SMALL TOWN
WNY

WNED
TV SERIES

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WHY
A SERIES ON
SMALL TOWNS
IN WNY?

   Small Towns are inextricably linked to a uniquely American experience and are, mostly, in a landslide fall at this point.
To make myself perfectly clear, a suburb, is not a small town. They are vastly different with vastly different qualities of life, infrastructure and designs.
   We have been sold a great lie about suburban development and it's destructive consequences for the environment and society at large.
   Cheap land and cheaply made homes are not the long-term answer to anything anymore and only equals an ever-cheapening quality of our lives, culture and society.
   All is not lost though, and this shows sole goal is to open the public eyes at large about some of the beautiful small towns that somehow managed to survive the onslaught.
   The small towns you will see on the episodes here have all mostly retained their integrity and architecture and original planning.
   Some towns have become true guiding lights, actually enhancing their original, good bones while others went even further with redesigns based on sustainability and walk-ability and a very high quality of life.
   We will share all we have found with you. Inspiring you to get out there and see the towns for yourself and maybe, just maybe, even inspire a few of you to actually make a move to one. The initial feedback I always seem to get from fans of the Small Town WNY episodes is that they are too short.
   Well, there's two facets to that we tell people...
   Number one; when our previous show (Discovering WNY) was first pitched to our local PBS station, they came back with a pretty brilliant marketing idea that would help us both out.
   Of course, we initially pitched the show as a full, standard half-hour program. But what was suggested by them was an interstitial (in-between the shows) series of episodes as it would allow the show a much broader exposure to a much more diverse and large audience than any singular, weekly half hour series ever could. We thought it was a brilliant idea and we've been using this shorter broadcast format ever since as it just makes good sense to us.
   After all, we created these shows to feature and promote the WNY region and all it has to offer and spreading the good word throughout an entire week of programming blocks, at all hours, to all demographics and throughout all sorts of styles of shows was the best way to shout the message from the proverbial rooftops and get the word out to everyone.
   Secondarily to this, is the simple, singular point, that these are suppose to be teasers to get you off your butt and out of your house to go explore and discover the great small towns of WNY for yourself.
   If we give too much away, then what's the incentive?
   Our incentive here is to tease you, not to feed you 'til your full.
   To create just enough of a spark in your curiosity, so that now that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, you can finally, safely, go get out there some weekend afternoon and go explore them for yourself.
   And speaking of the pandemic being over...
   As bad as the it was for our previous show ("Discovering WNY"), as our entire business subsisted on the sales of accounts to small, local, Mom & Pop shops in small towns throughout the WNY region, it was truly a blessing in disguise as it forced us to put the brakes on the run-away locomotive we had been riding on for past 3 years, take stock, take a step back, think a bit and really dig deep and see and most importantly, understand... what we had been building and exactly what it was becoming.
   You see, "Discovering" is a very ambiguous name and implies many things to many people and could literally encompass any subject matter I wanted. Which, at the time, we came up with the idea, was the point. But after hundreds of half hours of episodes and tens of thousands of hours of hard work, we were truly riding a rocket that had no direct focus. And as we stated, up top here, the pandemic simply allowed me time to stop, look at what I built and really, just define and refine what we had built.
   And what did we see when we started to take a look back at the hundreds of shows we had produced over the last 36 months?
   Well, basically that everything was "small-town" oriented and that we had barely touched the city or the vast majority of it's direct, connected burbs.
   We were on a "small-town-mission" and we were gravitating even deeper into by the time the pandemic hit and didn't even realize it at the time.
   So, over the course of the pandemic, we set about rethinking, redesigning, rebranding and refining the show toward it's ideological heart and soul. Which was all things small towns.
Hence the idea of "Small Town WNY".
   Now go get out there already and start exploring the small towns of WNY! The towns will appreciate it, as will your heart.
   Thank you for watching.

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