[78-L] Too late to circle the wagons^^

[Stewart, Joseph R]

Cary Ginell wrote: I have a feeling that NPR is strong-arming stations into playing more of their

>programming and threatening to pull their affiliation if stations do

>not do so. This happened with KCLU in Thousand Oaks, which was a jazz

>station when I started with them in 1994. Little by little, NPR

>programs took over the airwaves until virtually no live local

>programming was left. It is now 90% network news, NPR's special

>interest game shows, and local talk with only a few scattered hours of

>jazz left. Some programs, such as Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk

>are played TWICE weekly.



Nope. Stations that carry NPR programming are NOT "affiliates"... they are MEMBERS. The NPR website talks about NPR being more of a "membership organization" than a conventional network.  It says NPR "produces, acquires and distributes programming that meets the highest standards of public service in journalism and cultural expression; represents its member stations in matters of their mutual interest; provides satellite interconnection for the entire public radio system."  For NPR to "pull their affiliation" from a station wouldn't make sense. In many markets there is only ONE Corp. for Public Broadcasting-qualified public radio station (i.e. stations that are qualified by budget, number of full-time employees, hours on-air per week, etc.etc., to be NPR members).  If NPR were to "pull their affiliation" from the only public radio station in a given market, just exactly where are they going to go?



The real reason most NPR stations seem to be carrying more talk than music? It's called FUNDRAISING.  Public radio station managers feel they can raise more $$ from listeners with NPR's news/public-affairs/talk programming than with music formats of ANY kind. As the arts producer at one such NPR station (that does keep some musical programming on the air, though not as much as I would like), I'm on the public radio music-personnel listserv as well, and there's been bellyaching over there for YEARS now about how so many NPR stations are dropping their music formats in favor of news/talk.  And it has nothing to do with NPR "strong-arming" anyone.  It always comes down to economics.  And remember, NPR produces and distributes musical programming too, like Performance Today, From the Top, World of Opera, Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, All Songs Considered.  The other national program producers, American Public Media and Public Radio International, have a lot of music programming as well.  But it's up to the individual stations to choose to carry them.



Hey, the same thing's been happening on commercial radio for years.  AM radio is a wasteland of satellite-delivered (mostly conservative) talk programming, and hardly any stations air music any more.



Robert Bratcher's comment that "maybe it's just a whole lot cheaper for a station to run NPR with a skeleton staff for a few local shows than have a really good station with a full staff" is, I'm afraid, a lot closer to the mark in a lot of cases.



Randy Stewart

Arts Producer, KSMU

Springfield MO