Baltimore's public radio and television stations are seeing little drop-off in their fundraising efforts, suggesting that their audiences' hunger for news and information during this election year is making up for the country's uncertain economic climate.
Officials at both WYPR-FM (88.1) and WEAA-FM (88.9), which carried out fall pledge drives during the past week, reported totals that were roughly in line with last year's pledge drives, if not slightly over.
The total raised at WYPR, where the February firing of talk-show host Marc Steiner raised a firestorm of protest and threats from many listeners to stop contributing to the station, was up about $5,000, or about 2 percent.
"I think the numbers aren't down because we've got a lot of people listening, and a lot of them realize what the programming provides for them," WYPR program director Andy Bienstock said. "Even if they couldn't give as much as they had, they thought it was important to give something."
Although the average size of the pledge to WYPR was down, Bienstock said, the number of people pledging increased, more than making up the difference. This year's on-air pledge-drive total of $207,592 was nearly $5,000 more than last year's total. But the number of new contributors, or members, was more than 900 this year, compared with 530 in 2007. The number of pledges also climbed, from just under 1,600 last year to more than 2,100 this year, he said.
"The volume of calls was just simply terrific," said Bienstock, who admitted it "had entered my mind" that the recent economic downturn could have spelled trouble for the station.
WYPR's experience was typical of what has been happening throughout the country, said John Sutton, an Annapolis-based consultant on public radio fundraising.
"In difficult times, people count on the news that they get from public radio even more, and are willing to pay for it," he said. "We find that a lot of people are making their first-ever gifts, in the $50 to $75 range."
Recent fundraising results are in line with the historic model, said Boston-based fundraising consultant Jay Clayton.
"If you go back in history and look at the big news stories, like 9/11 and the first and second Iraqi wars, the Iran-contra hearings, people [go to] their public radio stations during these times," he said. "They translate that into the need to give."
