NPR only allows member stations to pre-empt its regularly scheduled programs to cover "local stories of importance". And its programming can be quite expensive.
I speak from direct personal experience and that's simply not true. NPR is a content provider, they are not program directors. Assuming you manage to deal with the issues that Audio4TV mentions and you become an NPR affiliate, you can choose to not air whatever NPR programming you don't want to at any time. At WEOS we routinely pre-empt network programming for sports coverage, and pre-empt for special events like the Homelessness Marathon or broadcasting local speakers (we usually have about 8-10 per semester at least).
Granted, with NPR shows it often has greater consequences from your LISTENERS if you pre-empt stuff all the time; they get annoyed and probably won't hesitate to tell you. Or worse, campaign against you come fundraising season. Given how expensive most NPR/APM/PRI/etc programming is, this is not an idle concern as you almost certainly will have to run regular fundraisers and ramp up your underwriting to be able to afford it.
I would check out PRSS, and bear in mind that I think...I'm not 100% sure, though...that PRSS now offers a "Storage Receiver Only" package for affiliate stations, that allows you access to the non-live-stream programs only and it uses an internet connection instead of a satellite downlink. Obviously not having access to the live streams is limiting, but equally obviously, not having to pay for a satellite dish can save you a bundle. Plus a lot of the non-live shows are a lot cheaper; PRSS carries literally dozens of programs that can be acquired and aired for free.
And there's lots of shows that distribute via podcast of MP3's of whatever, many of them are free, too.
On the flip side, if you're really gung-ho for becoming more of an NPR station...you can consider entering an LMA (Local Management Agreement) with one of the existing pubradio outlets in your area. A lot of high school stations do that. It puts your station under the aegis of the larger NPR's station's memberships with NPR, APM, PRI, etc...thus you don't have to spend a fortune to meet their minimum staff requirements. And generally a H.S. station's signal/market is smaller than the NPR's station...so the added cost in program fees is comparatively a drop in the bucket. YMMV, of course, but that's often how it goes.
Usually it's pretty basic: the high school station simply repeats whatever the NPR station is airing (usually by off-air pickup via a radio at the H.S. station's studios), and then the H.S. station has local DJ's for the few hours each day that they'd be there anyways...usually 2-6pm, give or take...and they play whatever they want (sometimes to the annoyance of the NPR listeners).
In your case, it sounds like you might want to do something a little different and whatever NPR station you partner with may be perfectly happy to play along; use your station as an alternative outlet and air shows like
The Takeaway instead of
Morning Edition,
The World instead of
All Things Considered,
Free Speech Radio News instead of
Marketplace, air more BBC World Service shows or add
Democracy Now!...stuff like that. It's not easy coming up with alternate programming for the entire 24 hour day, but there's a fair amount of options for most of it. If nothing else you can air the same show at a different time and thus reach a different audience.
And that's just news/talk...I know some stations that are LMA'ing and putting on a mostly Triple-A (Adult Album Alternative) format using
World Cafe and
Undercurrents as their anchor programs and getting really good ratings with it. Of course, your market may be different so YMMV.
Nice thing about deals like this is that you can also negotiate a revenue-sharing arrangement, too. So you get the larger NPR station's underwriting and fundraising staff & resources working on selling your station for you, and you only have to give up a portion of the revenue. You'll have to noodle on it (and probably haggle with the NPR station, too) about exactly what the ratio is...but in the end you very likely can get more money than if you tried to do it alone, and you don't have to do any work! That's a win-win if I ever heard it.
One thing I would suggest is that if you want to pursue an LMA, make sure you retain a good lawyer who knows FCC rules and knows radio. We generally use the folks at Garvey Schubert Barer but there's a few other equally good firms out there; Pillsbury Wintrop Shaw Pittman comes to mind. It won't be cheap, but it can save your bacon. This isn't to say you should approach an LMA with hostile intent, but you want someone who knows the game to be on your side and protecting your interests...some of which you can't always assume the NPR station will understand are important to you. You'll also want to join CBI (College Broadcasters Inc -
www.askcbi.org) and probably IBS (Intercollegiate Broadcast Service -
www.ibsradio.org) as well, or at least their listservs. They're both mostly about college radio but have experience with high school radio, too. Just take some of the claims IBS makes with a grain of salt. :
BTW, as for the commercial networks? You can spend an idle hour or two asking the networks about it but honestly I wouldn't get your hopes up. They rarely "get" non-comm radio's needs...and their entire structure of commercial placement makes it hard to get away from it. The live-reads by talent alone will usually bite you in the a$$ pretty hard because they're common, frequent, and by definition they happen outside of the local breaks and smack in the middle of regular programming. Besides, why would you want to put COMMERCIAL programming on your airwaves? Ick! ;D Seriously though, people generally tune in to non-comm radio expecting a certain non-comm style; putting commercial programming (even if you manage to get rid of the actual commercials) might be a turn-off.
