Give them an ear Beyond the big-picture questions about mission and responsiveness, staffers often face the very basic question of how to deal with the caller who screams in their ears because they had the misfortune of picking up the phone. He tries not to get defensive. When you get calls like that, they've got their minds made up. It's not our job to dissuade them. We just let them know there's someone to talk to.
Viewers have different expectations of their pubcasting station than of commercial media.
The relationship takes many forms. It could be hearing out a viewer who copies the wrong number to Sewing With Nancy , and then rants at the station when she reaches a sex line instead. Mostly, as Killingsworth suggests, it's very personal. Killingsworth remembers how an old woman, a shut-in, phoned her or her boss twice a week, for years, until she died. The calls would start off with a question about programming, but move into conversation.