PBS Coverage of Zero Waste

CRRA@aol.com
Fri, 22 Jan 1999 16:57:15 -0500


I need your help to evaluate the following proposal. Please forward any
suggestions of:

1) References for Wali Waiters or American Environmental Review show on PBS -
is this a legitimate quality program?

2) Have you ever done anything like this with other PBS stations or TV? Does
this proposal seem in line with what you have done in the past? Is this a
good deal?

3) Do you have any suggestions of who could contribute to funding this?
Would you want to contribute or help raise those funds to get out the Zero
Waste message to a national audience?

CRRA Board will be meeting to decide on how to proceed on Monday, April 14,
1997 at 5 pm (PDT). Please forward your comments/suggestions to me before
then.

Thanks!

***************************************************
Background:
On Tuesday, April 8, 1997, I received a phone call from Wali Waiters, PBS
Producer in Boca Raton, FL of the American Environmental Review national
television series hosted by Charlton Heston. His technical people had heard
about CRRA on the internet and they were looking for some California
environmental group(s) to spotlight on an upcoming show. Wali wanted some
basic information on CRRA, what our message was, who are target audience is,
and what our resources are to find out if we were an appropriate organization
for them to spotlight.

I highlighted our mission statement, our Conference Zero Waste theme, our
role in organizing the GRN and its Zero Waste messages, our work on an Agenda
for the Next Millenium with its Zero Waste messages, our film footage from
the 1995 CRRA Conference of Paul Hawken's speech (filmed but never used for
PBS locally), our target audience this year of businesses and GRN's target
audience of the 100 million Americans who recycle. By the end of the call,
Wali was excited about working together with CRRA on spotlighting the Zero
Waste message, and express mailed an overnight invitation to be a Special
Feature participant. He also suggested that he'd like to do ten 30 second
PSAs to promote this Special Feature before our conference, that would
promote the Conference for 25 seconds and promote the upcoming segment on PBS
for 5 seconds.

PBS requires a commitment of $22,000 from CRRA for our share of the
development of this Feature. PBS claims they will be spending about $250,000
to produce this show from their budget. I told Wali that we don't have that
available, but felt that we could raise that sponsorship for this purpose.
Wali asked for us to commit soon if we want to participate if we want them
to do any filming at the CRRA Conferene with all the national speakers there.
It will take the next 45 days to prepare the script for this and they
therefore would need a commitment ASAP on whether this is a show they will
produce.

The CRRA Board is considering on Monday: 1) Are they legitimate; 2) Is this a
good deal?; 3) Can we raise the money?

What do you think?????

Please respond ASAP. Thanks!

Gary Liss