Good-bye Mr. D.J.?

I've been in the Internet since 1994. It was a Chinaman who introduced me to it, an Indian teenager who showed me how to use it. If I were asked what one thing had changed my life most, I would be hard pressed not to have the Internet in third place after a) meeting my wife and b) having three children with her.

One way the Internet has expanded my world is the chance it gives me to listen to radio and watch television programs from around the world. I have three shortwave radios. I used them to keep in touch with the world. Now they seem like anchors. The short wave ether seems to have been taken over by Spanish and Portuguese speaking evangelists.

On my list of Favorites/Bookmarks are well worn links to foreign and a few domestic broadcasters. Last night I was listening to my usual Tuesday evening world music show from an excellent public radio station in an EC country. Between songs the well-respected DJ kept asking listeners to send emails to him to protest the imminent shutdown of the show in the New Year. The producers of the show are to lose their jobs, a computer will take control of the music. They want to prove the politicians wrong, that there will be more than a peep should the program end. Are DJs the next endangered species? I would be very sad to lose this program and decided I would send an email too. Five minutes later, the DJ acknowledged my email by email, then read it verbatim live over the air. Hundreds of emails had come in through the night, yet this one, from a listener in Minnesota, counted double. My suggestion was that they offer me the chance to pay for the privilege of listening by using my credit card on the program website. How can one translate Pledge Drive?