Pledge Drive

"A voice is a color, it's a sensation, it's impossible to describe." So says Andrea Bocelli in his video "A Night in Tuscany," the PBS pledge-drive favorite that has catapulted the 40-year-old Italian singer to worldwide renown. It's as profound a summation of the human voice as any poet might utter. But Bocelli should know.Listen to him, and you swear you've got a direct line to the angels. The voice is like a richly aged red wine: complex, mysterious, full of notes of sweetness and sadness.

MPT works through the final weekend of its August pledge drive with an evening of programs chosen by you, the viewers (picked according to the number of calls received when the shows aired earlier during the pledge drive). And it looks as if you're a pretty musically inclined bunch.First up is violinist Andre Rieu (5 p.m.-8 p.m.), leading the Strauss Orchestra in a performance that includes "Persian March" by Johann Strauss Jr. and "Radetzky's March" by Johann Strauss Sr. Then comes "Great Moments in Opera" (8 p.m.-9: 30 p.m.)

A word of warning to Channel 13 news junkies who opt to ride out late-ending Orioles games for your daily does of Denise, Al, John and Bob: If the game runs too long, you're going to be out of luck.That's what happened Tuesday night, as the longest nine-inning game in major league history didn't end until after midnight and WJZ went right from the game to "The Late Show with David Letterman.""After a certain time, we know that the news audience just isn't there," says program director Mike Easterling, guessing that most viewers have decided not to watch the news at all or have tuned to other stations ("We hope that doesn't happen," he says)

Howard County's business community has been asked to give $1 million over the next five years to the county Economic Development Authority to promote local economic development, business and county officials said yesterday.Organizers say the authority, a public-private partnership promoting economic development, would use the money to attract and retain medical, health-related and high-tech business and to expand county programs aimed at luring international businesses.The authority would spend about $580,000 of the $1 million to attract new businesses to the county.

It's not often that a public television pledge drive is news. But Maryland Public Television starts a 12-day pledge drive this week that's very big news in terms of the cultural life of Maryland and MPT's future after the firing last month of its controversial president, Raymond K. K. Ho.Let's be honest about pledge drives in general. To many viewers, they are an annoying, tote-bag, phone-bank, guilt trip with people who usually aren't on television (some for obvious reasons) seeming as if they'll never get off the screen.

Maryland Public Television will stage a one-day "mini pledge drive" tomorrow, with special programming and membership solicitation breaks, to make budgetary ends meet for the fiscal year ending June 30.Pledge phone lines will be open from noon to midnight, and programming during those hours includes encore presentations that are among the most requested in the PBS repertoire, said Barry Freidly, MPT director of development.No dollar goal has been set for the drive. Officials noted that MPT staged a similar three-day drive last summer.

Listeners to WJHU-FM (88.1) this week brought the station's winter fund-raising drive to an end a little more than a day earlier than planned, under a new strategy that counted telephone callers rather than dollars.A final money tally was not immediately available, but the station heard from pledge caller number 1,000 early Thursday evening. The drive began Dec. 2.Program director Chris Wienke said the station set 1,000 pledges as the goal, rather than a specific dollar amount, "because we're really talking about the people we need to support the station."

Day 1 of Barney Held Hostage began with a wild-eyed woman on TV screeching at me to send money or else Barney gets it."I SWEAR TO GOD, YOU'LL NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN!" she screamed, face contorted in rage, spittle spraying at the camera. "DO YOU HEAR ME?! NEVER!"OK, fine, maybe she wasn't quite that worked up. And maybe she didn't use those exact words. But there was no mistaking her intent: Get the checkbooks out or . . . well, something very unpleasant could happen to Barney.As it was early in the morning and the first jolt of Folger's had not yet kick-started my brain, it took a few minutes to realize that my 22-month-old son and I were watching public television's spring pledge drive, the whiny annual beg-a-thon that has become broadcasting's version of scraping fingernails across a blackboard.

Maryland Public Television's August pledge drive exceeded its goals of $400,000 and 6,000 new members.The final tally for the 10-day pledge drive was $411,665 collected from 5,626 on-air pledges and 1,688 challenge-grant pledges.The programs that pulled the most dollars included "The Peter, Paul and Mary Marathon," "The Judds -- Their Final Concert," "The Jacques Pepin Live National Pledge Marathon," "The Moody Blues in Concert at Red Rocks," "So Far: The Grateful Dead," "Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti in Concert" and "Mario Lanza: The American Caruso."

Something like the stinging sea nettles that annually drift up the Chesapeake Bay to annoy swimmers, the pledge pitches are once again back on Maryland Public Television.Yes, the traditional membership period returns tonight through Aug. 25, following a one-year break from begging that MPT says did not generate enough contributions from viewers. As in the past, the outstretched palm is accompanied by a slate of special programming aimed at easing the pocketbook pinch.Much of it is musical and much has been seen before.

