Q100’s Bert Show gets more than 200,000 thank you letters for troops in time for Thanksgiving
November 14, 2012, by
For a third time, Q100’s Bert’s Show has achieved its goal to send at least one hand-written letter to every military personnel who is overseas during Thanksgiving: more than 200,000.
This is actually half as many letters as they needed last year, when 400,000 troops were overseas, many in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bert Weiss said he'd now like to do this every year. The show tried it once in 2007 and brought in more than 300,000 letters. A year later, they attempted a digital version but that didn't work. In 2011, they revived the old-fashioned letter-writing campaign. "There's something so special to receive something hand written," Weiss said.
The landlord for the building where Q100 studios are based allowed them to use empty space above their studios for the past week to stack, organize and count the letters, most of which flooded in the past week. Anywhere from 20 to 50 volunteers at any given time did the sorting from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day since Nov. 7. Bert Show operations manager Tommy Owen (who can be heard every week doing a weekly rap summary of the show's happenings) oversees the entire operation.
The U.S. Postal Service was set to send off the last batches for delivery this afternoon.
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About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
