All Fund Raising, All the Time

A local classical music/NPR station has announced a format change, whereby they will devote their entire broadcast day, except for the obligatory mind-numbing 6-hour NPR segment, to fund raising. "We've been getting some complaints about the frequency of membership drives," said a spokesman. "They've gone from annual to semi-annual to quarterly, and we're adding 'mini-drives' in between. We figured it would be more fair to the listeners to just switch over to an all-fund raising format, so they would know what to expect when they tuned in, and not be disappointed when what they expected to be an hour of classical music turns, instead, into an hour of yakking about what a 'good investment in quality programming' your contribution would be." When asked whether a loss of listeners might not be anticipated as a result of this change, he said, "We know there is a core group of loyal listeners out there who are hooked on NPR, since it's their only source of knowledge about the world, or about life in general. They're going to stay tuned in, whether we play music the rest of the time or not. And as for that group of soreheads who listen to the music early in the day but switch stations the minute 'All Things Considered' comes on, we can get along without them. Frankly, we doubt if they donate that much anyway; they're just parasites." Harsh words, coming from a station whose announcers normally speak in hushed, "metrosexual" tones. But it's an interesting experiment, and if it works we can expect many more stations across the country to be following suit.