Hollywood Extreme Makeover 

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Listen to a discussion on this subject by Jerry Vreeman and Bob Cook recorded in 1995

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Discover below the plan that can make this impossible dream a reality 

The facts indicate that American kids are being corrupted by relentless media bombardment.  On any given day they can see on their TV screens 130 acts of sex, sexual innuendo, or nudity along with 250 acts of violence and numerous other violations of traditional morality.  It’s no wonder our kids lead the world in unwanted pregnancy, suicide, drug addiction, violence, cheating, and involvement with guns. 

We have allowed the wrong crowd to gain control of mass media.   This is the bad news.  The good news is that technology is forcing America to switch from traditional radio and television to Internet broadcasting.  This gives us a window of opportunity to create a New Hollywood. 

With the top Internet-only radio station now getting 4.3 million listeners, the long-predicted media convergence is unfolding in plane view for all who have eyes to see. Gordon Bailes, a recent speaker at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, predicts that Internet broadcasting will eclipse both Satellite radio and traditional radio and television. 

This means that we have the greatest opportunity to impact mass media since KDKA made the it’s inaugural broadcast in 1920 launching the mass-media era. You now have the opportunity to embrace a strategic moment in history and become part of the team that will rescue the next generation. 

We need three things to pull this off:  content, audience, and bandwidth.  Let’s start with bandwidth since it’s the biggest technological challenge.  Your current Internet Service Provider (ISP) doesn’t give you enough bandwidth to broadcast quality television to a large audience.  We can solve this by setting up an ISP using new wireless technology.  

This project is so costly we can’t afford to start until we have at least a thousand people sign up to subscribe when it becomes available.  The opportunity to have this service gives you a number of advantages. 

Here are the most important.  As you develop your own radio/tv station, you will be uploading lots of audio and video to your station site.  This is a long and tedious task at current upload bandwidths offered by cable or DSL, and dial-up takes so long it often times out before the upload is complete.  When this happens, your only option is to trim your file and start over. 

The first advantage of our service is speed.  The second is the ability to offer quality radio and television on demand. Our goal is to offer this service for no more than you would pay for cable without the television.  And who needs TV when the whole family is involved with such a grand and glorious vision—producing new shows and recruiting new talent. Nothing can beat listening to and watching your own productions. If you just get on the waiting list for the new service, you will make a great contribution to all who are involved in the Makeover project. 

You’ll get an overview below on how to develop audience and content, but first you might be interested in knowing how you can meet the gifted people who have already joined the effort at the highest level. The first step is to click  “About Us” on www.My-TV.US.  The second step is to attend the next Hollywood Extreme Makeover Seminar in your area. This can also be the first step in protecting your own kids and those in your neighborhood.  Getting kids involved in creating the new medium and helping with programs is the quickest way to wean them from television’s corrupting influence.

Our long-term goal is to immerse at least 3% of America’s business and/or churches in Internet broadcasting and empower them with the ability to reach 3,000 to half-a-million listeners within their local areas as they also develop a worldwide audience.  Each will have between thirty and fifteen hundred families who own their own home Radio/TV stations and contribute audience and content to the national “superstation.”

Each church or business will benefit by owning a powerful vehicle for growing their enterprise and training leaders.  At the same time they will be helping to rescue the next generation from the corrupting influence of Hollywood.  Amazingly, this vehicle may cost the organization very little or nothing at all.

If we tried to reach this goal through the acquisition of traditional AM, FM, or television stations we would face insurmountable obstacles and enormous cost.   Licenses are just not available, existing stations rarely go up for sale, and investing in a dinosaur would be unwise. Our plan makes Internet broadcasting amazingly inexpensive.

We start the process by leveraging the value to a family for owning a family station. This value gets to be really big when children join in creating programs and helping with technical support. The whole family enjoys serving the community and gaining some well-deserved notoriety.  Friends and neighbors are often eager to join in. There can also be a business advantage to entrepreneurial families.   

