The Toronto Star organized an all-out subscription drive in my apartment building today. An entire extended family seemed to be running the operation. The parents were at a display table in the front lobby; the table displayed samples of prizes that new subscribers were eligible to win. Other family members went door-to-door pleading with residents to sign up for a special low-price offer: the first week of papers was only a dollar. The pleading was heartfelt: the girl who canvassed me was desperate to use her subscription bonus money to build up her university tuition fund, or something like that. I still said no, but I felt terrible afterwards.
Later, in a burst of rationalization, I blamed the Star for employing such hard-core sales tactics. These tactics are especially bad if newspaper carriers are still paid the way they were when I delivered the Sunday Sun many many years ago. Back then, the carriers were responsible for collecting all the subscription money themselves, and had to turn most of it over to the newspaper. The amount left over was their pay. This meant that if somebody was never home when the carrier called, or was otherwise reluctant to pony up their subscription cash, the carrier lost money. It’s a hell of a way to earn pocket money.
Years ago, when I lived in Waterloo, a community newspaper tried an even uglier approach. Once a week, they delivered a copy of their paper to every apartment in my building, whether the resident wanted it or not. Then, they sent the carrier around to ask for voluntary payments for the paper. The girl who knocked on my door told me that she only got paid if people gave her money for the paper. Yuck. My solution was to give her the money, and suggest that she should keep it for herself as a tip. I suspect that she might not have been allowed to do that, unfortunately.
A friend of mine recently reminded me of a way to listen to new music online: Pandora Internet Radio. The basic idea: you supply them with the name of a favourite song or artist, and their database creates a “station” that supplies you with music that is similar to the suggestion you gave them. The only drawback is that, in my opinion, some of the matches are too close to the original.
But they do allow you to create more than one station and then mix the results, so I’m going to try it. My seed artists, if you want to poke fun at my musical taste, are Brian Eno, Black Flag, the Psychedelic Furs, Fatboy Slim, Galaxie 500, Smashing Pumpkins, Joy Division, Beat Happening, Yo La Tengo, Death In Vegas, the Stone Roses, Slowdive, Toots and the Maytals, Dressy Bessy, Talking Heads, and Camper van Beethoven. (I do listen to some newer stuff, honestly!) We’ll see how this goes.
Posted by davetill 