Today was a good day...
This
morning the Minneapolis Star-Tribune business
columnist Dick Youngblood wrote a very favorable
column about our business here in Red Wing. It was a
lot of fun getting to know Dick over several
conversations and meetings and I really didn't know
what to expect. Needless to say, I was very happy and
a bit embarrassed by the attention.
But it was the sub-headline on the second page of the
hard-copy article that really made me smile. For many
years I thought I was a "washed-up sales rep" when in
fact I was only a "burned-out sales rep". Imagine my
relief.
You gotta love it. :)
The article can be found
here.
Thanks for the article Dick and thanks for the
support Dave and Dean.
Hometime...yet again (ver. 2009)...
The
Hometime episode we were involved with last year is
being re-broadcast over the next several weeks,
beginning this past Saturday (01-24-09). Locally it
will be shown on Saturday. February 14, 2009 at 5:30
pm (TPT, channel 2).
What a terrific opportunity this has been for us and
I am thankful for being so fortunate. We have met
many people and we had a blast being involved.
One of the more interesting aspects for me was the
challenge from an operational standpoint. Extremely
tight (and rigid) deadlines and having to essentially
close the shop for two days to conduct filming. If I
remember right, it was six, 18-hour days in a row.
There was a flub or two (or three) along the way, but
nothing that couldn't be fixed (or reprinted).
The web traffic has been significantly heavier this
year. I think it is because Hometime has a much
better schedule this year on PBS (they typically
block it right before "This Old House") and the
search engines have had a full year to digest and
sort relevant inquiries, consequently the search
listings are more favorable.
For those so inclined to see the episode, here is the
segment:
Hometime, part deux (ver. 2008)
It has been interesting tracking the feedback from the Hometime show. The show was released to the PBS affiliates last weekend and each affiliate creates their own schedule. In any case, over time most of the PBS affiliates broadcast the show and this slow 'unrolling' allows me to watch the traffic patterns.
We only track trends and do not spend too much time drilling down into the 'Rabbit Hole' of data out in the virtual world. So far, Tennessee, Ohio and Maine have been especially active with follow-up from either the PBS.org or Hometime.com web sites. Since Saturday our web traffic is about 3x the normal volume and the typical visitor is spending about 4x the average time looking around the web site. This means the overall visit quality is increasing, which is a good thing.
Locally, the show will air this coming Saturday. The Red Wing paper did a terrific feature on the show last weekend, so that should raise local awareness as well.
Hometime
Recap; The PBS television show Hometime came to our shop last year to film an episode. This episode is part of a season-long project of completely building out a luxury town home and our job was to scan, print, stretch and install custom designed art. Hometime has been broadcast nationwide for 22 years and has a very loyal following.
It wasn't until the last month that we received final confirmation of the Hometime episode that we participated in. PBS has kind of a funky way of doing things in regards to schedules. PBS does not have the same kind of competitive pressures as the other networks, so they allow the local affiliates to pretty much schedule at will and around any fund raising activities they might have going on.
So, the bottom line is that our episdoe (#2206, Town home: Finale) will be broadcast nationwide on March 8th and in the Red Wing area (TPT, Channel 2) on March 15th at 9 am.
What can we expect? I have no idea. Hometime is carried by 240 PBS stations and is broadcast 340 times per week. The typical episode is seen by about 1 million households and 1.2 million viewers.
Bill Gibb was the producer/director for our episode and Bill told me that it typically takes 8 hours of filmed tape to produce 8 minutes of on-air footage. I saw our episode and there is about 7 minutes of dedicated air-time in discussing our portion and through most of the show you can see the art in the background. One of the best parts for me was the shots taken of the Red Wing community at large. Bill followed-up a suggestion to take some footage from Memorial Park and got some terrific footage of Downtown Red Wing.
I have several tools in place to try and measure what kind of impact the show will have and I promise to share as the results unfold.