Thursday, April 30, 2009

5,400?

I heard this morning on WUNC that they are up to 5,400 contributors for this travel lottery fund raiser. They keep talking about how much left to be raised, but I don't hear them say how much they have actually raised in payments and pledges. It would be interesting to know how this compares with efforts in previous years.

Naturally for WUNC, there is no information at all on the status of the fund raiser on their website.

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They seem to be saying the number has now gone above 6,000 as of the morning of 1 May.

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Still nothing on the WUNC website about the results, but I think they said on-air today - 5 May - that 7,500 people had contributed or pledged to contribute later.

7 comments:

W said...

yes. This has got to be one of the worst stations when it comes to openness. They seem so insular.
Unlike some stations, they don't even use the 'member' concept where donors become members. My suspicion is they don't in order to avoid having to be accountable to anyone but themselves or their deep pocketed donors.
I've known stations in the past which would actually air an hour of talk and phone calls where the subject was the station itself. They would do this about once a quarter. Why doesn't the usually unbearable State of Things program do an hour on the station?

Terry MAGUIRE said...

You make very good points.

When I checked yesterday, there was nothing on the WUNC website about the final results of their fund-raising exercise. I'd like to see totals presented in a year-to-date fashion and comparing this year with other years....among many other things!

W said...

I wonder if WUNC gets free rent at american tobacco in exchange for mentioning so often that it's a place to work, live and play.

And why does their afternoon host "Katherine Brond" have such a breath-y delivery? What's the point of that?

And what's with this Marketplace show being on in the afternoon and morning? Why so much business news?

And what determines which shows get aired twice on the weekend? You mean Car Talk is worth two airings? Maybe so if fundraising is your only goal?

WUNC: the station with no disclosure and no room for criticism.

w said...

no posts in a month and a half? where's the author of this blog?

Let me get back to complaining about the monopoly public radio station we are unfortunately saddled with.

What's up with all the time wunc spends on self-promotion. Someone should calculate how much time they spend saying "bringing the world home to you, north carolina public radio. wunc." And how many times do they have to try to impress with "HD-" whatever? And their oh-so-clever choices of musical segues. What a waste of airtime, which is a violation of the privilege of being the monopoly public radio station around here.

Another complaint is the way they think that their local people have to read the half hour headlines -- which are written by the npr anyway. what a waste.
And so often they intercede over npr news with local reporting which is usually crap. long winded stories, usually about things that are well enough covered elsewhere.

w said...

Now WUNC is warning us that they are going to extort more money out of their shafted listeners (probably) with more of their happy hosts hawking vacation trips.
Before they go asking for more money when they already probably get free rent and already have about as many sponsor announcements as would be the case if they were openly (rather than merely subtly) commercial, there ought to be some disclosure. What kind of salaries are they paying out? How much is being spent on the un-listenable and uninteresting State of Things and The Story? I used to like Dick Gordon when he hosted The Connection; 'The Story' is a waste of airtime and possibly contributed funds -- we'd know better if there was disclosure.

w said...

Anybody know how WUNC organized? Is it a non profit corp? It is under the state? Are their employees state employees? Is it subject to open records laws?

w said...

As a listener, I find it insulting that WUNC airs its self-promotion "my source" testimonials on airtime that would otherwise be utilized for national news. I have listened to 91.9 WFSU and 90.3 PRE to see that at the same time when these inane promotions are airing on WUNC 91.5, the other stations are broadcasting national news. Apparently WUNC management thinks its self-promotion is more important than information and news.