These advantages help to motivate business associates and church members to enroll in the six-hour workshop.  Some will also be motivated by particular components of broadcasting such as drama, interviews, script writing, program production, web authoring, technical support, etc.

Each who attends should, if possible, bring a laptop and microphone so they can go home the proud owners of an Internet broadcast station with the first interview edited, encoded, and ready to broadcast on the new station they have built.  We start with radio because it’s much easier, but some may want to include limited video content and start their own TV station. 

Unlike like traditional radio, having an otherwise busy personal schedule is not a problem.  Programs can be uploaded whenever they are ready, and there are none of the deadlines of traditional broadcasting.  The family station can become a family and neighborhood project.  Everybody learns how to be a talent scout. The kids love it and often have outstanding talents and computer skills. 

Each new station owner will seek to develop quality programs and a local audience of around 300.  If 50 members own stations, the combined “superstation” would have a local audience of around 15,000 households—about the size of stations like KPRZ in San Diego.  Larger organizations will have larger audiences, depending on the number of members who get involved.

Audience development begins with a set of steps that each individual will follow:

Sponsor a neighborhood talk show in your home.

Select celebrities and high achievers to be interviewed--focusing on faculty members, students, community leaders, and athletes.

Help each interviewee become a center of influence for the new station.

Suggest they invite their family and friends as special guests to the talk show.

Back them up with an invitation strategy including business-card invitations, door hangers, a one-page website advertisement, and pre-configured email announcements—all with similar graphics and branding.

Assist them in making follow-up phone calls that can be automated for those who request them. 

Include all ages in the lineup for interviews--starting with adults and ending with a few show-stopping kids.

Launch the Grand Opening with a neighborhood block party.

Continue the networking process.

The ultimate goal is to give America’s morally-concerned majority the control of future radio and television.

Your seminar group can lead the way in robbing Hollywood of the ability to corrupt the next generation with immoral content.  Together we can provide each station owner the opportunity to compete for free radio time that reaches the national audience.  We all, from youngest to oldest, have the opportunity to produce compelling family-friendly programs that qualify for the larger audience as we join forces to change the future of television.  Once we control what’s on the small screens of the world, we’ll be on track to eventually gain control of the large screens as well.

Here are 12 steps to doing great interviews.

It’s good to have some knowledge about background so you can establish your guest’s credibility for the subject to be discussed.  It’s also good to have key questions written down, but you should never depend on your notes.  You must be totally free to concentrate on listening carefully.  This is the only way you can craft appropriate follow-up questions.   

It is important to know what subjects your guest would not be comfortable discussing.  This is why a pre-interview session is important.   

Listen with your ears for content and your eyes for feeling.  If you notice a non-verbal response that denotes some emotion like passion, fear, or even tears, point this out and clarify it’s meaning.  Content requires clarification, elaboration, and examples.  Feeling needs to be drawn our and expressed. 

Coach your guest on the importance of replacing monologue with dialog.  Have an understanding that you will look for pauses to interject follow-up questions. 

 Post-production editing can easily double your interviews quality.  You will want to edit it down making it as short and tight as possible without leaving out important content. During the seminar you will learn how to edit, and the needed software is provided in your seminar toolbox. 

Your voice intonation will probably need some exaggeration if you want to captivate your audience.  You must sound like you are truly fascinated with the topic. 

You will find it helpful to listen to interviews on radio and watch them on television. Notice what works and doesn’t work.  You’ll hear some well-known broadcasters make mistakes.  Ask yourself what you would have done differently. 

Doing good interviews can enable you to meet top celebrities and turn them into valuable friends. 

Here are a few general broadcasting tips. 

In summary, the six-hour New Hollywood workshop involves each participant in actually setting up an Internet radio station, recording, editing, encoding an interview, learning how to attract large audiences, becoming a talent scout, and producing a variety of compelling programs. 

Obviously, creating a New Hollywood is going to require considerable resources.   

For information about funding possibilities, please contact Bob Cook at 619 423-5760, cookbob2@cox.net