"Making Peanuts the New Normal"

Welcome back and we hope you and yours celebrated a wonderful and safe holiday season.
If you're a gadget or electronics guru, then you know this was the "week of wonder" at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. All type of new and innovative gadgets were on display, from smart watches to a drone large enough to actually fly one person (up to 275 lbs, I think) on pre-programmed flight! Delivering my Amazon order is one thing, but I'm not sure I want the person who processed my order to arrive with it!

However, the CES also marks another important time. This week is when business in Hollywood will start returning to normal. Though, we'll still have to wait until Monday as everyone is too concerned with Sunday night's "Golden Globes Awards" show to think of mundane business.

The beginning of the new year should be a bright signal to all of us to look to ourselves and what we can and will do to make this new year better than the past one. As I titled this post, "Nothing is the new normal!" Too many people are satisfied with what was, whether it was good, bad or somewhere in between. They postulate, "If it was good enough for me last year, it should be good enough for me now!" Now, where would be at this moment, if everyone held that same thought?

I for one, do not believe it's true. While it's true that there are many factors within our various environments that we cannot control, there are still plenty that we can. And the very first one starts with ourselves. 

We must ask our self, "What can I do, see, learn, experience, etc. that will help me improve my life? Do I need to do it at home? At work? Socially?" My view it is all of the above.

Just because we graduated high school, college, graduate school, accreditation for this or that, it does not mean that we have stopped learning or that we can afford to stop learning. We must strive to learn every day. We must strive to be a better person every day. We must strive to reach out and help someone every day. We must strive to be a better father, mother, spouse, son, daughter, etc. 

If we do not do this we become stagnant and stale like moldy old bread and what good is moldy old bread? 

So, take a look in the mirror and ask the person you see what he/she suggests as a starting point to improving you and your life and the lives of those around you. And remember one very important fact - the person in the mirror never lies!

Now, back to show business - What I've written above applies to show business as well. If you read any sort of decent TV magazine, i.e. "TVGuide," you'll see a roster of many of the new shows that are coming on, during what's called, "mid-season." That's right about now, where they plug in new shows to replace the ones from this past Fall that failed in ratings. You will be amazed at the crap that networks are planning to out on the air. And that is why we at Dalmatian Productions, Inc. and Cause and Origin Productions, LLC, are working so hard to bring our show to television. But it is a very hard row to hoe! It's not about what you know, rather it's about who you know. You can have the greatest idea for a new TV show, but if you don't have a connection to get it in front of the right person, it will remain just that, an idea.

With Hollywood getting back to business this week, so are we. We are pulling out all the stops, favors, etc. to get "Cause & Origin" in front of the right people. We are very fortunate to see our Twitter accounts soaring, with almost 1,200 followers @DalmatProd and over 300 @CAUSE_ORIGIN. But that doesn't mean we have enough. We don't! As a matter of fact, we're not even close!

We need to generate thousands, even tens of thousands of followers on Twitter. Hollywood is all about numbers. For example, advertisers' prime interest in TV viewers are men and women, ages 18-49, in general. Networks want to have an idea that a new show will attract millions of viewers before they have ever created a pilot! Here's an example:

Several years ago there was an excellent TV show called, "Jericho." It did very well in the ratings for about three years and then the network decided to cancel it. The millions of fans didn't like that idea. So they (and yes, I was one too!) started an online campaign to convince the network to keep the show on, at least long enough to tie up the loose ends of story lines. In one script, the concept of peanuts came up to signify displeasure. With that, fans of the show purchased and shipped to the networks head office in New York City, thousands upon thousands of pounds of peanuts! Each day, multiple shipments of peanuts arrived via the Post Office, UPS, FedEx, couriers, etc. Finally, the network caved and produced an additional seven episodes to close the show.

That's what we need!! NO...NO...Not peanuts! We need that type of support to help us get this show in front of a network, any network from NBC to Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. And that will be generated by increasing our Twitter numbers. We are so blessed that so many fire and rescue departments have followed us. We are also blessed that so many of our career brothers and sisters who belong to a local IAFF lodge, support us. So what's the problem? Each lodge or each department only counts as ONE follower. What we need is every member of the lodge, every member of the department who uses social media, needs to add their voice to support our show. So please, pass the word around. Tell your co-workers about the show. Tell your friends about the show. Ask them to follow us on Twitter, or find us on Facebook (Dalmatian Productions, Inc) and leave a comment. They can also send us an email to info@causeandorigin.tv.

