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Clear your calendar and watch the encore performance of This American Life on Thursday, May 7th. Read the rest of this post to find out why, but most importantly, you should take five minutes now and buy your tickets for your local movie theater. This is a great show, and it is a lesson that other traditional media brands should learn from. Q1 earnings are in, and the results are not good. Media companies need to become more creative and find new solutions as they are adapting to the changing business environment.
Nonprofit organizations are feeling the same hurt. The drop in charitable donationsdue to the downturn in the economy is affecting service organizations and other charities in big ways. Due to a large shortfall in donations during its recent pledge drive, PRI’s This American Life staged a live performance at NYU on April 23rd. Ira Glass explained their fundraising challenges on The Colbert Report.
This American Life is the best radio broadcast on the air and over the Internet (subscribe via iTunes), and I jumped at the opportunity to go see the show live at NYU, but unfortunately the live show was sold out. Luckily for me, the show was also broadcast live to over 400 movie theaters around the US, including NYC. So, on April 23, my wife and I made our way to our local movie theater for the show.
At first I was skeptical that a radio show could translate well to the big screen, but my skepticism melted away immediately. My favorite monologue of the night was the third act (39 minutes into the podcast above) when Dan Savage delivered a story about the death of his mother and how he felt himself being pulled back to the Catholic faith for comfort in the aftermath. If you are not familiar with Dan, he is a very popular syndicated sex columnist and hardly a candidate for a religious reawakening. All the more reason that I found his story to be surprisingly moving.
See the show, and let me know what you thought. You won’t be sorry.