FIELD TRIP! left-click ventures to WGBY

Public broadcasting has been all over the news recently as federal funding for PBS and NPR is in jeopardy. Now more than ever, support from viewers is vital to public broadcasting, and for PBS pledge drives are incredibly important. This month local PBS station WGBY is running their March pledge drive, and some of us at left-click recently had the great experience of traveling down to their station in Springfield to take part. left-clickers Colin (our graphic designer), Dylan (one of our technicians), and I all took calls for an evening and showed our support for PBS.

We were greeted by Kevin Maroney, who contacted us with the opportunity to help out WGBY. We were interested in supporting local public television, so for a second year in a row we sponsored a raffle to encourage increased pledging. This year we donated an iPad 2, and Kevin invited us down to the station to bring some visibility to the event and participate in the drive.

Thursday’s programming involved a concert by Joe Bonamassa, blues guitarist and titled by many as "The Best Guitarist You've Never Heard Of", during which we had quite a few call-ins from people pledging in order to receive CDs or DVDs of the performance. The REAL showstopper of the night was afterwards, when WGBY showed what can best be described as an insanely popular Irish male vocalist group called Celtic Thunder. The phones were ringing non-stop with fans calling in, identifying themselves as “Thunderheads” and talking excitedly about which member of the group was their favorite. For a certain pledge amount, callers received tickets to Celtic Thunder’s upcoming show at Springfield Symphony Hall in November, and tickets were going fast. Our very own Dylan took the first call of the night: a customer pledging $1800 in order to get a whole batch of tickets! These were some really devoted fans.

We answered calls with some entertaining characters from C & S Wholesale Grocers, as well as some unaffiliated folks just kindly donating some time (and getting some free pizza for it). In addition to taking pledges, Dylan talked on-air live about how much he loves PBS and how left-click decided to help out. If you were watching, you heard that he’s a big Nova fan. In the downtime between answering calls, we enjoyed some free food and coffee, and hung out with fellow-call-takers and a few of the WGBY interns, who had some amusing insights on the inner-workings of the station.

It was a great night, and we had a lot of fun. We bet there are a lot of you PBS viewers out there reading this, and we hope you’ll call in to WGBY during this March pledge drive and become a member!

If you’d like to make a pledge to WGBY to support public television, and be entered into a contest to win an iPad 2 that left-click has donated to the cause, tune in to channel 57 this week and call in, or pledge online at wgby.org/give