Some continued reporting from AMPPR attendees. Valerie Stains is a freelance producer who spent many years at NPR doing a variety of jobs. She reports on two sessions:
FRED CHILD, host of Performance Today (Air Talent Training)
As he has done for past radio conferences, popular PT host Fred Child had sent out a pre-conference call for sample air checks to be critiqued at his session, “Air Talent Training.” When absolutely nothing arrived before the gathering,
I asked some of the attendees at the AMPPR conference in NYC to write reports for this blog. Here is the first of two installments:
From John Pitman, Music Director at All Classical in Portland OR:
While visiting the facilities of WQXR/WNYC, I felt like I was walking the halls of some vast intergalactic public radio space station: multiple floors, corridors, elevators, seemingly uncountable staff… it was most impressive.
Back in 1992, I spent 3 days in Warsaw, not really thinking much about Poland or Chopin, but intent on wrangling a visa to get into Russia. It wasn’t easy at the time. Warsaw was the back door. Those 3 days turned out to be life-changing for me. Yes, Chopin just happened to be my “desert island” composer, but my focus was a quick transit to Moscow to explore joint-venture opportunities in a newly open, former Soviet Union. Don’t ask. In any event, I was completely caught off guard – Warsaw charmed me.
Remember the 1997 film, Contact directed by Robert Zemeckis? I was reminded of the film upon watching the new series Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking airing on the Discovery Channel. His now already famous quote, “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans” is an early gem from the series. Hawking’s grim yet grounded opinion about what would happen if aliens landed on Earth made me nostalgic for the feel-good, hopeful opinion crafted by Zemeckis into the Jodie Foster film.