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IN THIS EDITION:
As I write this, Field Day was only 3 days ago and the emails and reports are still coming in, but it definitely appears that FD was a major PR success thanks to the work of the PIOs. Dependent on how you enter the search information, Google News alerts is showing 258 hits for the month under the word “field” plus either “ham radio” or “amateur radio”. If I take out the word “field,” as a condition, then I get 550 news hits for the month. (As a fast comparison, the Katrina event was 1000+ hits.) So, all in all, Field Day has been quite successful and (unless you lived on the East coast) we did not need major rains to do it! In addition, I have noted a LOT more television spots in the coverage. This upswing in TV news coverage is possibly due to (a) a slow news weekend and (b) Katrina memories, but for whatever cause, it is gratifying to see.
With all this
good TV news coverage, an opportunity arises! Bill Pasternak, WA6ITF,
requests, “ Please contact those
stations and request a "font free" copy of the "package"
(story) that they aired -- along with a release stating that the video/audio
may be re-used by the ARRL in documentary or promotional presentations about
the hobby. The preferable tape format would be Betacam SP albeit DVD
would also be OK. Then send it to me at my CBA and Ill catalog it and
send a list of what we have to Allen at HQ.
Please DO NOT send off-air copies with station logs, bugs and fonts. This
is totally useless for re-use as there is almost no way to remove said
"bugs" and "fonts." In fact, the raw, unedited camera
footage is better than the edited version as a lot of good pictures are lost in
the post production process to get it to fit the tiny time slot on a TV news
show. And PLEASE - DO NOT send in VHS tapes.”
Last week it was fires in Arizona. As I write this, I have just been informed of ARES activating in Eastern PA for major flooding. In both of these situations, the NIMS strategy will be implemented in order to coordinate the many response organizations that are needed. NIMS (National Incident Management System) is going to be the outline by which any major disaster response will be choreographed. Do you know what it is and what it says about YOU? As a PIO, your job is to be the best news source you can for the media. You not only need to know about ham radio emergency communications, but you need to know how it fits into NIMS. More important, you yourself need to know where to go!
Do the terms JIC or JIS sound Greek to you? If so, then you really need to learn about them. The Joint Information Service is the shared pool of PR and media people that are working an event. The JIC is the center at which the media will gather to get information. Where are YOU going to be? Do you know how to get IN to the JIC? What credentials or contacts will you need?
Yogi Berra said that half of the job is showing up. If you are not in the right place, your value as a PIO is dramatically diminished in an emergency.
We all know the old line, “When my ship finally comes in, I will be waiting at the airport.”
Don’t let this happen to you! Talk to your section’s Emergency Coordinators now and learn about NIMS, JIS and other essentials so that, if a crisis happens, you CAN be in the right place, with the right info at the right time.
I usually like to put a good website into CONTACT!, but this month there were several excellent sites that came to my attention.
http://quickmaps.geotripping.com you can quickly custom-build a Google map and insert markers and locators. Then it gives you a URL to use so you can paste the map in your own Web site. This is great for club sites and events!
eHow – which tells you how to do just about anything- has an interesting page for getting your first Amateur Radio license at: http://www.ehow.com/how_1756_file-ham-radio.html
Coyote Communications has many good ideas for gaining local support available at: http://www.coyotecommunications.com/outreach/promote2.html
Among them are:
The
Red Cross has released a video on the emergency rebuild of the internet and
digital systems following Katrina. While it is focused on their IT teams
and getting internet capabilities back up as soon as possible, it has good
things to say about the hams holding the fort while things were being worked
re-created. http://www.interfacetvshow.com/episode1.asp#
Over 64,000 brochures have been requested since March 15 when the campaign began. Hello-Radio Website stats are:
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Visitors for June so far 15092 |
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Visitors in May 22721 |
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Visitors in April 19862 |
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Kevin O’Dell, N0IRW, is on the national PR committee and works in video production. He checked his regional market around Ardmore, Oklahoma and found that in his region alone the "Hello" video PSA had been aired during May 2006 on:
| A&E Country Music Television CNN Discovery ESPN FOX Fox News Fox Sports Southwest Headline News HGTV |
History Lifetime MSNBC Spike TBS The Learning Channel TNT The Weather Channel USA VH1 |
Total spots aired in May for that market area – 899!
I am also getting many reports that the radio spots are playing well in those regions where PIOs have made efforts to place them with stations. If you have a station that will play the video on cable or TV, pleased contact me at apitts@arrl.org and I will send you a disk, either DV or DVD, to take to that station. The radio spots are downloaded directly from www.arrl.org/pio .
Hello promotional materials are available for presentations to non-ham groups. They were designed with this specific audience in mind, and together with the Talking Points on the “Swiss Army Knife for PIOs,” make an excellent presentation.
To request brochures or DVD’s of the public service video announcement, write to hello@arrl.org and be sure to give information about how many you need, what type of presentation is planned and where to mail them. Please do not order more materials than you realistically need. There is no cost for the materials. All we ask is that you would consider donating back to the ARRL at least the cost of the shipping. This has been running abut $6 per hundred of the brochures. While not required, it is definitely appreciated and a sign that you support the development of more materials of this type and quality.
More information, including audio options, is also available on www.arrl.org/pio
One of the ideas announced at Dayton was the invitation for hams to produce short ( 3 minutes max) video clips on various topics which could be added to the Hello-Radio.org website. These should be targeted to the NON-ham or very new ham and explain what something is about. The videos should be complete and ready to go when received, in DV format and hopefully less than 20 megs in size. In this way they can be viewed on the website fairly easily. Topics might include such things as:
Anyone wishing to create such a video is strongly encouraged to contact Allen at apitts@arrl.org first to prevent duplication of topics and get full information.
On the subject of, "Are kids interested in ham radio?", here's one data point.
I've been working with Troy Baucom, AE6VP, who is a 6th grade teacher at Whitney Elementary School in Sacramento. The school is pretty ordinary, in an older but nice enough suburb near Carmichael. However, many of his kids are disadvantaged ... single-parent families, some no-parent, lots of moving, little parental support, and you probably get the idea.
Troy decided to see if he could grab their interest with radio. It's a long story involving a lot of work, but:
The club will continue next school year, the school admin will move his class to a bigger room with a couple of anterooms, one for the ham shack, and he'll move his antennas to the 2-story MP room roof. The 6th graders want an after school club too so they can attend after they move on to the middle school.
Troy (and the school administration -- they're thrilled with it) provides all the labor, energy, and teaching skill for the kids. Considering "Radio Club" vs "gang," hopefully all can live to enjoy it.
As I said, FWIW
Fred K6DGW
Auburn CA