics (including the one in the phone room) and a music bed live.

Mary B comes on to pitch the tote bag and gets my attention on it. Avery, the kid who was the "runner" between phone room and control room comes on air at the very end. It was an eerie flashback for me -- my mother just these last few weeks showed me a photograph of me at his age being interviewed on a KCOS (El Paso's PBS station) fund drive. We wind up bleeding over into Salsa Sabrosa because we're so painfuly close to our goal for the show. Wellington Guzman be praised, he let us finish "clean".

Then back to the phone room. There are ten phones in it. They ring in order -- first #1, then #2, and so on, all around the room. We had them all ringing much of the time. Of course it wasn't just us in the control room, it's also the volunteers answering the phones, and the runner bringing us tallies and yellow sheets with names of people to thank, and all the staff coordinating *everything* that you don't hear on air. And of course all the people at NPR putting together the show that people are tuned in for in the first place.

Every station does "goals" for pledge drives differently -- if memory serves me right, KCRW used to set goals in dollar amounts. At our station we do it by number of pledges, with no reference on air to dollar amounts. I don't know exactly why we do it that way, but that's the way it's been done for as long as anyone remembers, and for us, it seems to work.

Mary Oishi was bold this time around -- she set "goals" for each show a percentage higher than what we achieved in the spring. Systematic and fair: the percentage was the same for every show, whether the "baseline" from the spring was two calls or a hundred. It worked undeniable magic for a *lot* of shows. But I think, with tonight's ATC, we just hit the wall of what was physically possible to take in terms of number of calls. Friday drivetime is *always* the busiest time. She's done a fine job of scheduling drawings and such so more people call sooner in the pledge drive, but it seems lots of people still put it off 'til the last possible minute.

If we'd had twenty phones instead of ten, I think we might well have exceeded the goal. As far as I can tell it's just a physical limitation. Is it worth rewiring the entire building? Do we even *have* a space for backup pledge-takers? I honestly do not think so. I'm not complaining -- I just think we did about what we could do tonight, with what we've got to work with.

Here's how I understand it -- I'm sure someone with some math skills could explain it better, but this is how I see it. It typically takes 3-4 minutes to take a single pledge. Less if we're taking just the bare essentials ("I'm driving but here's my name and number, I'm pledging this amount, call me later if you have any questions!!! I've got to merge but just had to show my support for this show!!! There's a cop behind me!!! Bye!!!"); more if we're getting into comments and details ("well, I *did* prefer when you had that show on in this time slot, I mean, I still listen to it when I can, but it worked better for me back then, and why *did* they reschedule it? Oh, I see. But if you'll pass the word on, I *would* appreciate it. And by the way, there's this *amazing* talk show out of Minneapolis that I hope your program director will listen to sometime . . .").

That means it's *usually* 3-4 minutes before phone #1 (or #2, or another low-numbered phone) is free to take another call. If it takes that long for the circle of phones to "ring around", that's fine, because it means the last caller's getting picked up on about as the first is getting thanked one final time. But if -- and this *isn't* a physical problem -- this is human nature -- everyone puts off pledging until the last day of the drive, and all the phones fill up in under two minutes, well -- yikes.

We're still on air pitching the number to call and people calling in are getting busy signals and even calling the control room to say that they can't get through. At that point, too, it gets confusing 'cause based on what we hear in the control room, we don't hear phones ringing, we just hear talking. Does that mean that no one's calling, or that there are no free phones and all the talking that we hear is volunteers taking pledges? Should we pitch *harder*, or calm down, talk slower, and ask people to try again?

I'm not saying this to snipe at anyone. I just seriously wonder enough to ask these things as rhetorical questions. In a *perfect* world the control room and the phone room would always be on the same page -- and here it seems the public TV stations have a natural advantage over us, 'cause viewers can *see* when *all* the phone volunteers are on the line, and so can the hosts. But in radio, the considerations are -- well -- different. Both the control room and the phone room get crowded during pledge drives. And we can't have all that "noise" in the control room, to begin with. And even if we could, we couldn't have the control room and the phone room any closer, just because of how the building we are in is laid out. What's the solution? I honestly don't know.

I'll spare you the off-mic control room banter, except for one brief exchange between Elaine, Jim, and myself:

Jim: So you're killing the handoff.
Elaine: Yeah. I want to do a short weather.
Jim: How short?
Elaine: Really Short.
Me [mock "radio voice"]: It's seventeen degrees -- somewhere!
Jim [mock "radio voice"]: It may rain! Or -- it may not!

He *still* beat me by a syllable.

Ah well. I'll learn. ;^)