The TAPING RECORDER August 31, 2001 No. 08-01
News from and about Taping For The Blind Inc.

A PRECIOUS FEW…The days of summer are dwindling down to a precious few, and
we suspect that the heat will not be missed as we move into fall. We must
say thanks to all of you who helped by substituting for vacationing readers
- you make Jim’s life easier and you keep our quality programming coming to
our listeners!

SPEAKING OF LISTENERS…Our new schedule begins shortly thanks to Jim
Martinez, Dr. Ed Bradley, and the Listeners Committee. The annual review
found that we need a day stretcher for everything we want to get on the
air. We have added two new programs—"Inside TV Guide" and "Discount Store
Digest." The first of these will feature articles from "TV Guide" and will
be a half-hour program read by Nancy Daly. We will continue to have the
half-hour program reading TV schedules from "TV Guide" (read by Jean Frey),
but now we will offer more. The second addition will give our listeners a
look at the ads from WalMart, K-Mart, and Target, and this show will be
placed near our "Grocery Ads" show to help the shoppers in our audience.
Discount Store Digest will be read by Anita Simpson who is giving up
"Dining Guide" due to a change in her schedule. Welcome to new reader Cindy
Tilford who will be taking over the "Dining Guide." We are bidding adieu
to "Traveling Around" and are shortening "Short Story Show" to make room
for the new programs. While revising the schedule is a difficult task, we
will continue to work on it to make our programming the best we can. The
revised schedule will begin at 6:00 a.m. on September 4, 2001.

LABOR DAY SCHEDULE…While we are thinking about it, we will have a shortened
schedule on Labor Day, September 3, 2001. The building will be open from 7
- 11 a.m. As usual, we hope this doesn’t cause anybody serious inconvenience.

HTBR—OTHER CHANGES…We are moving toward total independence from using other
radio reading services as sources of programming. The Minnesota Talking
Book Network has been very useful for us, but they are currently converting
to digital (wonder where they got that idea), and to make use of their
signal would cost us money we don’t have, so we are saying thanks and
goodbye. The In-Touch Network from New York is having problems delivering
their analog signal, and while we haven’t used a lot of their work, we do
not plan to use that source again. During our conversion to digital, we are
still considering what to do for overnight programming, but once we are
converted we will be all HTBR, all the time.

LISTENER CAMPAIGN…We will begin our next fund-raising drive from our
listeners in conjunction with sending out copies of the revised schedule.
These campaigns are quite successful and are significant testimony to what
value we bring to our audience.

CONGRATULATIONS…We are pleased to report that Dick Hokenson (book reader)
has his second grandchild (a baby boy) born toward the end of July in
Dallas. We are happy for you, Dick!

CONDOLENCES…The sympathy of the entire organization is offered to Mary
Pedersen ("Discover" reader) who lost her mother-in-law recently; to David
Cindric ("Chronicle" reader) who lost his mother recently; and to Brian
Rodgers (Custom Recording reader) who lost his father recently.

SIGN UP!…If you are reading this on (gasp) a piece of paper, and would like
to get it in your e-mail on your computer, it is a very simple matter.
Simply send a blank message to tbi-houston-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, and
then respond to the verification message. Your contributions to this
publication are also welcome, so send those to Bob Bartlett at
rlb19@....

RLB