The Beijing Hour is probably the flagship show for CRI, or CGTN as the English output is now known. Sometimes some interesting content, but pretty dry. I imagine even NPR fans would find it boring. But vastly different from the bad old days of Radio Peking and it’s endless political harangues.I agree with you about CRI. I've not listened to their shortwave broadcasts in recent months, but for many years when I did listen from time to time, the English programming was frankly fairly boring, but not in a "dull Communist propaganda" way. There were lots of inane discussions of things like tipping and restaurant etiquette, internet dating, fashion trends, pop music. The aim seemed to be to put across an image of "hey, we Chinese are just like you" for whatever reason.
I‘ve only very occasionally listened to CGTN on shortwave since the Albania relay station was closed in 2019. The audio quality of the relays from Cuba is awful, along with much of what Radio Havana Cuba puts out, due to engineering incompetence and/or indifference. There are a few English transmissions direct from China that are audible in North America if you are willing to do some digging.