Pledge to KPCC SoCalif Public Radio, Win a 2007 Prius by Nov 2

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(HBO6 @ Oct 20 2006, 05:09 PM) [snapback]335917[/snapback]</div>

Which package?

 

Why I don't subscribe to Public Radio:

I did, for years, until I gave it some thought.

1) It used to be called "commercial-free radio." No More. They have more commercials than your local Top 20 station. And they are bad commercials, mostly a recitation of URL addresses given without a hint of creativity or listener interest. The companies and organizations they feature are seldom those that any average person has a use for. They break up perfectly good discussions to remind us of some later program and ask us to go to www.reallyuselesscompany.com for some really useless information.

2) For about a whole month each year, your "favorite" station does little more than beg for your money. Even if you had given it to them, you have to listen to brain-numbing, hour after hour pleas for cash. Subscribing doesn't gain you anything here. Dumb "matching funds," as if anybody really believed in them, and hourly quotas that are never met nor commented on the next hour.... This is the most unintellectual medium you can imagine.

3) Although they claim that listener sponsorship is the main source of their support, never do you hear the listener rewarded. Just once they could say, "This traffic break was brought to you by the generous contribution of Joe Shmuck." But they don't.

4) Public radio is a smörgåsbord. Each station subscribes to programs that its station manager selects and the listeners, the fund-givers, are never asked for their choice. You pay, they chose.

5) You might think this is a cop out for me, cheap guy that I am. But I subscribe to XM radio, at a greater required cost, and get Public Radio in the bargain. Why pay twice? And when they go off on their marathon fund raisings, I can switch to another equally interesting station.

More reasons will come to me later, but this is a good start.