Despite the fact all my favorite PBS programs go away during pledge time, I just bought an awfully expensive mug.
I started giving money to public radio/TV while I was stationed in DC. Someone during the radio pledge drive said “If you have EVER sat in your car in your parking spot and stayed there to listen to the end of the segment before exiting your car, you owe us money [paraphrase]”. Now HOW am I going to argue with that logic?
So every now and again, when I have a few extra bucks, I tip some cash in the direction of PBS or NPR.
Do you donate to one or the other or both? Why? Why did you start? Am I the only sucker? What are your favorite programs? Am I the only one who wishes PBS would put ‘American Family’ or ‘Frontline’ up against the dreck on Saturday afternoon broadcast TV?
It’s so funny you mention that example, because I can recall being in my car one Wednesday morning in the parking structure, waiting for Frank DeFord to finish his weekly piece. As I got out of my car I saw a handful of other people open their doors and get out as well. We looked sheepishly at each other and said NPR? and laughed. We were all doing exactly the same thing.
I just sent my Michigan Public Radio mug to my White Elephant person. Heh.
That’s me. I’m a little better about it now, since I don’t like our NPR affiliate’s new lineup. Friday evenings almost always got scheduled around This American Life, Saturday mornings around the Tappett brothers. I have donated to NPR, since their pledge drives always make you feel so danged obligated. You’d have to be quite the tough sell not to respond!
However, it’s the little guys that get me. One year I gave for Inside Jazz, which isnt around any more, at least not here , but I figure that Marketplace, Click and Clack, and All Things Considered are popular and underwritten enough that they’d be afloat no matter what. I love 'em all. i really can’t think of a program I won’t listen to, except sometimes the guest folk singers on a Prairie Home Companion. Can’t handle some of that music. I LOOOOVE Calling All Pets, but they don’t carry it here.
Isn’t PBS having a pledge drive right now? I saw a great Allison Krauss and Union Station performance the other night (song is still in my head, actually) that I thought was part of a telethon.
Since when can you give to an individual program? As far as I know, you can only give to a station. Indeed, for one local outlet, which runs both a PBS TV station and an NPR radio station, you can’t even give to just radio or just TV.
I absolutely LOVE my public radio station. It’s on in my car all the time. I listen on the weekends.
But I’ve never given money.
Honestly, 2 pledge drives ago, I said okay, this time I join. I kept wanting to call in during a certain program to show my support for it, but I ended up being out late most days that week. Finally, I said, okay, Friday I do it. Friday would have been the last day of the drive. Amazingly enough, that pledge drive they met their goal EARLY, and stopped the campaign on Thursday.
This past drive, just about a month or so ago, I have no excuse for.
And Wendell, I think that’s what the above poster was referring to - calling during a show you like to show the radio station that you like that particular show. If no one calls during the show, I guess they figure no one’s listening, either. That’s why I don’t bother calling during Car Talk and all those other popular ones. I’d rather show my support for one of the more obscure ones I like, particularly if it’s a local show.
I switched to NPR in the car 24-7 a couple of years back because I’d finally had it with commercial radio in all its forms. So now, if it’s not a CD, cassette or Cardinals baseball broadcast, it’s Daniel Shore or “Wait, Wait! Don’t Tell Me!” At work, I’m late back from lunch often because I don’t want to stop listening to a Terry Gross interviewee.
And I can be quite happy with PBS, too, if it’s something like Frontline or a Ken Burns’ piece or Rowan Atkinson as Black Adder. But I swear to god our local station had an early 90’s Styx reunion concert on last year during a pledge drive. One of 'em was actually in the studio wearing spandex over a huge, potbelly. Yech. I wanted to call in and offer money if they’d promise to stop airing it immediately.
When I’ve felt a little flush in the past, I’ve donated to both. When feeling a little strapped, I listen/watch without guilt.
The important thing to remember is that there doesn’t have to be a pledge drive on to donate.
I feel like a heel for not pledging to our PBS station since they have so many shows that I like, but during pledge time every show I like goes away and is replaced by marathons of Suze Orman financial shows (those teeth give me nightmares), Dr. Wayne Dyer health seminars, and Liberace retrospectives. I liked it better when they kept about 50% of the regular programming and just interrupted it. How can you expect me to watch and pledge when you take off every reason that I watch when it’s time for the pitch? Put some honey in the trap Alabama Public TV.
I’m going to start pledging to PRM (Mississippi) or the local NPR station in Huntsville, AL just to spite the main NPR station here in Alabama. They all pull the guilty trip on you, but the on-air people on the APR station are so smarmy about that it gets nauseating. The other stations know how to be more smooth and subtle about it. The APR hosts come across as bullies. Besides, the other two stations have better lineups, even though they seem to have less funding.
I give to NPR. I love PBS but I hate the pledge drives with endless semiars hosted by that bald fool in the sweater. I want to support Frontline, Masterpiece Theater and what not. I refuse to pledge while crap programing is on.
I always give to public radio. I helped start a public radio station in Western Kansas about 18 years ago and I know how we functioned on a shoestring for so long and we would have folded a number of times if it weren’t for public radio listeners who donated.
However, PBS is another thing. It is getting too polished for my tastes. People show up on camera wearing earrings that cost more than I make in six months, and they have the gall to ask me for my money. I know it is silly, but I resent that.
