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The show finally ended with a red-faced archivist...
It generally pays to be creative in archives. With very limited staff and financial resources, being innovative and resourceful is essential. However, some seemingly great initiatives can end up having unexpected and unfortunate consequences.
Some time ago, our local Member of Parliament agreed to include a full page on our archives in his quarterly newsletter. A message on the importance of archives was therefore mailed to several thousand households in Central Alberta. The response was so good that a few weeks ago, the archivist was asked to be the guest host on the MP's bi-weekly television show. It was another opportunity to talk about archives to a large audience. However, because the show is an important part of the MP's communications program, other issues were to be discussed. There were to be phone enquiries/opinions from the viewers. The archivist was to act as the friendly moderator.
The first part of the show went well, with the archivist making his pitch for history and archives and asking the MP gentle questions on current affairs. After twenty minutes, it became apparent that no calls were coming in. The M.P. asked the archivist to remind the viewers to phone in. Several reminders were made, but still no calls.
The television staff then put up a sign asking the archivist to tell the viewers that the phones were not working. No sooner had the archivist made the announcement and the phone rang. Buttons were pushed, but no one seemed to be there. The phone rang several more times. Each time the button was pushed, no one seemed to be on the line.
The scene became like a Monty Python skit. More voiceless calls. More excuses and lame banter from the archivist. Increasingly urgent requests by the MP to see what was wrong and to encourage people to keep trying to phone in. It turned out that all the calls were coming from the control booth. The MP's assistant was rather frantically trying the line to see why the phones weren't working. However, the archivist, the M.P. and most importantly, all the people trying to phone in from home did not realize that was what was happening. It looked like the archivist was persistently cutting off all the calls and hogging the airtime for himself.
The show finally ended with a red-faced archivist, a great many amused or angry viewers and a camera man who was splitting himself laughing. The MP mentioned in closing that in the eight years of doing the program he had never had a show without phone calls from his constituents.
Over the next few days, the Archives got calls from the public, some teasing, some angry and several asking if the fact that the archivist was a well known member of another political party meant he had purposely cut off all the calls. Not a good way to promote an archives. For programming reasons, the television station rebroadcast the show a number of times over the next two weeks, just in case anyone missed it the first four times. Mercifully, the Andy Warhol "sixty minutes of fame"/shame eventually came to an end.
Michael Dawe, Archivist
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