MIM Notes 223   December 1, 2000

Under Lock and Key radio program must grow!

by the MIM Radio project director

November 8, 2000

Eight months ago, the MIM & RAIL radio project reported in MIM 
Notes 207 (April 1 2000) on difficulties in producing the Under 
Lock and Key program on a timely basis. Here I follow up on that 
report, and address political problems with distributing the 
program. Finally, I lay out where the program should be in 6 
months.

Promises made, broken and rectified

Earlier, we reported the technological advances that speed 
production, and announced success in getting more people involved 
in the producing the program. We announced the release of 4 
programs on 1 CD, and promised the release of 10 more within the 
next month. In reality, we released only 4 more to date. (We did, 
however, release a second volume of RAIL recordings of rare Mumia 
Abu Jamal essays.)

Getting more folks involved in producing the program is a 
political success, but poor leadership on my part made me unable 
to tell when and where the program was floundering. We lost 
valuable time. Only in late September did an effort get under way 
to seriously address this backlog problem.

As of this writing, 11 new shows are ready for CD release and are 
already on our internet site. Two more have been promised for 
tomorrow, completing the backlog. CDs will be in production 
starting this weekend, as will the process of linking the shows to 
the anarchist-led radio database at radio4all.net where the shows 
are popular.

Due to the long delay in producing programs, we are not entirely 
sure who is still airing the program other than Free Radio Santa 
Cruz (California) 96.3FM on weds mornings and other times. We hope 
to get confirmation back from other stations and publish an 
updated list soon. Check the website for the most current 
information.

Failure to market Under Lock and Key program hurts effectiveness

The radio program got a good response from almost everyone who 
actually listened to it, but my liberalism about developing the 
radio program has led to a decrease in the people listening to the 
program.

Overall, the struggle to get more folks involved and make it more 
regular in production is something we've made some progress on.

But that's almost useless without focusing on getting the thing on 
the air. I've been really liberal about taking up a marketing 
program to progressive & pirate stations. I've just been waiting 
for somebody to step up and do this task. I've tried to recruit 
people to market the program, but when these efforts were not 
successful I didn't pay any attention to how critical that task 
is. Instead, I continued to pour MIM & RAIL time into producing a 
program that has been reaching a dwindling audience. 

Now that we have acquired the recording & computer equipment, the 
blank CD and material costs are minimal, but production, packaging 
and web distribution are time consuming. In order to use our 
scarce labor resources most effectively, we need to increase the 
listenership of the program.

Locally, I've seen DJs who play the program at good stations 
graduate and I've been too passive to aggressively replace them.

I've also done a crappy job of encouraging other parts of MIM & 
RAIL to get the program on the radio in their locations. I had 
been content to stop sending CDs to comrades that didn't respond 
to my progress questions.

Action plan

Within six months, we aim to reach a national listenership of 
10,000 people. All or almost all of the stations that would 
consider playing the program are too poor to subscribe to the 
ratings services, but we can make some rough estimates based on 
geography, time period and the numbers of callers by the station 
in general.

Given the number of programs ready to be released, for at least 
the next 6 CDs/6 months the program will come out on a regular 
basis. So for the time being we can eliminate the problem that 
infrequent production causes the marketing effort. Once we get the 
station list up, it should be easier to prioritize regular 
production.

In the next month there will be a mailing going out to stations 
rumored to be progressive. There will also be an email 
announcement to prisons lists, and an email or snail will go out 
to all the pirate stations we can find. We1/4re also going to 
bombard the major Pacifica stations with CDs. If anyone can 
recommend a specific DJ or Pacifica program/time slot that would 
be helpful.

Our experience plus the experience of the old MIM Notes and 
Commentary Program is that promoting the program doesn't work well 
remotely. We need to talk to people and DJs in person. That's 
where you come in.

Instructions to comrades and friends

1. At every event you organize, bring some CDs. During your 
introduction, hold up a CD and talk about this great program and 
how you do all this great work in your city, and the program is 
distributed internationally and how it sucks that its not on in 
your city. Ask if anybody is a DJ or knows one. (Maybe you'll sell 
a few CDs that way. Given that the programs are time consuming to 
produce and based on MIM Notes, our priority needs to be radio 
play, though.) GIVE OUT the CD to anyone you believe might play it 
or who might get it on the air. Tell them to email radio@mim.org 
if they want more. I'll put them on the list and advertise their 
radio show on the web site and in MIM Notes. Getting money from 
DJs who play the program is great, but don't let that be an 
impediment.

2. Call up DJs who play progressive music, especially college DJs. 
Ask them to play the program. If they are interested, mail them a 
CD, and follow up with them.

3. At large political events, look for the radio reporters and 
give them a CD. People with microphones/recorders in the audience 
generally are not reporters. Anybody with a microphone separate 
from the recorder (no matter how cheap looking) that they put near 
the podium tend to be radio hosts. But it doesn't hurt to ask.

4. Stop by local college & community stations. Tell whoever is 
there about the program. Ask who to speak to. You will often get a 
program manager. What you want to know is who is might be 
interested. You want to speak to them directly. DJs at even the 
crappiest stations are buried in unsolicited CDs. Leaving CDs for 
people you don't know is roughly equivalent (if more expensive) to 
just throwing them away. Asking the program manager to find 
someone to play it is probably a waste of time. But if the program 
manager suggests 2-3 people for you to talk to, leaving CDs with a 
note (that I'll provide for you) would probably be worth it.

One more bit of advice. I've found the smallest stations to be the 
friendliest and least bureaucratic. But in those cases we might be 
dealing with a listenerships of 20 people. That's fine, it's 
progress but it won't get us to our goal alone. The larger the 
station the more bureaucratic you will likely find it. But when 
you start getting listenerships of 1000 or more, you're going to 
start having people on the street coming up to talk to you about 
the program. That's when its going to start aiding your work. 
We're going to need to get a few of these 1000+ stations to hit 
our goal.

All readers should send in an order for CDs along with either a 
cash donation or an outline of your marketing efforts.

How you can help

Readers not a part of an active MIM or RAIL branch should of 
course join one. But if you just want to aid the radio project, 
that's fine too. You can do the same things offered above. We 
expect to spend $500 on this marketing effort, and so can use 
donations of money, stamps or CDR disks. We are also eager to 
receive donations earmarked for either the marketing effort or to 
pay production costs for CDs destined for radio stations that play 
the program but are not able to pay for the program.

ITAL The MIM & RAIL Radio Project can be found online at 
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/ma/radio.html. You can email the 
MIM & RAIL radio project at radio@mim.org. END