Media News at a Glance

• BT Viewed Over 50,000 Times on YouTube; 100,000 Times on Three Other Video Web Sites
• 42,920 Responses Received So Far From Magazine Ads
• Over 28,000 Receive Monthly GN Reader Update E-mail
• Reaching 18 States and Six Provinces From a Single Radio Station
• Postal Rate Changes Force Booklet Reformatting

BT Viewed Over 50,000 Times on YouTube; 100,000 Times on Three Other Video Web Sites

Past issues of United News have mentioned how the Church is using video Web sites (Google and Yahoo video, YouTube and GodTube) to increase the exposure of the Beyond Today TV program on the Internet. The most video views have come from the YouTube Web site, where 92 Beyond Today TV programs and commentaries are posted and have generated over 50,600 video views.

Each day the Beyond Today videos are viewed by hundreds if not thousands around the world surfing these video Web sites. Currently, we have 324 videos posted on these four video Web sites that have been viewed over 157,500 times.

Some viewers have actually contacted us for more information or have asked us questions. This is encouraging, as these viewers would need to leave the video Web sites and then go to the Beyond Today Web site or use a search Web site to locate the Church's contact information.

These free video hosting services are producing a lot more exposure to the Beyond Today program. We have already been featured several times on GodTube's "Today's Featured Video" section. We add new videos all the time to these Web sites, so we expect the number of video views to keep on rising.

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42,920 Responses Received So Far From Magazine Ads

Our most recent space advertising campaign has brought in thousands of requests for two booklets and a Good News magazine subscription. The two booklets being offered are The Middle East in Bible Prophecy in the April Reader's Digest and Marriage and Family: The Missing Dimension in the April American Baby and May Parents magazines.

Here are the totals as of June 1, with more arriving every day:

Reader's Digest 29,170
American Baby 9,839
Parents 3,911
TOTAL 42,920

Please pray for the continued success of this campaign.

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Over 28,000 Receive Monthly GN Reader Update E-mail

The Good News Reader Update is the most subscribed to e-mail newsletter UCG offers. At this time last year, we had around 19,500 e-mail addresses subscribed. We now have 28,080 on the list and more are added every day! Each day Web visitors are submitting their e-mail addresses requesting to receive the monthly e-newsletter that updates them on the work of the Church and provides an inspiring biblically based message from UCG President Clyde Kilough.

Our subscribers are from around the world and comment frequently about how they like being connected to what The Good News is providing to its readers.

If you have not subscribed or would like to read past updates, visit www.gnmagazine.org/gnupdate/.

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Reaching 18 States and Six Provinces From a Single Radio Station

The Good News radio program first aired on news/talk WWVA 1170 AM radio in Wheeling, West Virginia, in March 2003. Beyond Today radio continued in its place in December 2005. Recently, an additional airtime of 11 p.m. Mondays was added to the existing airtime of Fridays at 8:15 p.m.

Why add more airtime in a city with a population of just over 31,000? Certainly Wheeling is no major media market, but WWVA radio is a real powerhouse.

After sundown, WWVA's 50,000-watt signal reaches listeners in 18 states, including Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia, and six Canadian provinces, including New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec.

Our local radio monitor, Art Gabel of the Wheeling congregation, continues doing a fine job of verifying each program. Interestingly, Marty Turkiewicz, who lives in New York and is our radio monitor for WBEN 930 AM in Buffalo, often listens to Beyond Today on WWVA and on 50,000-watt WWL 870 AM radio in New Orleans, Louisiana, which itself reaches into 28 states.

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Postal Rate Changes Force Booklet Reformatting

The postal rate changes that went into effect in the United States in May had an unexpected and unpleasant surprise—the cost of mailing our booklets increased dramatically. Postage costs were up more than 28 percent the first week the new rates were in effect. Some portions of our mailings are up over 80 percent.

The biggest difference is that while previously postage was based almost entirely on weight, the new rates also factor in size. Anything larger than 11½ by 6¹/8 inches—called "flat rate"—costs almost 32 percent more than it did under the prior rates. Rates for items smaller than that—called "letter rate"—actually decreased 16 percent.

To use a real-life example, the cost of mailing a copy of the Marriage and Family: The Missing Dimension booklet first class increased from 87 cents to $1.14. The cost of mailing a copy of Sunset to Sunset: God's Sabbath Rest decreased from 87 cents to 75 cents. The weights of the booklets are similar, but size now makes a dramatic difference in what it costs to mail them.

Compounding the problem is the fact that our larger magazine-size booklets are generally our most popular. For example, seven of our 10 most-requested and most-printed booklets are the larger size. Even though a person may request several of our smaller booklets, if even one of the larger booklets in included, the package must be mailed at the higher rate.

The change in postage rates factoring in package size came with only a few weeks' warning, leaving us little time to prepare and no time to reprint existing materials before the new rates went into effect.

To mitigate the impact of this postage increase, we immediately began work on converting the larger-size booklets to the size of our smaller booklets, commonly called digest-size. However, since almost half of our booklets (16 of 33) are the larger size, it will take some time, perhaps a year, before our production staff is able to reformat all of them, especially since we have only limited windows of time to work on them in between our existing work on The Good News, Vertical Thought, advertising materials and other booklet reprints.

Regrettably, these rate increases and the impact on our staff to reformat these booklets will likely prevent the production of any new booklets for the next year.

Rate increases for our other publications—The Good News, Vertical Thought, World News and Prophecy and United News—are yet to be announced and are scheduled to go into effect in July.

—Contributors: Scott Ashley, Aaron Booth and John LaBissoniere

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