WDUQ campaign includes appeals for NPR

WDUQ in Pittsburgh launched its year-end fundraiser last week with a special appeal to its listeners: forgo thank-you gifts for your contribution and the NPR News and jazz station will send 10 percent of the pledge to NPR. General Manager Scott Hanley, who announced the special fundraising appeal during the NPR Board meeting last month, said he has a “six-figure problem to resolve” in closing the station’s year-end budget gap, but folks at WDUQ are “very concerned about what is happening at NPR.” As much as the station’s supporters “love coffee mugs and tote bags, they love NPR more.” Prior to the campaign’s launch on June 4, Hanley blogged about the cutbacks undertaken at NPR this year, adding: “The most stable source of income for NPR is fees for programs from stations like WDUQ. But, in times like these, it isn’t enough.” Contributions from WDUQ’s campaign will “be on top of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in programming fees that DUQ has already committed to pay to NPR,” Hanley wrote. It’s not huge, but it’s a start.”