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6 August 2005
KCET Pledge Drive
One of the down sides to public television broadcasting is the ever constant need to run pledge drives to encourage viewers to make contributions for the sustenance of the television channel. Notwithstanding the recent political controversy about public television's liberal leanings, PBS barely managed to retain its federal funding. Still the station and its network of local television stations must continuously strive to increase viewer funding in contrast to how everyone necessarily needs to fund the upkeep of the BBC in the United Kingdom.This evening KCET, PBS' Los Angeles and Southern California arm, broadcast the debut concert of a new Celtic group calling themselves Celtic Woman. The concert featured a host of fine-looking divas in shimmering evening gowns with pencil-nib sized headsets lining their cheeks. As opposed to more flamboyant Celtic music performances that I have been to, most of the good music at the Celtic Woman concert came from the support vocals, the choir and the orchestra rather than from the women themselves who merely had to flaunt their frills, mellifluous voices and had to bob up and down gently (I was however soon to be corrected by a woman with Rapunzel-tresses gambolling around with her fiddle).
But the funniest moments during the programming came from KCET's pledge drives. Not very unlike most other television solicitation events and sponsored mini-programs, the pledge drive featured a man and a woman constantly piping the merits of supporting KCET, about how it presents a "safe haven for children, balanced views in its news programs" and about how the children learn their rhymes from Sesame Street, the artists are "inspired" from concerts like Celtic Woman. In the backdrop there are three rows of busy-looking middle-aged men and women, all "amazing, enthusiastic... and well-dressed" -- it seemed to matter to those who make their contributions on the phone during a music concert that their volunteers be well-dressed -- taking calls on multi-coloured telephones and scribbling down with pen and pad. It surprised me how all the phones were busy all the time when the hosts were featuring them -- surely, those 'wonderful' volunteers must have down times at some point.
