[OutVoice] Greetings of the Season from "This Way Out"

[tworadio at aol.com]

Happy Holidays! "This Way Out" is now heard on more than 200 local stations across the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe; through direct-to-home satellite and cable outlets in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia/Pacific regions; and around the world via our podcasts and on global short wave station RFPI. “NewsWrap” offers radio’s only international weekly LGBT newscast; our interviews and program features run the diverse gamut of entertaining and illuminating LGBT-related subject matter; "Audiofile" celebrates new CDs by openly-LGBT musicians; and the “Rainbow Minute” provides capsule summaries of people and events around the world in LGBT history.
 
We’ll get right to the point: this is the time of year when the annual grant we received from the Kicking Assets Fund of the Tides Foundation runs out. We’ve applied for renewed funding, and based on their longtime support, we're optimistic about receiving another grant in March 2010. But we need your help to keep "This Way Out" on the air until then. You may ask:

- Why don't you have paid advertising or ask for donations on the air?
Because FCC regulations governing public radio in the U.S., where we originate, prohibit commercials. The FCC allows on-air fundraising only to benefit the station. For that reason, we can’t ask for donations to "This Way Out" during the program.

- Why don't you charge stations a fee for the program?
Because, from the beginning, we wanted to reach the widest possible audience, and several local stations that carry "This Way Out" can't afford to pay for programming; others have policies against doing that.

- Why can't you get grants from other foundations?
After more than 20 years on the air, we’ve been unable to secure new funding from the limited number of foundations that consider LGBT projects; fewer still fund “media”. We’ve sent proposals to more than 25 foundations in recent years, but even requests for renewed funding from previous donors – with the happy exception of the Kicking Assets Fund – have been rebuffed.

We've reduced our expenses to the bare necessities (not that they ever included "luxuries"); our full-time Coordinating Producer is collecting far less than half of the modest compensation authorized by our Board of Directors; our Associate Producer has gone virtually without any compensation at all; and the dozens of people who produce programming for “This Way Out” do so as unpaid volunteers.

Unlike other LGBT media, being on public radio means that open-minded non-gay listeners hear our voices and discover our humanity; our international LGBT “NewsWrap” segment underscores our motto that “an informed community is a strong community”; and “This Way Out” is a vital lifeline for thousands of closeted people in every corner of the world, and often the only LGBT-supportive voice they hear. The “critics” agree:

“Just wanted to pass on my deepest thanks and gratitude for your show. I love the international coverage, the humor, the music – I love it all!”
-H.C.
New York, New York

“I heard tonight’s This Way Out for the first time ever. I'm not gay, but have gay friends; I'll tell them about this program. Keep up the good work.”
-K.L.
State College, Pennsylvania

"Thank God I found you!"
-Sampson
Owerri, Nigeria

“Radio seems to be an exceptional medium for communicating our concerns to those who would rarely read a gay or lesbian periodical... Thanks for the terrific work you are doing."
-Walter L. Williams, author of "The Spirit And The Flesh"

“I'm a 44 y.o. married male just confronting my homosexuality. I can't tell you what a moral boost your program is for me. I look forward to it every week. It's better than church.”
-Neal
Los Angeles, California

"Live long This Way Out!"
-Chetna
Delhi, India

Please add "This Way Out" to your annual holiday gift-giving list, or – even if you don't prepare a list – make a tax-deductible donation to help keep us going. If you'd like something tangible in return – for yourself, or for unique holiday gift-giving – ask for one or more of the special thank you CDs described below.

Don't let "This Way Out" become a victim of these difficult economic times! Please use one of the PayPal buttons at our Web site, www.thiswayout.org, or postal-mail your check or money order to PO Box 38327, Los Angeles, CA 90038-0327, USA.

We know that many are struggling – but we also know that others are doing just fine.  *Whatever* you can afford, please know how grateful everyone at “This Way Out” will be – and our estimated 400,000+ listeners around the world – for your thoughtful donation.  Please also share this appeal with others who could amplify your support.

Thank you – and all best wishes to you and yours for a happy holiday season and a healthy, prosperous, pleasurable and productive 2010.
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THANK YOU GIFT CDs
(all donations are in U.S. dollars)

Chose one of these half-hour programs for each donation of $25; choose two for $50, etc:

A CONVERSATION WITH HARVEY MILK
In March 1978 now-"This Way Out" Coordinating Producer Greg Gordon traveled to Northern California to interview newly elected San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. Their conversation covered civil rights activism, politics, and some of the gay personalities of the day. The Oscar-winning movie generated renewed interest in this historic figure. And, as you'll hear in this illuminating and highly entertaining half-hour interview with the pioneering LGBT civil rights hero, much of what Harvey had to say still resonates today.

