How much is your time worth?

Chicago Public Radio recently started its spring pledge drive. Regular NPR listeners probably think of these drives as the time that their local public radio stations are the least enjoyable to listen to. It seems that there are very large chunks of airtime devoted to repeating the phone number to pledge or the URL where you can become a member.

The dynamics of the daily pleas for money are very interesting. During very popular shows, on-air pledge drive hosts seem to stress that money collected during certain shows does a couple of things:

1. It tells the station which shows are most popular. Very democratic, but this assumes that the number of donations and/or money collected during a show is directly related to the popularity of the show, which may or may not be true.
2. It tells the national NPR programmers what kinds of shows would be best to produce due to popular demand.

During times of the day when there are fewer listeners, however, the hosts change their tune. During these times, the arguments seem to be that public radio offers a special and currently unique set of programs that are free from corporate and political strings. They clearly state that public radio gives news that is relevant and not just celebrity gossip, sports or other pop culture. With this argument comes the implication that regular (i.e. commercial) stations are at the mercy of their corporate ad sponsors. And therefore, if you hate having your programming dictated by large companies trying to sell you something, you should donate to NPR.

This reminds me of the recent study released that claims that many cell phone users are willing to see advertisements in their mobile content. I for one, am part of the mob that wants as little ads as possible. That doesn't seem to be the trend, seeing as how major media companies are hopping into the mobile adspace. With large companies such as Nokia leading the charge, it seems that cell phone banner ads galore are right around the corner. The Online Publishers Association certainly thinks so. Some are claiming that 50% of mobile users will accept mobile adds. The key to me is "accept", just like they "accept" banner ad on regular PCs now. That doesn't mean they want them.

I for one am willing to trade an unobtrusive banner ad in exchange for otherwise free content. Just so long as they don't start to adopt the movie theater model of charging for admission and then making you sit through 20 minutes of commercials and "trailers".