An Interview of Bruce Camber, written by Andrew Caster
Dallas, San Diego, Denver, Palm Beach, Glendive, Montana, and Damariscota, Maine: Hundreds of small business owners throughout the USA are beginning to produce docudramas for television and the web, and according to Bruce Camber, “Soon millions will.”
Camber speaks from 14 years of weekly television productions. His series, Small Business School, opened on PBS television stations back on September 3, 1994. Right from the beginning he has been telling any body who would listen -- every PBS station, all their independent producers, and every business owner, “Mel Brooks got it wrong! We are all producers. Get a website and get busy producing.”
He continued, “Everything was getting cheaper, faster, and easier. There were virtually no barriers to entry. It was a no brainer then, and it is common sense today." He believes that video productions are about where word processing was in 1980, "Today, nobody talks about word processing . We all just do it. In just a few years even the over-60 crowd will be producing television.”
Camber is teaching people to do it. Instructions and tools are all online. For every episode of their show, over 200 businesses are nominated. They have 60,000 businesses that have been highly recommended to them by local business advocates. "These are businesses that have created jobs for at least ten years. They are loved in their community for their generosity and ethics, and they are respected in their industry for their leadership and integrity," he said. Of that group he says about 1000 businesses are developing the B-roll and answering questions online to develop their transcript and a case study guide.
"Our goal is to have over 2000 businesses each year profiled on their local PBS station. That is about 210 stations, each doing about ten episodes per year. The best of those episodes will air nationally and globally." The show, Small Business School, has aired on most PBS-member stations over the course of 14 years. It has been airing on the Voice of America around the world since 1995.
To be sure, these are not hot and flashy productions. They say that these are just good stories about good people doing good things, “This is a Pollyanna production. We believe in the goodness of people and we go out to find the best role models we can to tell a story that is not being told on television – most business owners are fair, ethical and very decent people.”
Camber rather whimsically cautioned all the young, sassy producers, “All of a sudden we turned 60 and now the kids think we’re old. Sorry, kids, we ain’t. We’re not going away. We’re not retiring. Retirement is boredom, then death. We’ll die with our boots on. Now, we may have become slow adopters, but just remember, we invented this stuff in the first place.”
For more information, contact Bruce Camber,
Executive Producer 214-801-8521 camber@SmallBusinessSchool.org
Small Business School, Inc. http://SmallBusinessSchool.org
