Yanno, you’re not required to accept the gifts.
My npr station isn’t really doing a pledge drive this year. Once a show or so they do their spiel about how they need the money and say that if people will go on line and pledge they won’t need to roll out the whole big old pledge machine. This takes maybe a minute. They have done this a couple of times and say that as long as they can meet their goals and operating expenses they won’t need to do a full scale pledge.
buttonjockey308 Quote:
Originally Posted by fishbicycle
Not a single penny of that money went to a single affiliate station in the country. It went into the investment coffers of NPR, to keep their business going, upgrade facilities, buy equipment and the like.
If I understand it correctly, NPR’s revenue is essentialy what it gets from the federal government ( I sort of remember this being about 10% ) and what it gets from the affiliates. It gets none of the pledge money except in the same sense that McDonalds gets payed by your employer. Alot of NPR programing is damn expensive. They have reporters all over the world. Those are expensive. The satilite equipment is very expensive, and at the time of the kroc money landing they were working with equipment several generations old, and the Federal money was starting to dry up.
NPR probably will have to find a way to stop using federal money completely, very soon. I think that there are strings that are being put on that money that are becoming impossible to deal with, and meet their mission.
Icky, sorry for the copy/paste residue.
Yeah, that was gnarly! But you are right, and you have the idea. NPR has been in the process of rolling out a nationwide, digital program delivery system called Content Depot. It ties in with the FCC mandate that all broadcast stations will eventually become digital. They have to buy all that stuff to convert from analog to digital, and the multiple terabytes of storage and other computer facilities that will enable programs to be uploaded to stations automatically. This will do away with the multiple satellite feeds they have to carry presently, and the millions of dollars they have to spend anually for rental space on the satellites and the upkeep of the transmission equipment. That’s where a good deal of the Kroc money is going.
Pledge money pays for programs. “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” are sold as a package. It costs nearly $300,000. That takes care of six hours of the day. Stations have to come up with the same kind of figure to pay for the rest of the national shows they carry. Or, they have to hire people on the cheap, or work with volunteers, to play CDs of jazz and classical music because they can’t afford Talk Of The Nation or Diane Rehm or Fresh Air. And/or they must buy programs from other distributors that cost less, and are therefore less interesting or compelling, which in turn, makes people change the station.
Most, if not all, NPR affiliates are owned and operated by a university. Some of their money comes from there. The rest of the money they need to operate comes from constantly applying for grants, and underwriting by local businesses.
I don’t speak for NPR, and I have no axe to grind. I’m trying to fight a bit of ignorance here. For any person to figure that they can quit supporting their local station because Ray Kroc gave NPR millions of dollars, well, that’s just ignorant.
FWIW, I personally don’t support my public stations because they suck, not because I think they’re rolling in the dough.
Try the oppposite on. If you, and other people, supported them, maybe they could afford to buy programming that doesn’t suck.
Perhaps if I supported the generic station at a generic time, but as I’ve said, that’s not the case with pledge drives. If I pledge during their drive they’ll surely take this as support of the same stuff the pledge drive consisted of, and I’ll be treated to instead of quality programming, more reality tv and warmed-over old pop acts. Granted, that grouping includes Heart during SoundStage, but…
They didn’t show them during the drive! If Heart, or someone I liked just as much, had played during the drive I would have felt more like donating. But I don’t want to feel as if I’m encouraging them to put on more bad programming.
And making my mind known by simply writing them is out, too. I’ve tried that and the responses I’ve gotten have made it clear they don’t care what I think. I don’t even think I mentioned whether I was a member or not. If they don’t listen before I join, why should they listen after I join (“coaxed” by a drive far removed from the programming I actually want,) as their responses didn’t imply they listen to members more than the public.
On the other hand, to be fair my public station has improved over the past couple years. But it still shows enough reality TV/Antiques Roadshow, and has long enough and intensive enough pledge drives (which are only a couple times a year thankfully,) that I wouldn’t really care if it went under or not. A couple years ago, I actively wanted the station to fold so a new one could take its place that might be better.
