Last night, I was watching Frontline, mainly as a way to avoid watching Idol, but also because it had part three of its four-part "News War" series. This episode focused on how alternate sources of news are causing newspapers to scramble to keep their readerships from dwindling too fast (let's just say there were lots of references to The Daily Show and Rocketboom). It was a pretty engaging report, interviewing almost every big name in the newspaper, television news, and online businesses.

My local PBS station, WNET, also knew that this was an engaging special, as they broke in at least 4 times during the 90-minute special to ask for money. And these pledge breaks lingered to the point where I switched away from them to see what else was on, only to come a few minutes after they went back to Frontline, which only got me more annoyed. I'm sure a lot of people get annoyed at these breaks; people have been making fun of them for as long as I can remember. Here's what I want to know: do those pledge breaks (or "begathons," as they used to be called) still work?