"If you watch even one second of PBS and don't contribute, you're a thief. A common thief!"
— Betty White, The Simpsons, "Missionary: Impossible"
This trope is about two things with media production:
- People who donate money directly to the producer or distributor of works, in hopes of getting the work made, or in the hopes of seeing more works like them. The media could be anything from a creator's blog or comic book to a documentary film.
- Viewers of programs, TV networks or radio stations whose primary funding comes from voluntary donations, rather than advertising or subscription. The networks do funding drives where hosts plead with viewers and listeners for donations, warning them that without their generosity, the programs will likely be canceled.
The Trope Namer is PBS, whose stations and original programs used to be funded almost entirely by viewers. (Some stations still are.) For this reason, most PBS programs still end their acknowledgements with "Made possible by financial support/contributions to your PBS station from... viewers like you." (Since October 4, 1999, they've been following this with "Thank you".)note Odds are, fewer viewers donate than not. People usually donate to PBS not just because it helps keep the public station running, but because neat "gifts" get thrown in (albeit for far more than the free-market rate), and because it's the PBS equivalent of Ratings: the sorts of programs that bring in heavy donations during pledge drives are the sorts of programs that the station will renew. In more recent years, PBS has offered a streaming service available only to donors. Most of the grant money comes from airtime-hungry MegaCorp firms (especially those hoping to garnish their public image), not-for-profit foundations, and (until 2025-26) the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ("A private corporation funded by the American people", eg an annual appropriation from Congress).
While the type of media seeking donations could in theory be any genre, in practice, the genres tend to be those that find it hard to garner advertising support or commercial subscribers, such as educational programs, kids' programs, documentaries, experimental art films, scholarly topics (history, philosophy, political science), public affairs shows, and community programming.
See also Thanking the Viewer and Please Subscribe to Our Channel.
Other examples:
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Comic Books
- Batman '66: Parodied. In one story, False Face creates a TV series about Batman and Robin and plans to use it to kill the real heroes on live TV. He says it's thanks to "viewers like you" when he announces their upcoming demise.
Live-Action TV
- Heavily parodied on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 8th-season episode Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. Since the show's writers/cast chose not to go all-in on recently-departed star Raúl Juliá, the next best target was public television pledge drives (the movie had been produced for PBS). So Pearl, having found her way to Castle Forrester an episode prior after escaping Ancient Rome, started a pledge drive to go play the slot machines.
- Spoofed in the first episode of No Soap, Radio, which credits the show to Trans National Petroleum, The Updyke Foundation, and Rico's Boom-Boom Room.
Web Animation
- Nothing, Forever added a Weather Forecast segment in Season 2 Version 1.4, the true purpose of the segment is to run a ticker at the bottom of the screen thanking the Stream's Patreon subscribers.
- Parodied in the opening for the Strong Bad Email, "autobiography"
:
Strong Bad: This email is brought to you by a grant from The Cheat and the support of Viewers Like You.
Web Original
- Many Internet radio stations/networks, including SomaFM, and mvyradio.com will often begin their broadcast by thanking those who helped fund the station.
- Leo Laporte's TWiT network, though in that case Leo's pay comes almost solely from viewer/listener contributions rather than advertising (more a self-move to make him accountable to those who watch), which mainly goes to technical operations and other employees.
- It's not uncommon for projects funded via crowdsourcing websites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter to acknowledge those who helped back the work. Perhaps the most infamous example of this is Mighty No. 9, whose credits spend so long listing off its 70,000 backers, they reach about 4 hours in length. See for yourself.
- Radio Dead Air home of What the Fuck Is Wrong with You?
- The Welcome to Night Vale podcast is funded mostly by merchandise sales and listener donations, with the creators offering gifts for people who set up a regular monthly contribution
- Many, many YouTubers do this, particularly those who have Patreons or Ko-Fis and what-have-you. They'll usually have a credits roll with the names of all the people who donated above a certain amount of money to the channel, and smaller YouTubers often read every donor's name out loud.
- The Other Wiki often displays messages asking for donations to keep the site running, and said messages usually end with a "Thank you".
