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Why does WGBH torment its listeners so?
By adamg on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 7:46am
Philil Greenspun runs some numbers, concludes that WGBH on-air fund drives don't bring in enough to cover the costs of annoying listeners and driving away advertisers sponsors and that the non-profit station could make up the difference in the compensation of the 14 vice presidents who made between $200,000 and $350,000 a year in 2006. Because, he says, WGBH no longer has a monopoly for the high brow in Boston:
... I'm listening to CBC Classical right now, which is free of all commercials, free of fundraising solicitations, and streamed at a much higher audio quality than WGBH's Internet feed.
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Comments
Unlike public broadcasting stations....
Unlike public broadcasting stations in the United States, the CBC is almost entirely funded by the government. It's an apples to oranges comparison.
One of the people commenting
One of the people commenting on the blog had some really points. Donating money, even small sums, connects people to the cause at hand. That may be very important to the station, to maintain their core listener base. When I was younger one of my friends mothers was an avid PBS fan and would give them 100 dollars so she could carry the 1 dollar tote bag around. It made her happy.
It also shows grant people that yes they are trying to collect money, in fact they are trying to collect money from the people using the service! This could be an intricate part to rationale behind the scenes.
In a way it also tells them how many of their listeners are actually enjoying themselves. After adjusting for economic conditions if pledge dollars go up or down by 10 percent that is a strong indicator for what people are thinking about the station this year.
Finally, this is a free service. Are you offended that these people, for one week out of the year, spend some time reminding you of the free service? Is that the real problem here? 20 minutes out of 60 minutes is not all that bad actually, it is less then what commercial stations do on a daily basis all year round.
more than one week a year
I know it's not the case, but the pitch seasons for public TV and radio SEEM to be omnipresent, which is one reason why viewers/listeners might be driven away.
For public TV, at least, it may appear that way because they re-run many of their best programs in conjunction with fundraising drives, so viewers who are not tethered to public TV are exposed to it mostly during these times.
As for WGBH radio, all I can say is that if you wake up to the repetitive pitches of a fundraising drive, it's like experiencing Groundhog Day before you even get out of bed.
The 14 highly paid VPs raised my eyebrows. Tossing stones from a glass house (i.e., as an employee of a university), I'm very familiar with the genetic tendency of non-profits to keep adding/promoting layers of administrators to the payroll.
That said, we should appreciate the fact that we enjoy some of the best public TV and radio offerings in the country here. I'm not a regular viewer/listener, but I do recognize that we're fortunate to have these resources.
It's stupid to waste money
So you're basically donating money to pay for:
- prizes given in exchange for donations
- overpaid administrators
- conducting the fundraising
I should expect this kind of reasoning from you at this point, but I just can't let this one pass.
Your conduct encourages the station in ITS conduct, which does no good for anyone, and we've already seen the testimony that it drives away listeners... drives me away, that's for sure, and that's just a bummer all around.
there are other ways to raise money. A yak-fest by self-important executives isn't a particularly good method, and GBH needs to join the rest of us in the 21st century.
Well you are being so very
Well you are being so very catty this morning, go grab yourself some coffee or something.
I was never a public radio/tv type of person, I honestly never thought it was any good. So I have also never given them any money either. I guess Im not part of the problem, sorry to break the bad news to you. BTW I would suggest you check out the local walks for different causes, or any number of other charity events in the area. Many of them tend to be zero sum, and some in fact have ended up costing more then they make... Big donors want to see little donors, and little donors cost more to find. Im sorry if that is offensive to you but it is the truth. To get the million dollar check you need to show them that you can get 100,000 from 10,000 people. The same was also true of Obama in the election, much was said of his million donors, but the truth is most of the money came from the big guns. This is not my rationale, its the way this world works buddy.
I do have to say that I do enjoy the BBC for news and some entertainment. That is public TV/News that I can enjoy.
Not really
merely repeating what you said, and others
the money from fundraising, pays for the fundraising and some nonessentials.
that's a huge waste.
I do believe you tossed in a
I do believe you tossed in a little comment about expecting that sort of reasoning from me... I found it a little catty
But ...
don't cats love the milkman?
Normal cats love the
Normal cats love the milkman, kool kats love the shadymilkman
And, of course, Edie Massey ...
Loves the eggman.
Eggs! R.I.P. Edie
Eggs!
R.I.P. Edie
One more reason
That horrible, grating "made for newspapers" voice of Delores Handy that you're forced to listen to when the stream starts (or restarts)... and in various station breaks as well.
I almost built a Handy-voice detector to turn down the audio when she's on, but as the poster notes it was easier to just listen to other stations.
Listen to the Vorbis stream.
Listen to the Vorbis stream. No annoying intro, much better quality.
(I would gladly double my monthly contribution for continued access to this if they set it up that way...)
Delores Handy wtf
Srsly, dude. She freakin' PRONOUNCES WORDS WRONG. None of her weird pronunciations seem to fit with any dialect or speech impediment I can possibly come up with (I'm pretty well-versed in linguistics, and believe me, I've tried to make sense out of her vowel issues, and I just can't. Unless it's a really obscure dialect, there isn't one where vowels are arbitrarily fronted and backed irrespective of the phonemes surrounding them. And it doesn't seem to be a speech impediment, because she'll pronounce a word some weirdass way, then pronounce the same string in a different word totally typically).
"Gusts of wend." What? That isn't how you say that.
And yeah, the glottal fry and the unsupported speaking. Ugh. Someone missed some basics in terms of voice use when doing public speaking.
(For the record, I'm quite an advocate of nondiscrimination in terms of accents and/or speech issues. When someone has intelligent things to say and speaks in an atypical way, then sure, I'm happy to listen to that person, and it's just another example of diversity making the world beautiful. But when your job is to read the headlines and the weather forecasts? Then they're basically hiring the person for his or her voice, so I expect an average typical speaking voice to be a job requirement.)
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
If you have 14 vice
If you have 14 vice presidents, you are doing something wrong....
And...
... if you have 14 mice-presidents, you need ShadyMilkMan to bring over all of his kool kats :-)
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
But what if they aren't mice presidents?
Do you have ShadyMilkman lead all the kool kats over to the Mouse of Representatives?
I want to know more about the 14 vice-presidents
13 more than the USA has (and all of them better paid).
That's a lot of vice
Not sure I want to know about the minutes of their meetings.
Double clicked
Sorry