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The pledge drive for Sachet Bay’s public radio station had started as any event like this does. “We’ll wrap this up just as soon as we meet our goal, callers. You know what that means‚Äìthe sooner you call in and make your pledge, the sooner we’ll get you back to regular programming!” Kathy Marklay had said this three-years ago. This was officially the longest pledge driver ever.
They certainly hadn’t intended it to be this way. It was only $15,000 after all. A small amount for such things, and, in reality, they didn’t even need it. The stations benefactor, an independently wealthy liberal from Tennessee who’d done well in the late 90’s - a dot-com that sold doggy diapers and baby-slings for cats - and gotten out before the gettin’ went bad, he had made sure that the station would never need another dime to keep the soothing voices of NPR’s even-keeled, albeit liberal, DJs filling the 6,000 square foot home he had built upon is retirement at the age of 32.
Never-the-less, they feel the need to at least act the part of a desperate public radio station. And, of course, once they’d started it wasn’t as if they could stop. They’d loose face in the view of their listeners who, for the record, knew damn-well they didn’t need the $15,000 and weren’t about to pony-up that $200 pledge, even if it buy them that fancy fleece vest with the station’s logo embroidered on it. So there they were, three years later and only $14,457 short of their goal. Now, only if they could get a corporate match for contributions over $50, then they could wrap it all up. If only…