- Later episodes of The Gaming Historian end with an announcer stating this trope after the host says their Signing-Off Catchphrase (and also when they doesn't end that way).
Announcer: Funding for Gaming Historian is provided in part by supporters on Patreon. Thank you. *cue end credits*
- Every review that Bobsheaux does always open up with his girlfriend Raven Fox's voice saying this, before the opening sequence. Which by the way, also plugs his Patreon.
Raven Fox: This review is made possible with contributions from viewers like you.
- Jay & Miles X-Plain The X-Men gives Patreon supporters on-air thanks from a variety of fictional characters and concepts, including Sexy Nightcrawler, Sexy Gambit, Sexy Dracula, alien robot and smooth jazz radio station ZZ-105, and the Angry Claremontian Narrator.
Western Animation
- In Justice League, The Culture Channel is used as a Brick Joke in the 2-parter "Injustice For All". The Ultra-Humanite is seen earlier in the episode enjoying an opera on the Culture Channel in prison, to Lex Luthor's displeasure. Later, when he's been paid off to betray Luthor, he donates it to the Culture Channel, leading to this hilarious parody of the line:
Announcer: This program was made possible by generous grants from the Ultra-Humanite and Viewers Like You.
- The Martha Speaks episode "Martha's Chair" has Mrs. Demson see the "Viewers Like You" segment while watching Antiques Roadshow. She then rudely replies "You're welcome!" This is also an example of Biting-the-Hand Humor, as Martha Speaks airs on PBS itself, though on the PBS Kids block, not around the same time as Antiques Roadshow.
- In The Simpsons episode "Missionary Impossible", Homer gets frustrated with a PBS telethon interrupting a show he was watching, and calls in a fake donation with enough money to end the telethon then and there. Unfortunately for him, PBS finds out where he lives and comes to collect whether he likes it or not, resulting in him getting attacked by Fred Rogers, the Teletubbies, and the Sesame Street characters; he runs to Reverend Lovejoy for sanctuary ("Their bloodthirsty pursuit is made possible by a grant from the Chubb Group!") and gets sent abroad as a Christian missionary. The episode is eventually revealed to be Fox itself hosting a telethon, with Bart calling in a gigantic fake donation.
Rupert Murdoch: You've just saved my network!
Bart: Wouldn't be the first time. - The Patrick Star Show: At the end of "Time to Eat", Patrick thanks the viewers for watching and says that "we couldn't do it without viewers like you!" Text appears on-screen, followed by a credits roll as the audience claps.
Real Life
- NPR ("Listeners like you")
- TBN (Trinity Broadcast Network).
- LinkTV (Only on DirecTV, Dish and the web)
- EWTN (a Roman Catholic network, foundress Mother Angelica used to encourage viewers to "keep us between your gas and electric bills", a donation slogan that's been picked up by other hosts on the network since Mother's passing.)
- Most Christian television and radio, and religious media in general for that matter, with one big exception.
- Canadian provincial television (TVOntario and BC's Knowledge Network).
- PBS shows do this. In 1999, a mandate was issued which requires Thanking the Viewer. American Masters happened to be already doing so at least a year prior, and some shows are really creative about it.
- Averted by Buccaneer Broadcaster Radio Caroline in the 1970s. When they tried to supplement their meagre commercial revenue with an appeal for listener donations they didn't get any. They did manage to stay on the air, though.
- WCRB, a classical music radio station out of Boston that is affiliated with that city's local PBS station, WGBH.
- Many charities or other nonprofit organizations, perhaps with help from a local TV or radio station. (This could be anything from a public access/PEG channel to a local network affiliate.)
- This trope is the entire point and intention of Grassroots movements. The idea is that since the campaigns are exclusively funded and powered by the majority of people within a given society, said movements gain direct political influence and become/generate representatives — all for that majority's sake.
- The tokusatsu series Dogengers is primarily financed by corporate entities (as it revolves around the concept of Local Heroes, many of whom are Corporate-Sponsored Superhero-types if not outright company mascots), but is also partially crowdfunded. Reflecting this, the names of donors (be it the real name or the internet handle they used) are included in the credits as thanks, though people can also request their names not be included.
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