NPR REALLY doesn’t Want to Hear from Listners…
NPR is pulling itself farther and farther away from its listeners.
Last Saturday, I sent a short note to wesat@npr.org (the email address for Weekend Edition Saturday, one of the precious few NPR programs I still listen to); it was no big deal, actually just a wise-*ssed comment about something Scott Simon said on the program:
To: wesat@npr.org
Subject: Anniversaries…
Afternoon!
Scott Simon said, “You think NPR gets a little carried away with
anniversaries…” How about that fever-pitched celebration of Morning
Edition’s 25th Anniversary?
Oh, right, there _were_ two 15-second top-of-the-hour mentions…
Charlie Summers (who just couldn’t resist)
Ok, so I wasn’t asking for a response. But clearly, NPR has decided to make it d*mned hard for anyone to communicate to them any comments on their programming. Today (Wednesday), I received an auto-response from NPR saying, in part:
We are no longer using WESAT@npr.org for the show’s listener mail. Now, ALL correspondence must go through our Web site!
Wow…nothing like an efficient autoresponder that takes four days to get a response out!
So now we all need to run to their contact page, accept unaudited Javascript (for no good reason I could determine other than all the tracking cookies the javascript tries to set), click, select, and otherwise waste tremendous amounts of time, just to comment on their programming.
They aren’t interested in avoiding spam, they are clearly going out of their way to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to comment on their programming.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’ve become completely disillusioned by NPR over the past year (it’s only a little over a year ago now that NPR canned Bob Edwards from Morning Edition telling its listeners, “Shut up and take it, since we’re smarter than you are and don’t give a rat’s patootie what you want to listen to!”), but this is getting ridiculous.
For whatever it’s worth, here are the comments I posted, jumping through their goofy hoops for the one and only time:
> We are no longer using WESAT@npr.org for the show’s listener mail. Now, ALL
> correspondence must go through our Web site!
It’s amazing how NPR continues to make it more and more difficult to actually hear from and respond to listeners. I send mail last Saturday, and receive an utoresponse TODAY telling me you don’t want to be bothered hearing from me unless I jump through your web hoops.
Seriously, never mind. It’s becoming perfectly clear that you consider communications one-way, and even more clear that some of us are so weary of it we’re not going to bother you again. Not by writing, and not by listening.
No response is necessary; I’ve added NOSPAM to my email address to make it as difficult for you as you’ve made it for me.
(I’ve sent the URL to this blog entry to the Ombudsman email address…let’s see how long it takes for them to send me an autoresponse telling me that the ombudsman is not accepting email, either…)
April 13th, 2005 at 7:35 am
Of course, they are only following in the footsteps of those other people that never really want to hear from the people ‘in the field:’ Congress has gone to the same - “we accept email only through our website.” As with NPR, the message certainly seems to be “Don’t make it EASY.”
–Russ
May 6th, 2005 at 9:06 pm
Isn’t it also possible that by accepting listener messages only through a web form they are trying to curtail spam? Is it even possible to spam a web form? I should know, but I don’t.
-Art-