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“We’re not cross-marketing at the moment,” Malatia told me when the current pledge drive began. “But it’s nothing we’re hiding.” When WBEZ asks for your money and Vocalo doesn’t come up, that’s a “marketing strategy,” not secrecy. “When we do talk about spending the money,” Malatia says, “we say if you want a complete list of our investments it’s on the Chicago Public Radio Web site.” Malatia’s president of WBEZ and Vocalo’s common parent, Chicago Public Radio.
Malatia makes the point that Vocalo, aka vocalo.org, isn’t a radio station. “It’s a social networking Web site with a station attached.” So I went to the Web site and streamed the radio station through my computer at work. I wanted to find out if Vocalo was running a pledge drive of its own. It isn’t.
But in the meantime there’s the current drive, and I’ve never heard the announcers so apologetic. I told Malatia that when I called to pledge I asked the volunteer at the other end of the line if Vocalo would get a cut, and she had no idea what I was talking about.
