Dan takes one for the team! (was: Re: Maine Public Radio fundraising)

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Mon, 5 Apr 2004 23:41:08 -0400, "Dan Billings" <billings@suscom-maine.net> said:

> From listening some on Thursday and Friday, I think the extension was
> legitimate.  The on-air talent sounded pretty desperate on Thursday and
> Friday.  Their frustration with the lack of progress was hard to hide.

I must admit that I find these sorts of fund-raisers (whether
positioned as a ``pledge drive'' to support a station or a feel-good
``telethon'' on a commercial station) to be utterly
un[watch|listen]able.  That's one reason I make a practice of
restricting my donations to periods in which the stations are not
begging.  Usually the sorry excuse for programming (particularly in
the case of the public TVs) makes me feel even less inclined to donate
during those times.  (No, no matter how many times they play ``Over
New England'' or the Village People Reunion Tour, I still won't give
them any more money and I don't want to see what money I do give going
to put crap like that on the air in the first place.)

I'd like to see stations adopt the ``rolling fund drive''.  Instead of
blowing up the schedule to make way for extended begging, just take a
few funder avails every day to run a prerecorded promo inviting people
to donate if they want to support the program they're listening to.
(I expect the management of these stations to respond with the same
tired old saw as we get from commercial station management about how
some new idea (format) can Never Possibly Work because if it could
Someone Else would have tried it already, and if it had succeeded then
the entire community (industry), lemming-like, would already be doing
it.)

-GAWollman