Today a bunch of competing radio stations in the Netherlands are coming together to raise funds for Ukraine. And by "coming together", I mean "airing the same show for one whole day". The same shows, the same presenters, the same jingles, the same music - interesting, considering the radio stations involved range from youth-targeted in-your-face pop stations to nostalgia-driven rock stations, and even this one jazz and soul station that tries hard to not sound dated. To raise funds, apart from donating all advertising proceeds to their partner organizations, they're encouraging listeners to donate, in exchange for a song request.
This isn't unusual, or at least not in Europe. I know one of the radio stations involved in this initiative does this every year, a format that has been adopted in other countries. It does seem like a nifty idea: we'll play your song - and I assume they're not limiting themselves to the song on the daily playlists - in exchange for a donation to a chosen charity.
Would this concept fly in the Philippines? I highly, highly doubt that.
And I don't mean the "competing radio stations come together" thing. There's no hope of that happening. Besides, the fact that radio stations here still tend to be local - a handful of networks aside - mean there's no scale to doing something as big as that. Anyway, no, I'm actually thinking about the "we'll take your request for as long as you donate" thing. That will never, never fly here. Let's face it: we Filipinos are really cheap people. If we can get something for less, if not free, we'll go for it. The whole bare minimum thing and all that. Why donate money for a song request when I can just play the damn thing, without interruptions, as often as I want, on my streaming service of choice?
I don't know. Maybe it's because of the selfishness we constantly deny to be. Maybe it's because of the "everything is expensive" mindset we can't quite shake off, for better or worse, thanks to decades of inequality. Maybe it's because we just want instant gratification, and paying for it is just, well, a hurdle. I don't know. I wasn't supposed to extrapolate the first paragraph this far, but I haven't been feeling good over the weekend and, well, here we are.
Oh, right. I remember people over the past few months demand that news outfits do their job "better", whatever that means. Maybe do more rigorous fact-checking, or call out the current administration's lies more, or just appeal to their political biases more, I don't really know. But journalism requires resources, and it's very likely these are the very people who don't regularly buy a newspaper, or at the very least, turn off their ad-blockers for the websites they choose to support. So they either get really flimsy, or resort to clickbait to prove they have the numbers that allow them to get more money from their advertisers. Have you ever wondered why these news outfits always seem to talk about BTS, or highlight tweets from politicians that have this air of "no, you're wrong, actually"? So you'll retweet them.
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