An Uplifting Radio Item

To help brighten your mood on this Friday, here's a radio item that isn't about layoffs...and about the significant power the medium still has to do good.

Clear Channel Akron/Canton hot AC WKDD/98.1 is in the midst of a huge annual event - the 10th Annual "Have A Heart, Do Your Part Radiothon" to benefit Akron Children's Hospital.

Looking back at our item from last year, the 2008 edition raised $1,000,760 for the local hospital last year, a record...and much more than even top 15 market stations raised in similar efforts.

We hear from the folks at Freedom Avenue that over the years WKDD has been doing the event, it's raised over $6 million for Akron Children's Hospital. (As we've noted before, WKDD now-sister station WHLO/640 did its own radiothons for Children's Hospital back in its days as a Susquehanna-owned talk station in the mid-1970's.)

As last year, the Radiothon is streaming not only live audio from WKDD.com, but live video ("The Miracle Monitor") as well. In addition to calling 866-543-0981 (or 330-543-0981) to pledge, you can donate with just the click of a mouse from the Radiothon web page. (Don't click the graphic above...it's a static screen grab. Go to the link here instead.)

The pledge phone lines will be manned until 9 PM tonight, and 7 AM to 9 PM Saturday and Sunday...we assume the Internet donation form, of course, would be available 24 hours.

As of this writing at around noon on Friday, the Radiothon is nearing the $100,000 pledge level.

A side note: With WKDD morning co-host Matt Patrick devoting his full day (and weekend) to the event, his WHLO mid-morning talk show was covered today by Doc Thompson, the former Cleveland radio type (WMJI, etc.) now doing afternoon drive at Clear Channel talk WRVA/1140 Richmond VA. We presume he fired up the ISDN from Virginia...