We want to be inundated with Followers the way that network was flooded with peanuts! 

Finally, we close with a solemn salute to our 85 brothers and sisters who answered their final alarm in 2015. They paid the ultimate price to serve their friends, neighbors and communities. We pray that the souls will be bound up in the Bond of Life and that the memories of the love for their families and their dedication to their department will serve as a blessing to all who knew and loved them. May they rest in Peace.

New Podcasts and More

Hi all - Hope you're enjoying your day. Seems Winter is making its way in and the holidays are almost upon us. First, we want all of you who follow us here, on Twitter with either @DalmatProd or @CAUSE_ORIGIN, how much we appreciate your follows and your support. As we've said before, TV is a very, very tough business! However, your faith and support buoy us up and helps us to continue to work as hard as we can to bring this TV show, all about you, to the viewing public. And for that, we are deeply grateful to every one of you.

On to the new Podcast - We are hoping to launch the first podcast after the first of the year. Our goal is to present you with a great mix of important information, some excellent education and a little bit of fun, all thrown together (much like in the firehouse!)

Our podcasts will be prerecorded and archived. That way, you'll be able to listen to it at your leisure. As you may realize, there are hundreds of topics we can discuss.  We are planning to produce two shows per month. However, since the purpose of this show is for YOU, we want to give you the opportunity to let us know what topics you would like to hear discussed.

While we do have our own experience in fire/rescue, I've been out of active-duty for quite a while. So my sole role on this show is to be your host. And with that in mind, we have already lined up three excellent members to be our first guests. And we're looking for plenty more.

Along that line, here is a list of some of the topics that we hope to address on the show (in no special order):

1. Firefighter Health Initiative 2015 - 2016
2. Job Stress and its tolls on our lives
3. Job attraction and retention
4. Educating the public we protect and the public officials we deal with 
5. Healthy Eating and Firehouse Recipes!
6. Command & Control
7. The purpose and need for the PIO
8. Fireground tactics: Size-up, Analysis, Plan & Execute or Surround & Drown
9. The importance of proper record-keeping
10. The benefits of a well-trained fire department
11. Employing and promoting personnel
12. Budget develop and management
13. The role of discipline in strengthening personnel
14. Identifying and addressing fire department staffing issues
15. Automatic aid and mutual-aid versus adding more personnel
16. Capital equipment planning: identifying needs and resolving them
17. Why do some firefighters fail to wear (or properly wear) their PPE?
18. Preparing to compete for a chief's position

And that's just for starters! Because this is your show, we would like to hear from you about topics that you would like to hear addressed. Additionally, if you're comfortable being a teacher, presenter, etc., we're officially inviting you to contact us and let us know that you'd like to be a guess. Thanks to today's wonderful electronics and the Internet, you won't have to travel to South Florida to be on the show. We'll use cellphone, Skype and/or Face Time to connect with you. So, if you're interest, please leave a comment here, send us a Twitter Private Message to either @DalmatProd or @CAUSE_ORIGIN, or send us an email to steve@dalmatianproductions.tv. If you'd like to be a guest, please include a brief bio and the topic you'd like to present.

Finally, unless there's big news from L.A. this week, we will probably save our next post until after next weekend. With that in mind, from Rich, Tom, Jesse and me (Steve) we extend our best wishes to all of you and yours for very Happy, Healthy, Peaceful and Safe Christmas and Kwanza holidays. Let's use this season to take one more step, reach out a little further, and touch someone's life who needs us, but is afraid or embarrassed to ask for it. Just like laying a tile floor, we build it one piece at a time. It can be a slow, tiring job. But when it's finished, it's beautiful. Let's do the same thing in our lives. 

May the Good Lord bless and protect each and every one of you and yours.

Steve Greene, President
Dalmatian Productions, Inc.
Cause and Origin Productions, LLC