Story meetings, vetting scripts

Earlier this week, I was invited to sit in on two regional program story meetings — one for Metro Morning, another for Here and Now. I’ve attended a few “real life” story meetings, and I always find it amazing and impressive that these meetings somehow turn into a radio show in a matter of hours. I took some good notes, and shooks some good hands. Plus was nice to meet Andy Barrie.

Also, things with my Sean Ward piece seem to be going well. In a strange turn of events, I submitted a script to Nick Davis on Sunday night, and when I arrived at the CBC security desk on Monday morning, they somehow thought I was there to see him. I wasn’t. I was there to see Joan Melanson, who had invited me in the first place. But Joan hadn’t yet arrived, so when “Matthew” came downstairs to get me, he told me that Nick knew I was there, and though he didn’t know why I was there, he wanted to see me.

So, after the story meetings, I vetted my script with him. I always enjoy working with people like Nick who have a really intimate knowledge of “story” and how it works in the context of radio. He had lots of really great suggestions, which I tried to incorporate into my next draft. We should start tracking narration soon, in time for the piece to air before the release of Sean’s next book on December 5th.

Also, while I was there, I chatted more with Joan about internships. She told me to stay in touch, and promised that “we’ll make it happen,” hopefully for a January 2005 start. I pitched her a variant on Atlantic Public Media’s Sonic ID project, and let her know that I’ve got another proposal in the works for a series of short regular features. Sent her off an email this week outlining what I’m hoping to get out of an internship. Fingers still crossed.