September 25, 2008
05:59 am
Morning Preemption
KQED public radio here in the San Francisco Bay area likes to tell us, during their pledge drives, of the millions of dollars they spend to bring us NPR programming.
Well, in the last half hour, between pledge breaks and the local "California Report," they didn't actually play ANY "Morning Edition" at all, except for 2 seconds' worth when the board operator mistakenly returned us to NPR programming instead of the beg-a-thon.
Even during non-pledge times, KQED plays the bare minimum of NPR programming, cutting in over and over with "The California Report" as well as such inanities as "Perspectives," an annoying segment wherein locals can take to the radio and complain, tell stories, and generally force millions of listeners to groan.
At least once a week, they don't air the complete 2-hour "All Things Considered," instead they shorten it by a half hour to make room for yet another California Report. Often, I'll switch over to another NPR affiliate in the Bay Area -- whose signal is not strong enough to receive all the time wherever I am -- only to find that they are playing a segment that I never heard on KQED, and which is often the most interesting story.
I won't be pledging to KQED this year. I so rarely manage to get to listen to what I want on that station, I simply keep switching back to it to see if my shows are back on or preempted. You know, like one does with commercial television. Why should I pay for that?
It seems to me that KQED can fix their money problem in one fell swoop: stop paying for the NPR programming they never air.
KQED public radio here in the San Francisco Bay area likes to tell us, during their pledge drives, of the millions of dollars they spend to bring us NPR programming.
Well, in the last half hour, between pledge breaks and the local "California Report," they didn't actually play ANY "Morning Edition" at all, except for 2 seconds' worth when the board operator mistakenly returned us to NPR programming instead of the beg-a-thon.
Even during non-pledge times, KQED plays the bare minimum of NPR programming, cutting in over and over with "The California Report" as well as such inanities as "Perspectives," an annoying segment wherein locals can take to the radio and complain, tell stories, and generally force millions of listeners to groan.
At least once a week, they don't air the complete 2-hour "All Things Considered," instead they shorten it by a half hour to make room for yet another California Report. Often, I'll switch over to another NPR affiliate in the Bay Area -- whose signal is not strong enough to receive all the time wherever I am -- only to find that they are playing a segment that I never heard on KQED, and which is often the most interesting story.
I won't be pledging to KQED this year. I so rarely manage to get to listen to what I want on that station, I simply keep switching back to it to see if my shows are back on or preempted. You know, like one does with commercial television. Why should I pay for that?
It seems to me that KQED can fix their money problem in one fell swoop: stop paying for the NPR programming they never air.
posted by Gene Cowan | category The War with the Customer
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