Oh, you’re talking about TV. Even though there is a TV station on the other side of the building where I work, I know next-to-nothing about funding support for PBS affiliates. And I’ve never watched the channel. Unresponsive management is a poor business model, for sure. We have people calling us all the time to complain or praise, but that feedback never comes near me. But we listen to the people who support us. I remember having to watch the pledge drives on the Buffalo, NY PBS station to tape unique music programs (stupid numbers on the bottom of the screen…) that they would never show at any other time. And their pitching people were some of the most shrill, obnoxious persons ever to step in front of a camera.
I do know that without exception, all the NPR stations in Florida south of I-10 are hurtin’ for professionalism. In Orlando, all you guys have going for you is Pat Duggins, who does all the national bits from the Space Center. None of those other stations have enough funding to be able to afford to do all-talk or all-music. They must do a mix of the two. We are one of the few places in the country who have both kinds of stations. Two fairly unobtrusive drives a year cover them both.
I can’t speak for anywhere else, but KUHF and KUHT (public radio and TV respectively) here in Houston are run off the University of Houston campus in the same building. I’m reasonably certain that at least the radio station does not receive school funds directly, because they make a point of clearly mentioning it during their pledge drives. I think it’s due to a Texas law. I’m not sure who actually owns their building.
The radio station where I volunteer, WTJU, is a public “college” station, not NPR. All our programs originate from the station, and all announcers are volunteers. Additionally, each announcer completely programs his/her show each week. We hold fund drives twice a year. My particular show is a weekly “post-modern experimental avant garde” type of show. You know… clanging, moaning, eerie ambient etc…
During our fund drives (the next one comes up in early November) we announcers all have special editions of our shows. We might focus on an artist, a label, a specific music genre, or perhaps a theme. I’ll be doing a show playing music from the “Tesco” label in Germany on the November 10th edition of my show. It ain’t likely to generate much money…but the music is some really awesome and challenging stuff heard nowhere else in Virginia. The idea is we research, collect interesting music and rarities, and tie this week of one special show after another with requests for cash. It’s a lot of fun…and I hope not too painful for the listener.
None of us have any specific fund-raising training other than a couple of meetings just prior to the week-long event. Some of us are probably annoying, though the word from above is to try and be positive, even if no one is calling and pledging. Occasionally some neophyte may try to lay the guilt on a bit too heavy—and I’m sure listeners just turn us off then. Grr.
I’ll try to learn from this thread and be as inoffensive and unobtrusive as possible. Still, without community funding, our station would go off the air. We get a lot of good local press for our unique programming, and rarely get complaints about obnoxious silly fundraising chatter.
Or repeatedly. 
Biotop --what I would like to see/hear is some honesty.
Can’t someone just say “look we hate to come begging every year, too–but why not help us out now so that we can interrupt less often and less intrusively?” or"you want that program to stay? Pony up, already!"
Get a Soprano on to do it right. Or a British comedian–something.
If I see Marty Robinson (actually, I think he may be dead) one more time schilling for WTTW, I may suffer brainstem meltdown.
I think I would almost rather have someone shaking a baseball bat on TV and saying, “shakedown time again!” than the genteel, honeyed tones of middle upper class guilt wafting over the airwaves.
It’s so annoying–more so AFTER you pledge. Then you still have to listen to the drone.
NPR is almost un-listenable to (there’s a phrase for ya!). Maybe it’s just ‘cause they are preaching to the choir with me and I don’t need the education. I dont’ know–all I know is that I would rather watch Barney than listen to even a minute of pledge drive.
Sorry. I know you have to do it, and I know you don’t like to. I just wish it were different.
I understand that they need the money. And I’d love to call in and pledge during my favorite show, so they’ll keep it on the air. But they always run a “special edition” (read, extra-long) version of a more popular show and take my favorite off the air at just the time they should be trying to make me happy.