WORT News - Nathan's weekly dig

Just came across Action Wisconsin's continuing blog coverage of the WI State Assembly's efforts to take away more freedoms and rights. On November 7th of this year, Wisconsiners are likely to find a proposed amendment to the state Constitution on their ballots. The proposed amendment would permanently ban marriage and civil unions for gay and lesbian couples in our state.

I want to use this space to plus the Action Wisconsin blog: http://noontheamendment.blogspot.com/

Also, tune in to Queery on WORT 89.9 FM every Wednesday at 7:00pm for continuing coverage of this and other LGBT-related issues in Wisconsin. You're also likely to hear updates on these issues on programs like Her Turn (Sundays at 11am), In Our Backyard (Mon, Wed, Thurs at 6:30pm), and the 8 O'clock Buzz (Mon-Fri at 8am).

So if you've tuned in to the station anytime in the past six days, you've likely heard phrases like, "pledge your support..." and myriad entreaties to convince you why your financial support of WORT is important at this time. You've probably heard the phone number 256-2001 about seventy billion times. We're approaching the halfway point of our Winter 2006 "World Wide WORT" pledge drive.

Before I go on, let me put in a plug here - we do need your financial support to keep this station running. So go ahead and call us at 256-2001 or donate online .

Why do we ask for money so much during these 14-day pledge drives? The answer is quite simple. Listeners account for some 63% of our annual budget. That's nearly two-thirds. So we truly do rely on listeners - like you - to keep us running. To pay the phone bill and heating bill. To pay for satellite programming like Democracy Now and BBC News. To pay for improvements to our studio, or to cover the cost of computer equipment. To pay my salary - so that the station news operations run more smoothly and cover the communities within our community as best we can.

The rest of the money comes from a variety of sources. Underwriting accounts for 12% or so. An annual grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is another 16%. Events, record sales, and miscellanous other income trickles account for the rest. So in other words, all of our funding except for the CPB comes from local sources and WORT listeners. The business underwriters are also listeners, and we only take underwriting from local companies. That means that 84% of our money comes straight from the local community we serve.

So we do pledge drives. We go on the air to ask for your donations, and we fund our annual operating budget one donation at a time. We don't ask everyone to contribute a crazy amount of money... just $40 will get you our newsletter for a year and a lovely thank-you gift. Our average pledge is just $57. Many other stations push the really big donations, asking for hundreds of dollars. We encourage those, too, if you can afford it, but we recognize that in a community like ours, not everyone is doing so well financially. So we ask for *lots* of smaller donations.

This approach - many, many smaller donations - is labor intensive. It takes a lot of effort to pull of a pledge drive. Frankly, sometimes it makes me a little bit stir-crazy. But it's our way of doing grassroots fundraising. I've often fantasized about someone laying about ten million bucks on us, so that we could live off the interest and not have to do pledge drives. Or perhaps we could just do pledge drives for our capital projects. But that would seperate us from our base of listeners. It would seperate us from our roots in the community, our direct connections to people in the community, and that would be a great loss. Our fundraising is just another one of the ways that we stay connected and rooted with the people like you that we serve. It's also one of the few quantifiable ways that we stay tied in.

That said, if you or someone you know is a WORT-lover and has ten million to send our way, we'll put it to good use. : )

# posted by WORTNews @ 9:59 AM 0 comments

Howdy Madisonians--

For those of you in far-flung places, Wisconsin is currently being blanketed in snow. How many inches so far? I don't know. Enough such that two of my coworkers and several of our volunteers haven't been able to make it in today.

For those of you reading this locally, I wanted to post some of the closings and snow-related news that I know about so far today:

-- 6-8 horses somehow escaped from UW-Madison and are "running wild" in the Campus Drive/University Ave. area, says Madison Police Dept. officer Mike Hanson.

-- "Recovering in Mental Health" program, scheduled for 7pm at Temple Beth El has been cancelled.