I used to give to PBS but have slipped away from supporting them.
I’ve been a pledging member of my local NPR stations since 1973. I will match my collection of coffee cups against any man in the joint. I’m a sucker for coffee cups–don’t need any tote bags or tee-shirts though.
In all seriousness, I have the advantage of access to three different stations, four when the weather is right. This means that I can find something I want to listen to at almost any hour, day or night. The morning and evening news broadcasts are all I could ask for as is the weekend programing. I suppose a guy could habitually listen but not send in any money, but that’s probably the same guy who would take money out of the collection plate if he thought nobody was watching.
I have been known to give a few dollars every year to the local PBS station. They run a ton of British comedies and science fiction and have picked up the great Canadian based comedy “Made in Canada/The Industry”.
Unfortunately I give less then before because I am forced to pretty much ignore PBS for the two weeks of pledge drive while the shows I enjoy are bumped off the air for endlessly repeated music specials and psycho- / money- babble specials.
I guess someone somewhere is sitting there at the end of the pledge drives wondering why they sent in their 60 bucks to see more Suze Orman or whomever and once the pledge drive is over all they are getting is “Red Dwarf” and “Are You Being Served?”.
I listen only to NPR radio, and they get 25 bucks a year from me. I’m not with the “big hitters” with my 25.00, but if it helps them continue the quality of programming such as Prairie Home Companion, CarTalk, and Thistle and Shamrock it’s money well spent.
Yeah, I give. This year I gave to both my local (Chicago) station and the station out of Akron that I listen to at work via the internet, what can I say, I just like WKSU.
Anyway, I really don’t think I’ll give to the Chicago station again. Before I even got my pledge gift this year, I got a mailer and a phone call asking for more money. Now, really, that’s a bit much, doncha think?
NPR saved my life about twenty years ago when they called attention to the health dangers of PPA (phenylpropanolamine) in “legal speed” and the same stuff that was in the antihistamines I took and which was finally banned a couple years ago. Their pledge drives are personal and use their regular on-air talent, folks who have become like friends, and the money collected during a program—the same program that would have been broadcast at that time—is used to determine the level of support for that program. The drives last a week and sometimes are barely visible because they manage to collect enough money online. By the end of the full-scale drives the station manager gets punchy because he’s been there almost the whole time. You know when the drive is ending because it has a set time, although they will cut it short if the goal is reached. In fact, there is a goal, something PBS abandoned long ago. Listening as challenges are met is almost fun.
NPR gets my money.
PBS has begun to sicken me with its targeted pledge drives. WTTW does a night of programs saying how great the Irish are, followed by nights for Greeks, Poles, and Jews. They trot out all of these programs designed to suck money out of old farts (Andy Williams/Perry Como/Big Band Cavalcade/The Three Tenors/The Three Irish Tenors/The Three Black Tenors) then never play any of those shows during the rest of the year. Very distressing is how I know my demographic has reached old-fart status because of the 60s and 70s music specials they run. They play architecture tours of Chicago which were very cool five years ago but have lost their luster through repeated broadcasts. They play prerecorded pledge breaks because the on-air folks can’t bear to work through the THREE WEEKS PLUS IN A ROW pledge period and can’t bear sitting through the TWELFTH rebroadcast of Wayne Dyer this pledge period. I sometimes wonder if commercial stations broadcast less time in commercials in one year than PBS does in pledge breaks. There is no published goal and the only way you know the drive is over is because TV Guide lists your favorite shows again. In fact, they can’t have a goal they are working toward because then they couldn’t rerun the pledge breaks from last year.
PBS no longer gets my money. The only time they got it right was the special Red Green drive last year.
Wendell-Scout got what I was trying to say. After I hit reply, I realized I should have explained myself better. Sorry about that!
And Gelding? 3 whole stations? Sometimes 4? Wow. You are my hero. I would live in my car if I had that setup! Not, of course, that I couldn’t listen elsewhere, but the car is best!
I started listening to NPR about two years ago. As I am a graduate student my funds are not unlimited, but I was about to begin donating last year before I moved. The NPR station in Eugene has releived me of my obligation to donate since they have none of the good shows. They do not have The Prairi Home Companion, This American Life, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, What Do You Know, Radio Reader, Market Place, or any of the previoius shows mentioned with the exception oif Car Talk and All Things Considered. Instead they broadcast a bunch of stupid hippy shows and Greatfull Dead music.
When I start getting a larger income, I will be sure to donate money to the station I enjoyed at my previous location, but not KLCC. They suck! Ironically, they sem to pull in a whole lot more money than the one I used to listen to, so I guess my protest wont knock any sense into them. Maybe during the next plegde drive I’ll call the station and ask if I can donate to a different station just so I can tell them how much they suck.
Christopher, if you need a fix of solid NPR news and talk and don’t have to pay an hourly rate for your internet connection, tryMichigan Radio. You get all the usuals plus Todd Mundt and both hours of Talk of the Nation, which I can’t get out of my localest station.
, but I figure that Marketplace, Click and Clack, and All Things Considered are popular and underwritten enough that they’d be afloat no matter what. I love 'em all. i really can’t think of a program I won’t listen to, except sometimes the guest folk singers on a Prairie Home Companion. Can’t handle some of that music. I LOOOOVE Calling All Pets, but they don’t carry it here.