Status Check: We're making an impact!

By Steve Marshall

As I was waiting for one of the TV stations to finish copying our tape (see last post), I picked up a copy of the Union Tribune. The front page article was about how much money had gone into the ballot issues this year: Click Here

Both of our 'customers' were specifically mentioned! Sarah's Law has raised $7.6 M (the total money spent on both sides), and Prop 8 has become the most expensive social issue in the country, with a total of $48 M. It was really cool to see the news coverage on it, and know that we're a part of making something happen in such a high-profile arena.

Right under it was a 'human interest' article about how a huge number of 'regular Joes' were donating $20, $50, or $100 to Prop 8: Click Here

These are people who had never been involved in anything political before, but felt strongly enough about the issue that they wanted to do something. That's what we're doing too! And the coolest thing is: it's working. Our "4 Men in Black" video has been viewed by 20,000 people. Our Sarah's Law videos have been seen on broadcast TV 13 times, and they're looking at putting us in the LA market at the end of next week! To top it all off, if you look at the polls, we're ahead!

Sarah's Law has 49% in favor, 41% opposed (it's narrow, but we're ahead): Click Here

Prop 8 just jumped in support (we're now 47% to 42%), due to a new ad they put out: Click Here

What a Day! JP Catholic’s Sarah’s Law Ad Runs on TV

By Steve Marshall

As most everyone knows, the presidential debates ran on Tuesday night. Sarah's Law purchased some ad time right before the debates on a little independent station in San Diego. They really liked the Predator ad, and had asked Professor Dunn to make a BetaCam tape to send in to the station (beta is the 'professional' format). Since they were just in our backyard, my job was to borrow a car and run the tape over to the station first thing in the morning. I was on cloud nine! 2 years ago, I was a Boy Scout running around in the woods of Missouri; now, I'm delivering one of our projects to a TV station!

When I got back to my desk, I had 3 messages marked VERY URGENT. Apparently, just that morning, they had made a last minute purchase of 3 one-minute segments on the ABC, CBS and Fox channels in San Diego. Each spot cost several thousand dollars, and each station needed a copy of the tape in the next 4 hours. That definitely got the adrenaline flowing. We used our only blank beta tape on the spot I just dropped off, and they don't exactly sell them at Albersons. Also, the only digital copy of the video was on Professor Dunn's portable hard drive that he takes home with him each day. Professor was completely out of the picture because a family member had died, and he was at the funeral up in Orange County. The car that I had borrowed was gone, and the clock was ticking.

What ended up happening was: Dr. Connolly himself drove me around from station to station. We started at the indie studio, and managed to get our copy of the tape back (they had already loaded it into their system). From there, we took it to the next studio, ran it in, had their editors make a copy of it, and give us the tape back. That morning, I was thrilled to see the inside of a tiny independent TV channel. By the end of the day, I had been to the broadcasting citadels of three major conglomerates, and had been on the phone in negotiations with all three of them for a good portion of the day.

Meet the Student Bloggers

Steve Marshall
Junior
Business Student