-- James C. Wright Middle School is cancelling tonight's African American History Celebration. It is rescheduled for tomorrow evening, Fri. Feb. 17, 6-8pm

-- Town meeting for S.A.I.L. (Support for Active Independent Living) has been postponed to Wednesday, Feb. 23 at 10am at Blackhawk Church.

-- All Microsoft events and workshops scheduled for the Alliante Energy Center for this afternoon are cancelled. (Nevermind their operating system...)

-- Dane County Airport is NOT closed, but there are many delays. Check http://www.flightview.com/TravelTools/ViewAirport.asp?airport=MSN for regular updates.

-- East and West Towne malls are closed this afternoon.

-- Herzing College is closed today.

-- Lakeland College is closed today.

-- All MATC branches are closed today.

-- Edgewood College classes are cancelled today.

-- No Kindergarten registration today at Stoughton Schools.

-- Upper Iowa University is closed today.

-- UW-Baraboo and UW-Rock Co. classes are cancelled today.

-- UW-Whitewater is cancelling its night classes today (Feb. 16).

-- The roads are shitty. Stay home, drink a hot totty, listen to WORT 89.9 FM.

Yes, "cheap" does belong in quotes, especially when I remember that gas was less than a buck a gallon when I graduated from high school in 1998. Nowadays, I don't actually drive a car on a daily basis. I mostly bus or bike to WORT, depending on the weather. (I experimented with winter biking a couple years ago, but that didn't go so well.) But my wife has a car that we share, so I fill it up once in a while.

In case you haven't heard about it, there are several gas price comparison sites out there. One that relies on the participation of everybody is http://www.gaspricewatch.com. "Spotters" report prices they see around town. Unfortunately, not too many people use it for Madison.

Another one is here: http://www.automotive.com/gas-prices/33/wisconsin/dane/madison/ It's mostly a car sales site, but hey, if the shoe fits...

Of course, we'll be in far better shape when there's an honestly viable alternative to the inherently unsustainable fossil fuel dominance. But for now, it's tough for us to be as useful to each other without using oil-fueled transport of some sort. In the meantime, may as well spend less to get around.

Woohoo, WORT now has a high-quality webstream!

Actually, it's been up and running for about a week now. I've just been so busy here at the station gearing up for our Winter '06 pledge drive, which starts this coming Sunday.

So next time you're traveling to Caracas, Kathmandu, Constantinople, or Canada, point your internet browser to http://lists.wort-fm.org/testsite/stream.shtml

For most of the last year, WORT listeners have enjoyed WORT’s lower-quality stream of its news and public affairs programs. Now, you can tune in via the internet for any WORT show – news, public affairs and music.

WORT's new webstream will be a 96K MP3 stream. That's better than the quality of most car radios, and much better quality than WORT's older 32K webstream. Both the 32K and 96K streams will continue to run in parallel, since some listeners with slower internet connections may still prefer using the lower bandwidth stream.

The 96K stream is really nice, especially for news programming. Sounds just like our lovely hosts are sitting next to you. : )

Enjoy!

A couple weeks ago, I taught Mel how to record stuff on the computer here at WORT, and he's just running with it. Can't get enough of it. And he's been recording the Mel & Floyd shows as digital Em-Pee-Three files.

So after he records the shows, I copy them to WORT's online archive server for your perusal and download. Or at least I try to remember to do so.

Those MP3 recordings can be found here:

http://lists.wort-fm.org/archive/Mel%20&%20Floyd/

So far, there are only a couple shows up there - the last couple weeks. Oh, and we also have a recording of the Mel & Floyd live studio audience show from back in 2004. Just a little extra treat for ya.

Careful - each of these files is about 57 megabytes, so give yourself some time for the download.

Alternately, if you want a CD copy of one of these shows, just contact me, Nathan, at and I'll burn you one. We do ask for a suggested donation of ten bucks.

In the meantime, keep enjoying Mel & Floyd and all of WORT's terrific programs!

# posted by WORTNews @ 2:32 PM 1 comments