“ “This American Life” made its debut on the Chicago public-radio station WBEZ in November 1995. From the beginning, Glass made it his business to compensate for the peculiarity of his show by being what he calls “a pledge-drive powerhouse.”
“We didn’t know how popular it was going to be,” he recalls. “We wanted stations to make more money off our show than it cost. The flakier your mission, the fiercer you have to be on the business side.”
By brazenly pitching the show to marketing directors, Glass has been as much a boon financially as he has been creatively. Last year, Glass went on WBUR, Boston’s public mainstay, and in a single hour raised $50,000 — more than double the usual pledge amount. Although the show won a Peabody Award its first year, its future was never assured. “We were already on 160 stations,” Glass says, “but NPR was hesitating to pick us up.”
ira glass
i keep a list of work heroes - people who’s work or way of doing their work inspire me. ira glass is near the top of that list; irrevocably so.
i find that i love people who do simple, humble work with great passion and dilligence. despite it’s ranks of sneering hipsters, i find design to be this kind of work. the delusions of grandeur that designers adopt astound me (not that i’m immune to periodically being swept up)…the thing about it is that, like any other work, when it is done well, it becomes graceful, plain, and wonderful - as if it always existed.
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