What ever is left over from my Walmart shopping trip, goes to NPR.

How many cookies did it cost to get him on the show?

Walmart has recently reported record profits. Brian Lehrer makes over $200,000, twelve percent of which goes to taxes.

In Rochester, on WXXI, during a fund drive, the producers had the hosts encourage the public to make donations by trying to tie each donation to what programs got to stay on the air. The problem here might not seem obvious to everyone, but the idea of “public” radio is not served well by saying the only programs that will be saved are ones where the listeners can afford to donate. A dollar to vote, is not democratic. Over the past few years I have not heard this strategy get used, not at least in the Hudson Valley/Albany and New York City area. However, I do believe the appeals made by on-air personalities have been riddled with false pretense.

Annoying, is the frequency of the drives; it feels like its monthy, but WNYC has their’s quarterly. That’s 4 times a year, about 8 percent of WNYC’s air time, same as New York’s sales tax. Most of NPR’s listeners, like myself, do not know where that money goes, exactly. The fundraisers explain, vaguely, that their donation helps put said programing on air, and online, but never has to justify it’s budget, and funding methods. Noticeable are the many programs that have been underwritten by ExxonMobil, Merk, and for a time many by AIG.

I would like to propose that even if NPR had all the money it needed to operate effectively and efficiently, it would still guilt people into donating to increase its revenue. That anybody has any responsibility to donate is bologna. I suspect that NPR is another poorly managed greedy corporation, shutting down jobs unnecessarily (last year, they cut jobs by 7%, while reaching a record audience), and over paying executives; many of whom make $200,000-$400,000 annually; in some cases over $600,000. McDonald’s founder’s widow willed almost a quarter billion to NPR in 2003. NPR then increased their annual budget from 100 million to 150 million. Still, WNYC asks for money.

What would happen if people stopped donating? Before 1983 fund drives were not necessary. Member stations are NPR subscribers, and raise funds for their subscriptions and operation costs.
WFMU’s budget is 1.6 million annually.
WNYC has an operating budget of 56 Million.
[on the side: WNYC used to be a SUNY institution, where revenue provided support for the city, until 1997, when it was sold to "WNYC-Radio" for 20 million]
BBC is funded by British tax payers, and American subscribers like WNYC.
To answer the question, what would happen, is WNYC would have to look somewhere else for funding. Perhaps, lobby for state funding; maybe, reincorporate into the SUNY sytem and city budget. It would remain on the air, and they would have to seek progressive means of financing if they could not get enough from. Financing by fund drive has become a tax on those who are susceptible to guilt, the emotionally vulnerable.

You are doing anyone any favor donating, but you are giving money to an already well financed institution that pays some people very well; others, very poorly; and encourages their efforts, ensuring further efforts. If you don’t like the drives, don’t donate, you just get more drives.

My real frustration is with lack of transparency, bias in advertising or presenting (the fund drives), and how money is used within a non-democratic corporate institution that carries the auspicious word, Public, in its name. Without proper scrutiny, and with voluntary yet manipulative taxation of middle class liberals (plus a few conservatives, though they often feel entitled to liberal programs anyways), NPR and their local affiliates are destined for further regressive tactics, and whose presupposition on finance, warps content.

I’ll be sending my donations to another station like WFMU, or Democracy Now!

I’ll end my first real online rant, right there.