It was an interesting morning at the lush and lavish studios of MWS Media. First, a sprinkler valve on the expansive and well-appointed lawn burst, leading to a few hours’ of repair work and no water for cooking or showering for the on-site staff.

While waiting for pipe seal to dry, I pursued a very active thread at the Podcasters Yahoo Group. The essential question: would listeners donate money to offset the costs of podcasting, and would they do it often enough to avoid traditional advertising and sponsors? Or are we doomed to have commercials in our podcasts?

During the course of the discussion, I checked in with the Boing Boing newsfeed, and discovered a new site called PledgeBank. Essentially, this site encourages folks to pledge their support of something on the condition that others do so as well.

This dovetailed nicely with the discussion I’d been having all morning. So here it is:

I will contribute $5.00 each to five podcasters who are not supported by paid sponsors or paid advertising… if and only if twenty five other podcasters or listeners to podcasts do the same thing before July 14th, 2005.

Who’s game?

Full details.