I Got 15 More Minutes

This week the owner of the company I work for renewed our contract with the local TV station. We get several hundred spots to air our commercial throughout the spring and early summer and then again in the fall. In addition to the commercials, yours truly gets to continue his appearances on the evening news as a local "garden expert". I have been doing this for a year now and it started off being very awkward and somewhat difficult (at least to me it was). Although I would not go so far as to say it is easy, it is less awkward now, and we have developed a good working routine. I usually pick the topic, write the script and sort of have an idea of what I want to show, but let the cameraman and producer decide how best to pull it all together, and they do all of the editing. The most difficult part of the whole thing is trying to convey a message in just one minute when there is more than a minute's worth of information that needs to be said. Regular gardeners probably do not learn anything new, but I hope others do. The least I can hope for is that someone out there in TV land may think twice before indiscriminately spraying pesticides, spreading fertilizers or continuing other bad horticultural habits.

If your favorite shows are in reruns, or you have nothing better to do - you can find some of the archived clips here.