They do this with Rick Steves’ shows around here. I know him from the travel guides only, and was surprised to see that he apparently has a PBS show. Then they actually ran some as part of a pledge drive and I got to see what people were talking about. But still not a regular series.
Yarg! I cxan sympathise. I hate beg-o-thons. It is the only time PBS is turned OFF in my house. Let’s see…How many times must we be forced to watch “The Storied life of Millie Benton”? I’m an Ohioan fer Chrissake! no more Macanaw(or however ya spell it) bridge allready! I’ve been Rocked, rythemed and doowoped through the 50’s and don’t care much for the blues either!
You folks who only get the Red Green specials don’t know what you’re missing! Perhaps a kindly Canadian can have some pitty for you and send a tape. Give Steve Smith another Gemini already!
You NW Ohioans/SW Michiganders…Steve Smith… Bowling Green Ohio(that’s 75 south about a half hour after Toledo. Get off at the Stadium) Cla-Zel on Main.7 & 9 is sold out but tickets still available for the 4 & 2. THIS Sunday the 25th. Duct Tape Forever!
We were watching the Simon & Garfunkel concert the other night on our PBS station, which of course was stretched out due to the many pledge breaks.
I have no problem with PBS. I’ve even considered pledging. Unfortunately, [I point I made in jest as we watched], if I call up and pledge, they don’t turn off the damn pledge breaks for the remainder of the drive!!!
So even if I give money, there’s still crap on, and there are still pledge breaks!
Oh well. Truly I don’t watch PBS too much, but I listen to PBS radio, and the same arguments apply there. I guess I just grin & bear it, and thank heavens it isn’t like that 24/7 all year.
It’s not supposed to “mean” anything! Grant & Naylor wanted some all-purpose swear word and the “smegma” connotation is just a coincidence. At least that’s their official line on the subject.
Jeff, did their coining of the word “smegma” pre- or postdate Monty Python’s use of it?
I remember Georgia Public Television having a “Quiet on the Set” pledge drive many years ago. No screeching people begging for money and interrupting the shows, only Bob “Captain Kangaroo” Keeshen popping in BETWEEN shows to remind us to donate.
http://www.m-w.com dates “smegma” from circa 1819, so neither RD nor MP coined the actual word. As to who first used it in a derogatory sense…well, the definition practically begs it.
I’ll bet that’s their “official” line on the subject. 
Homer: I pledge $10,000 to make them shut up. From, uh… ‘Anonymous’.
–Pledging is not getting more frequent, but the content may be getting old.
PBS sets aside three periods each year for local pledging, March, August and December. The August drive should be over as of right now.
You should have smooth sailing on PBS until just after Thanksgiving.
This assumes your local station does not schedule an art auction or some other individual drive in between.
Broadcast rights to several Welk specials that have appeared during pledge since mid-1999 will expire on Sept. 1.
There’s another Welk special that will be videotaped over two days in Branson (August 30 and 31) that will rear it’s head during next year’s March drive. Tickets to that special are already sold out.
Doug Bowe… that last paragraph scared me. Mostly that you knew that information.
One of my secret fantasies for when I win the mega-million lottery is to wait for WTTW’s next pledge drive and when they announce “we need to raise $1 million during the next week” I walk into the studio with a suitcase full of money, hand it to the announcer along with a list of what they’re going to air non-stop, without pledge breaks, for the next week, and tell everyone to go home. Part of the fantasy also included giving Marty Whatsisname a tracheotomy with a rusty sardine can lid, but apparently somebody beat me to it, as he is no longer on the air.
Sick fantasy aside, :D, if you actually did this, say, give your state’s PBS system enough money to cover their budget for the year, would they stop the begfests?
I think so. I know when I’m listening to public radio during pledge drives they say how much they need to make and state that the sooner they get to that amount, the sooner they can quit interrupting our favorite shows and asking us for it. The town I grew up in as a kid one year had a “pledgeless pledge drive.” They had a few commercials between shows saying “It’s coming up on pledge time, but if you all just send in your money NOW we can just skip it.” Apparently this got a HUGE response and they in fact DID skip the pledge drive and changed the adverts to say “Thanks for making the pledgeless pledge drive such a success!”
At least they haven’t shown any John Tesh. :eek:
APT tried a pledge drive once where they had set goals for each break. If they reached the goal before the end of the scheduled break, they went back to the programming immediately - or that was the plan anyway. After that one time, they never tried it again. They probably figured out that even people in Alabama have remote controls for their TVs and could just flip back when it was over.
I’ve wondered about this as well. PBS makes a big deal about being commercial free but all they really do, in effect, is save up all their commercials and run them all at once. As for running the “good stuff” during pledge breaks, well, I have my doubts. What I really wonder is why they seem to show the same stuff over and over and over again. Then, the big incentive to pledge is, “We’ll send you your own copy of the very same program we’ve already aired four times this week!” Yay . . .
All I can figure is that it must be cheaper somehow.
What they ought to do is get something brand new and really engrossing, a new Mystery!, for example. Then, about 3/4 of the way through, they ought to stop and hold a pledge break. “OK, you people, We’re holding Diana Rigg hostage until we get $23,000. Get those phones ringing 'cause we’re not gonna finish the show until we get our money. We’ll sit here all night if we have to.”
I think it was Grant who who suggested to use “smeg.” Both have since claimed that they had no idea that some people use it as an abbreviation.