AUDIOFILE 2008 YEAR IN REVIEW
As always, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender artists provided the "soundtrack" for the ongoing struggle by sexual minorities for equality around the world with an exceptional variety of gender-and-genre-bending music in 2008. And as always, limiting the artists they featured during the year to just a few was no easy task, but CHRIS WILSON, JD DOYLE and CHRISTOPHER DAVID TRENTHAM share seven of their favorites during this 30-minute tunefest: excerpts from "Queer Blues," "Deja Vu Blues" and "I Ain't Ashamed" from Gaye Adegbalola's "Gaye Without Shame"; "Protest Song" and "Little Boy Blue" from Eric Himan's "Resonate"; "For Someone" and "Wide Awake" from Jake Walden's "Alive and Screaming"; the title cut and "Happy" from Catie Curtis' "Sweet Life"; "Like A Girl" and "Free" from Scott Free's "The Pink Album (A Pop Opera)"; "He Is" and the title cut from Sam Harris' "Free"; and "Get It Through Your Head" and "Meet Me at the Party" from Lori Michaels' "Living My Life Out Loud".

PRIDE ON SCREEN 2008
Our award-winning entertainment reporter STEVE PRIDE reviews his favorite LGBT moving images of the year – on screens both big and small, and with a cornucopia of clips and comments by their creators - in this special 30-minute show. Steve first looks at U.S. television (includes clips from network TV's "Brothers and Sisters," "As The World Turns," "Dirty Sexy Money," Showtime cable's "The Tudors," BBC America's "Skins," Logo cable's "Sordid Lives"; reality shows "Make Me A Supermodel," "Project Runway," "America's Next Top Model," "Transamerican Love Story"; and online, HereTV's "Paradise Falls," "3 Way" (3waytv.tv), and the franchise's first clearly gay couple on the independently produced "Star Trek: Phase II" (startreknewvoyages.com); Steve then reviews his picks for the Top Ten LGBT films released in 2008: "The World Unseen," "Breakfast with Scot," "Antarctica," "A Jihad for Love," "Ciao," "Were the World Mine," "Save Me," "Shelter," "Chris & Don," and "Milk".

[or choose the 2009 versions of the Audiofile Year in Review and Pride on Screen]

STRANGER THAN STRAIGHT
The legendary American DJ known as "Dr. Demento" raised audio kitsch to an artform. As "Nurse Pimento", the late Southern California gay activist and radio producer David Fradkin added his own kind of spice to pursuing the peculiarities of popular culture in this early 1980s half-hour production, which features some offbeat queer words and music from Carroll "Archie Bunker" O'Connor, Groucho Marx, Perry Como, Laurel and Hardy, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, Tommy Smothers, Martin Mull, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Noel Coward, the poignant self-aware words of Holocaust teen diarist Anne Frank, Bessie Smith singing, and her niece Ruby telling interviewer Chris Albertson about, their especially entertaining visit to a "Buffet Flat" -- and more!

Chose one of these hour-long programs for each donation of $50; choose two for $100, etc:

THE NATIONAL MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR LESBIAN & GAY RIGHTS RADIO DOCUMENTARY
This "audio scrapbook" of the first-ever national LGBT march and rally in the U.S. capital on October 14, 1979, produced by "This Way Out" Associate Producer Lucia Chappelle and Coordinating Producer Greg Gordon, illuminates the problems and the passion of the first demonstration of its kind. As rich with the music and culture of the period as it is with the politics, the hour traces the event from the initial planning conference and some activists' heartfelt and sometimes humorous cross-country trip to D.C. on a "Freedom Train" to the big day itself, and its coverage (or lack thereof) in the conventional media.

DIMINISHED CAPACITY
Alive with the sounds from the streets, this documentary, produced by "This Way Out" Coordinating Producer Greg Gordon, captures the enormous impact on the queer community of the November 1978 assassinations of openly gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and gay-friendly Mayor George Moscone. The "diminished capacity" defense (since eliminated legislatively) made it possible for former Supervisor Dan White to receive a very lenient sentence for the dual murders, a decision that sent shockwaves through the Castro District and led to what became known as the "White Night Riots." This fast-paced hour tracks the entire story through and including White's eventual suicide, with comments by many leading lesbian and gay activists and journalists of the time, and riveting thematic music by the Tom Robinson Band.

THE BIGGEST QUEER NEWS STORIES OF 2003
A keepsake collection of more than an hour of "This Way Out" reports during a pivotal year for LGBT progress, with the voices of many of the activists involved, covering the advent of legal same gender marriage in Canada, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning state sodomy laws, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision opening legal marriage to queer couples, and a P-FLAG mom's "on scene" account of and sound from the historic consecration of openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson.

SPECIAL PACKAGE: Get all of these CDs for a donation of at least $200.  We’ll acknowledge donations of $250 or more on the air upon request.