Breaking the money habit

I got into a discussion about public radio with someone and he said even though he listened to and enjoyed public radio he would never give money to any station unless they refused government funding, and that he had told his public radio station that. I work at KCRW, a public radio station in Los Angeles, (and occasionally for NPR, like today). KCRW gets over half of it's funding from listeners but let me tell you what we do when we get calls from listeners like this.

We ignore them.

Sorry, but even if you cross your heart, and swear on your mother’s grave, your promise that you'll pledge some money isn't going to convince us not to take the government money. And it shouldn't. KCRW and other public radio may be non-profits, but they're also businesses.

At KCRW we don't get a very high percent of our income from the government, but it's certainly more than you and your libertarian friends are going to give us, so until the government cuts us off we'll keep taking it. That's the capitalist way. It just doesn't make good business sense not to take any money the government is going to give them. In fact it makes more sense to have a lobbyist or two in Washington working on getting them money. This is true for most businesses, I think. A lobbyist working in DC can be the cheapest way to get or save money. And if a business is smart they'll want to get money in the cheapest way possible.

This was my first response. But the more I think about it, the more I think it would work. But you’d have to get a whole hell of a lot of people together.

KCRW and most of the bigger stations depend more on their listeners than the government.* Smaller, (usually rural) stations get most of their funding from the government. If all the
members were to cut their funding until they stopped taking government money then, yeah, KCRW and other large stations would be in trouble. Since the larger stations produce the shows the smaller stations buy, the smaller ones would be in trouble too.

This conversation was framed around public radio, but I think it relates to regular businesses too.

Which is easier, convincing the government to stop funding things we don’t want them to fund, or convincing businesses it’s better for them not to take government money?

Any ideas?

*As a side note, this discussion peaked my interest and I have to admit I don't know a lot of the specifics about where we get our money at KCRW. I know we get over half from memberships and (I think, it's been a while), about 1.2 million (half of the memberships) goes to NPR to pay for their programs. I know we sell underwriting spots on the air and also on our website and podcasts, (in fact, it's one of my jobs to make sure they get up there), but I don't know the percentages. I plan on asking about that next week.

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