One-day pledge drive nets WYPR $105,000 WYPR's one-day pledge drive Thursday raised $105,000 for Baltimore's highest-rated public radio station. Combined with money raised in the days leading up to the drive, the station added some $156,000 to its coffers, according to Andy Bienstock, WYPR's program director. This marked the station's first one-day drive, an alternative to the weeklong drives WPYR and other public radio stations have depended on in the past. The total raised was slightly more than the $154,000 brought in during the spring 2007 drive.

The board of directors of WYPR yesterday said its removal of talk-show host Marc Steiner from the Baltimore public radio station in February "will not be undone," in spite of a room full of protesters and a recommendation that it do so from its hand-picked community advisory board. "The decision cannot and will not be reversed," WYPR board chairwoman Barbara Bozzuto told a packed meeting room at the Church of the Redeemer in Baltimore. Steiner, the station's longtime public affairs host, was lauded for his "secure place in the history of WYPR," Bozzuto said.

Baltimore public radio station WYPR-FM has canceled its scheduled pledge drive this month, more than a week after its decision to fire veteran talk-show host Marc Steiner drew anger from fans of the show. Andy Bienstock, station vice president and program director, said yesterday the station will hold a combined winter and spring 2008 fund drive in April. Station management didn't want to hold a drive until a replacement for The Marc Steiner Show was in place, he said. "It's not fair to ask people to contribute without their hearing what we are going to do," Bienstock said.

All good things must come to an end and, alas, so must the public radio spring pledge drive. At 5:50 on Tuesday evening, when Andy Bienstock of Baltimore's WYPR made the disheartening yet inevitable announcement -- only 40 more minutes of on-air fund raising left to go -- we couldn't help but feel a pang of regret. After all, it seemed like just yesterday that we were hearing, for the first time, the rapturous description of the five-color WYPR T-shirt; the engrossing explanation of the station's debts and expenses; the poignant testimonials from prescient community leaders who know we love public radio as much as they do. It was hard to believe it was almost over.

Baltimore talk show host Marc Steiner is in for the pledge drive of his life. As Johns Hopkins University is preparing to put WJHU (88.1 FM) out for bids, Steiner is scrambling to raise at least $5 million to purchase it. "I do not feel personally threatened by the change," Steiner says. "My biggest interest here is creating a station that is locally controlled by a community-based, nonprofit organization." Also leading the effort unveiled yesterday, called Friends of Baltimore Public Radio, are furniture-store owner Gary Levine, an underwriter of the station, and Martha Rudzki, WJHU's marketing director.

"A voice is a color, it's a sensation, it's impossible to describe." So says Andrea Bocelli in his video "A Night in Tuscany," the PBS pledge-drive favorite that has catapulted the 40-year-old Italian singer to worldwide renown. It's as profound a summation of the human voice as any poet might utter. But Bocelli should know.Listen to him, and you swear you've got a direct line to the angels. The voice is like a richly aged red wine: complex, mysterious, full of notes of sweetness and sadness.

MPT works through the final weekend of its August pledge drive with an evening of programs chosen by you, the viewers (picked according to the number of calls received when the shows aired earlier during the pledge drive). And it looks as if you're a pretty musically inclined bunch.First up is violinist Andre Rieu (5 p.m.-8 p.m.), leading the Strauss Orchestra in a performance that includes "Persian March" by Johann Strauss Jr. and "Radetzky's March" by Johann Strauss Sr. Then comes "Great Moments in Opera" (8 p.m.-9: 30 p.m.)

A word of warning to Channel 13 news junkies who opt to ride out late-ending Orioles games for your daily does of Denise, Al, John and Bob: If the game runs too long, you're going to be out of luck.That's what happened Tuesday night, as the longest nine-inning game in major league history didn't end until after midnight and WJZ went right from the game to "The Late Show with David Letterman.""After a certain time, we know that the news audience just isn't there," says program director Mike Easterling, guessing that most viewers have decided not to watch the news at all or have tuned to other stations ("We hope that doesn't happen," he says)

It's not often that a public television pledge drive is news. But Maryland Public Television starts a 12-day pledge drive this week that's very big news in terms of the cultural life of Maryland and MPT's future after the firing last month of its controversial president, Raymond K. K. Ho.Let's be honest about pledge drives in general. To many viewers, they are an annoying, tote-bag, phone-bank, guilt trip with people who usually aren't on television (some for obvious reasons) seeming as if they'll never get off the screen.

Maryland Public Television will stage a one-day "mini pledge drive" tomorrow, with special programming and membership solicitation breaks, to make budgetary ends meet for the fiscal year ending June 30.Pledge phone lines will be open from noon to midnight, and programming during those hours includes encore presentations that are among the most requested in the PBS repertoire, said Barry Freidly, MPT director of development.No dollar goal has been set for the drive. Officials noted that MPT staged a similar three-day drive last summer.