Do you enjoy public radio?

I drive a lot and prefer PBS — mainly because these kids and their modern music with the hipping and hopping and …. but back to topic.

It bothers me that public radio now has commercials. Isn’t it supposed to be non-commercial? Oh yeah, their are contributors and grants and such. But when revenue started falling off, they started giving more detailed credits to their contributors to convince them to sink money into what is supposed to be a public service. Yes … now instead of one sentence like, “Funding for this program was provided by the Ford Foundation” they give you a full 30 seconds of, “Ford — where the rubber meets the road. See your local Ford Dealer for the new Escalade 9Mz, the going choice of drive-by shootings!”

Then, on their free and unfettered news, they have health spots by Kaiser Wilhelm Permanently Al Dente news service — which is always about what is going on the the Kaiser’s hospital. Did you really think that was NEWS?

And they STILL do their week-long fund drives. But instead of twice a year, they do them monthly.

Do you like public TV? Did you know they show infomercials? And Advertainment? Oh yeah

Every time fund drive comes around (again and again) they show Dr. Whizzbang and his miracle cure for tongue warts — a 90 minute infomercial …. and then Dr. Whizzbang is on during the “break” when they overtly ask for money and give you the 9 DVD collection of Dr. Whizzbang’s entire miracle library.

So has this cut down on listener/viewer contributions to public media? Well … it has cut down on at least this one donor’s contributions (fair disclosure — I used to be one of the dweebs on the phones in the studio — but no more!)

Now … back to classical music. {CLICK}