A BUSINESS QUESTION FOR THE SALVATION ARMY

I was walking into Kroger today to buy groceries to the tune of an obnoxious bell being rung by a salvation army volunteer. It got me to thinking about the future success or failure of this type of fundraising. You see, if I had wanted to donate money to this person's bucket I would have been unable to do so. Why? Because I never have loose change. And why don't I have loose change? Because I never use cash. My options were to donate a 20 dollar bill or not donate at all. Again, I'm all for helping the less fortunate, but I can't afford to drop a 20 every time I walk into Kroger, Wal-Mart, the mall, etc. Now I doubt that we will ever get to a point where we have absolutely no cash ... but I think it is not out of line to assume that much less cash is used these days ... at least in certain areas and among certain people. I use a debit card for everything. It's just like cash but I don't have to worry about losing my money or what to do with loose change. So anyways, my thought was that the Salvation Army should set their bell ringers up with debit machines so people could go by, swipe their cards, enter an amount and be on their way. I think they could make a lot more money. Just a thought though.

Something else I've wondered about is the effect of DVR and Tivo on the advertising and television industries. I finally got DVR and it is amazing. The thing I've noticed and love is the fact that I can watch shows whenever I want without commercials. So now instead of making sure I'm home at a certain time to watch a certain show I just have the DVR set, go about my business and then watch the shows when I have free time throughout the week. An hour show is now only 40 minutes so I actually save time. I don't miss commercials at all, but I can't help but notice that companies paid a lot of money for the 20 minutes of advertising during the 1 hour show that more and more people are not watching. The simple way I've always understood how the advertising companies and television companies relate and do business is they use the period of "sweeps" to determine advertising rates for the coming period. So if a show is DVR'd in a household I wonder if it counts towards the number of households watching a certain show. Because if it is then the numbers will be skewed and advertising companies will be paying to broadcast a message to people who are fast forwarding through it. I wonder what the long term effect of this will be. It's obvious that television advertising will have to be less important so I wonder where advertising companies will pick up the slack. Internet? Billboards? Something totally new that I haven't even heard of before? Who knows. Anyways, just some things I was wondering about. Thoughts?