By Friday morning it was clear that Hawaii Public Radio was not going to reach its $1,032,000 fundraising goal by the end of the scheduled 10-day pledge drive later that evening.

The semiannual fundraising began Oct. 1 and was short $290,000 as of Friday morning.

It was the first time that listener-supported KHPR-FM 88.1 and KIPO-FM 89.3 had encountered such a large shortfall.

"We’re going to cut it off tonight at 6 p.m.," HPR President and General Manager Michael Titterton said Friday.

While pledge drives previously have been extended by a few more hours, or perhaps into an 11th day, the amount left to raise in those situations was perhaps $20,000 to $25,000, he said.

"We’re paying the penalty of having 15 years of unbroken success," he said. "I’m surprised" that this is the first time a semiannual pledge drive has fallen so short.

By midmorning Friday, Titterton estimated the stations would have between $160,000 and $240,000 left to raise. Officials decided they didn’t "want to drag it into the weekend," and that they would give listeners a break.

Because the stations absolutely must raise their total goal, "we’re going to start a minicampaign Wednesday," he said. He is hopeful listeners will step up with pledges to help the stations "knock it out within a couple days."

It is also the first time for the stations to go into "serious overtime."

The stations of Hawaii Public Radio are nonprofit, noncommercial stations that depend on listener support in the form of contributions raised in pledge drives twice a year.

One strategy that station officials have employed during recent pledge drives is to encourage listeners to become sustaining members whose automatic monthly contributions could potentially decrease the amount of the semiannual pledge drive goals, a plan classical music host Gene Schiller summarized as a philosophy of "onward, upward and downward," Titterton chuckled.

Titterton attributes the insufficience to several factors.

"Generally there’s a fatigue," he said. "People are weary of bad news … and there’s been one thing after another, with no real relief in sight."

The hot, humid weather that has spiked lethargy as well as the mercury also could be a factor.

"It isn’t an excuse. It’s part of the general reality," he said.

To make matters worse, HPR-1 and HPR-2 fell silent on Oahu’s North Shore and for Kauai residents on the eve of the pledge drive, diminishing the stations’ ability to get the fundraising message to potential supporters.

Hawaiian Electric Co. lines that normally power the stations’ equipment atop Oahu’s Mount Kaala were damaged by a recent storm, and generators that had been powering the equipment ran out of fuel. Complicating matters was the mating season of an endangered snail species that lives in the area, requiring HPR and HECO to coordinate repairs with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.

The HPR-2 equipment is back up and broadcasting to the North Shore of Oahu, and to Kauai, but the HPR-1 transmitter aimed at those specific areas "took a direct hit from lightning," said Phyllis Look, director of marketing.

The transmitter was trundled down the mountain, and parts were being shipped, she said Friday. The HPR-1 signal should be back to full power by Wednesday.

Raising money to fund the next six months of programming, power and personnel costs is not a conventional way to do business.

"We’re the first to recognize that this is an imperfect business model, but it’s the only one we’ve got," said Titterton.

Similar pain is being felt at other public radio stations around the country, he said, telling of one station in North Carolina with a $200,000 goal that was "desperately trying to reach $75,000. As orders of magnitude go, I’d rather have this problem, than that."

ON THE NET:

» www.hawaiipublicradio.org

Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.