I remember that. I think the problem with Air America is that while they tried to mirror conservative talk, they failed to go through the same process to get there. Conservative talk didn't spring up overnight with a full slate of hosts to fill every day part. It took time for the business model to start up, work out the kinks, and grow into something that could eventually fill a whole station. Air America debuted everything all at once without (seemingly) asking themselves if there was an audience to support a whole day of programming.
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NY Times Article on Challenges Facing NPR
- Thread starter Barry
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True and also the local NPR Affiliates in some parts of the country need state legislation for funding approval and CPB funding given that some of the affiliates are owned by state entities like universities.
Wondering about the validity of our two-party system would be a long discussion veering far away from radio, but I do think that the quarry for those stones is a big part of the problem.
It used to be that we were a country that (mostly) lived by the creed "I disagree with what you're saying, but I will defend your right to say it." Think Reagan and Tip O'Neill palling around after a contentious day on Capitol Hill. Senators going out for a beer after arguing all day on the floor, etc. That paradigm (IMO) began to fall apart with the rise of that aforementioned quarry. It sells to throw rocks. Shouting hosts and one-sided "discussions" about how horrible X and Y politician is certainly moves the needle on ratings and revenue, but at what cost?
NPR and their affiliates are certainly pursuing ratings and revenue (via donations, grants, etc.) but they also seem to grasp that as broadcasters, they have a responsibility to the public which owns their airwaves.
Let's put it this way: They're putting something on the radio that the commercial stations have avoided for the most part. They're not necessarily doing it in pursuit of ratings and revenue, although that's not completely overlooked. They could probably get higher ratings by focusing more on politics and the more controversial topics. But that's not really where the bulk of their time and attention is spent.
As a KQED listener, I don't hear shows or commentary which could be described as "left wing." I think they strive to be pretty balanced.
I can hear plenty of right-wing conservative talk shows - Sean Hannity, Bill Mitchell, etc. And I can hear clearly left-wing talk shows on Pacifica stations such as KPFK or KPFA.
But while I don't listen to KQED every day, I listen fairly often to shows like Morning Edition; and if there is a left-wing "progressive" bias, I am not hearing it. Maybe that is just me, but there is a huge difference between left-wing opinions programs ( like what Air America used to feature), or opinion shows hosted by left-wing progressives on KPFK. Just my opinion.
I wish that Steven Inskeep or one of the other nationally-known hosts could invite Berliner back on the air for a productive discussion where he could elaborate. The straw that broke the camel's back for Berliner seemed to be the hiring of Kathrine Maher and the coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict, but he did not go into much detail. -- D.
Air America, with one possible exception, had hosts who were "campaigning" and not "entertaining".
Randi Rhodes was the exception, and that is proven by her presence on mainstream conservative talk stations during her career; she is entertaining. The rest of the hosts sounded too intense and generally seemed to be talking down to the ignorant or uninformed masses.
More to the point, they are using a different funding model that allows much larger staffs. That works until the economy tightens and such funding takes a dip.
Commercial stations would love to have 20 person news staffs, and live panels all day long. But there is not enough money in that sector for that.
I consulted and programmed a commercial news and talk station in Buenos Aires, one of about 15 talk stations in the market. We had a news and air staff of over 50 and a half-dozen station news cars. Advertisers there recognized the value of talk formats in that market and supported it with premium rates. In many books the station had as much as half of all the AM listening in the market.
The morning show had seven anchors, including a meteorologist and a staff comedian who parodied the news. It was backed by a dozen writers and several street reporters. 100% commercial station, but the market, the listeners and advertisers supported the effort.
It helped that we had 100,000 watts directionalized towards downtown and no other station had a signal that was noise-free everywhere. But people only listened when the topics and presentation were the best.
Which is the situation now. I feel it's disingenuous for someone like Berliner to say that perceived bias is responsible for normal economic conditions. The history of NPR is filled with funding dips. This isn't the first one. The company went through a major crisis in 1983. Some of it was caused by the company's overexpansion (something they called NPR+), but also by funding problems. These are pretty common in the non-commercial world, and they simply adjust their staffing to fit the budget.
Realize that, first of all, the system was designed to protect the interests of wealthy landowners, many of whom also held people as property. It was designed to make change difficult. The aftermath of the Civil War introduced some modernization to the system but even then there was a concerted effort to try to maintain something resembling the former status quo. The American Revolution was a "revolution" of wealthy property owners, after all.
While the two existing major parties date to the Civil War, it's the outward forms that have been preserved. The actual policies and priorities have changed over time. Recall that, until the New Deal, it was the Republican party that appealed to Black voters. If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, I think it's fair to say he wouldn't be a Republican.
Then there are the origins of the present American political - and legal - system. It's based on British common law, not explicit instructions as in a Napoleonic system. Politics in such countries tends to coalesce around two major parties with a possible third party as an occasional "kingmaker" and/or a third party focused on a specific national or ethnic issue. Examples include Canada (Liberals, Conservations, and the NDP as the third party), the U.K. (Labour, Conservatives, with the Liberal Democrats as the third party and the Scottish National Party specific to Scotland), and Australia (Labor and Liberals [more like conservatives in the American sense]). New Zealand is somewhat more complex, and also has proportional representation, unlike the U.K. or U.S. with our "first past the post" system. Coalitions are possible, if rare, when a third party is involved - there was a coalition between the Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties in the U.K. from 2010 to 2015.
