Class on Monday, April 19

This may be the last blog post for Communicating Creatively. A review of the entire blog is an excellent summary of the course. Thanks for all your good postings on summarizing each class, and thanks to all of you for your hard work and good humor this past semester.
Here is what we went over on Monday. How to write a Public Service Announcement (PSA), which are announcements of interest to the public. PSAs are generally submitted by or for not-for-profit organizations and many of them are created by the Ad Council, the public-service arm of the advertising industry. PSAs usually rely on gaining free air time as they are in the public's interest.
PSAs can be either controlled or uncontrolled. With a controlled PSA, the organization produces it, meaning the members of the organization have complete editorial control over it. You must be sure to create a quality product that a station will want to run. Most PSAs fit a 30-second time slot.
Sometimes, a station will want to put a "tag" at the end of the PSA, saying "this announcement was brought to you by WKYS." You will need to allow time in your PSA, if the station wants a tag.
In an uncontrolled PSA, you send the station a script and the station managers decide how to produce the spot. Sometimes, they may just have the deejay or anchor read the announcement on air or the deejay may "chatter" about it, which means he or she will talk about it informally on the air.
Tips on writing a PSA:
Concentrate on one main message, get the audience's attention, use sound effects (for radio), write in a warm, conversational tone.
Also, start with a hook to get the listener's attention, then in the middle give the audience the most important information. At the end of the PSA, ask for a specific action from the audience. Tell them what you want them to do. Also, identify your organization at the end and give some contact information, if necessary.

We then looked at some PSAs on the Ad Council Web site, as well as some others on YouTube, including some fake ones from "The Office" talking about how not to eat wedding cake.

Then everyone paired up, chose a topic and began to write a PSA. You will have time to work on the PSA in class tomorrow, and we will present them during the last class on April 26.

For homework, read Chap. 12 on the First Amendment as I completely forgot to cover it earlier in the semester. See you all tomorrow.