There are ongoing efforts to modify elements of the system. Proportional representation is one; ranked-choice voting is another (though very much subject to manipulation); "jungle primaries" are yet another. The idea is to encourage more collaboration within a system that has heretofore rewarded partisanship. Informal norms still allowed collaboration to happen but those are breaking down. One could argue that these modifications are not far-reaching enough but, as mentioned in the first paragraph, the system is designed to make change difficult. Look at how hard it is to get a constitutional amendment through. With the amount of distrust that prevails today between people of different political views, change is not only difficult, it's feared. What then happens is increased reliance on the judiciary to deal with issues not conceived of in the 18th century, but that's a whole other set of issues.
Would a multiparty system help? I would first look at the preconditions needed for success. First, arranging a viable governing coalition takes time. So a strong administrative state would be required to keep things going while those negotiations proceed. Then there would have to be trust among the various parties. Finally, a mechanism to require the governing coalition to step aside if it loses support would be needed - in other words, fixed terms would not work in such a system.
As for the Electoral College, it seems a bit insane, but consistent with the devolved approach to election administration that is baked into the current system. I imagine there would be substantial resistance to changing that approach. It's that issue of distrust again. There are certain elements of the current system that prioritize state-by-state considerations over a nationally uniform approach to governance; this is one of them. Personally, I don't like those elements, but I see where they comes from.
PS: I have gone on about this because it appeals to the political-science geek in me.
I disagree with you there. When the finances of commercial radio were much, much healthier, news was the first thing cut when regulatory relaxation made it possible. We can, and probably will, argue about the causes, but the outcome is indisputable.
News was cut at stations that did not want or need news. Listeners, going back to the start of Top 40 in the early 50's, did not want news in the music programming (except, maybe, in mornings). But the FCC required it. So we ran 10 minute newscasts every hour from midnight till 5 AM, and then tried to make the news as entertaining as possible in other dayparts.
Listeners know where to go if they need news. But for most stations, the idea that the FRC and then the FCC had back about 85 years ago or so that information had to be forced on listeners is just absurd because listeners, when polled, don't want any of that on music stations.
You make it sound like it was a natural phenomenon that couldn't be helped. Nonsense. This was a series of conscious choices that were made, based on program directors' prejudice against news and the desire to cut costs. Very little thought went into such cuts.
FWIW, KEXP was for years a division of KUOW (when they were KCMU), with the KCMU GM answering to the GM at KUOW, so yes, there is a connection between KEXP and NPR, although I believe that connection was cut when they became KEXP.
I agree totally, that really it's all about the stations. But at the same time, most of the NPR stations run the NPR news programs.
The OPR and JPR stations I listen to at night are NPR -- as they run NPR programs, but I don't think they are run by the NPR folks in DC. JPR's headquarters are in Ashland, OR. I think OPR's are in Portland or Eugene. The network isn't a monolith.
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Fair enough. But the Pew stats are still indicative of issues with NPR listenership network-wide. And that declining listenership may not be NPR's fault. Radio in general (according to Pew/Nielsen) lost 10% of its listeners from 2012 to 2022. I'm sure there hasn't been a terrific upturn since the last data I could find (2022). The slow decline in listeners is a problem for Radio in general, as more younger demos go online more or less exclusively.
NPR stations, just like other stations, have to deal with the loss of listeners in general.
That may be its stated purpose -- or not, as BigA suggested -- but when a station needs revenues they're going to cater to their audience, public or commercial or otherwise.
At KCMU we ran Pacifica because it brought in dollars, and the station needed dollars. Pacifica, at the time, was highly biased. But that was what brought in the donations. It covered a progressive niche in radio news that wasn't on other stations in the metro region. I can't see how NPR stations wouldn't be equally in tune with their listeners' preferences in how news is handled, especially if they are indeed hurting for revenues now, as was reported in the NY Times a couple weeks ago.
Does that mean they're biased? No. But they definitely are going to tailor their programming to their core. If they don't, they'll lose them. Isn't that how radio in general operates? Cater to your core listeners?
News on music stations was always unpopular with formats I listened to. There was always a news station that got the listeners when a big story broke. Most everyone else bulked up on news overnights to lessen the number of newscasts during the day. Some top 40s I worked would have a 5 minute summary each hour on the log but a 60 second headlines was what went on the air and those two minute long logged weathercasts were really 15 seconds at most. When the FCC required 'percentages' of non-entertainment, hiding or fudging on news was common practice.
There was a "prejudice" against news because research with our own listeners showed that there was next-to-zero interest in news outside of morning drive.
How many times did a listener have to tell us, "when you put on the news, I change to another station" for us to get the point? The interruption of news was a bigger objection by listeners than "too many commercials" and other possible negatives.
For most formats, this was the norm. And that is how format evolution brought us a few stations with strong news coverage and lits of stations with little or no news outside of morning drive.
Thank you, I hope you don't get invited to leave this forum, but you might.
What do you mean by that? Just curious.
I was told by administrator Fybush I could leave this forum. See earlier posts.
How about you actually comprehend the message you were given? Which was this: there are lots of sites out there where you can be as political as you'd like. This is not one of those. It's a forum that is focused specifically on broadcasting. If you want to post about "leftists who run NPR," I invited you to go do so elsewhere.
That invitation still stands.
There are some new, clear guidelines about to be issued by this site's owners. Anyone who'd like to follow those guidelines, including you, is more than welcome to stick around and enjoy the discussion here.
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