I’ve been a commuter listener for years and I’ve just been having this feeling in the back of my brain that it’s not the same as it used to be. Sure, the hosts have rotated, and there seem to be more of them, but it feels like the programming itself has changed. I could swear that there used to be like a 70/30 split for Domestic and Foreign news and that feels closer to half and half nowadays. Politics seem to be less the focus in favor of more human interest stories. And it feels like a lot of their guests have way less of a pedigree than they used to.
I dunno…maybe I’m just crankier than I used to be in the mornings. Can anyone set me straight?
You’re surely talking about a more recent change…But wayyyyy back in the 90s there was some dude with a girl’s name who made a strategic change at NPR that destroyed a lot of the local shows and local programming variation among member stations. The most popular shows at the time were Car Talk and This American Life, so suddenly there were countless clones of those formats, especially TAL. And NPR now had its own old-guy and pussy-boy celebrities, and people loved it.
And this worked. NPR was now pretty much immune to the attacks of the Gingriches who had been attacking its funding for years. But it sucked 10,000 dead dog dicks. If David Sedaris or Ira Glass ever comes within crowbar’s reach I’m-a Gordon Freeman their ass. And squawky boring Peter fucking Segal or however he spells it had better never come round here.
There’s still one good NPR station in SF, KALW, which is very old and connected to a high school so it gets some funding from elsewhere. It still has its own weird shows. If anyone else still has a quirky local station I’d appreciate knowing about it so I can stream it.
The old joke is that NPR stands for Nice Polite Republicans. A number of years ago they were neutered to the point that they became the audio equivalent of the New York Times.
Can I recommend the Driftglass podcast in these trying times?
If we’re thinking of the same person, he moved on to a company I worked for, made a mess the C-suite types thought couldn’t fail (and took years to claw back), and then quickly left for greener pastures before responsibility came home to roost.
As of last fall there was budgetary doom on the horizon
that they had to contend with more recently
For NASA, it was “no bucks, no Buck Rogers”; for NPR, it was “No subscribers getting tote bags, No Nina Totenberg.” Whether it was NPR overinvesting in a podcast bubble, or a failure of their advertising/don’t call it advertising model, or a huge drop in subscribers following through in pledge drives, they got fucked. Maybe they couldn’t withstand the MeTooing of Garrison Keillor, maybe the FoxNewsMaxWars crowd were former listeners and decided to find their news sources elsewhere, or died of COVID. It’s a shame: I certainly was glued to my car radio or work computer screen for whenever a president was getting impeached, or when we had a war on, or when I was implored not to drive like his brudda. In the meantime, local NPR affiliates will have to pick up the slack from the collapsing national concern, assuming their own pledge drives are up to snuff.
Just today, it was pretty big news that NPR couldn’t afford $96 a year for a blue checkmark.
(Or so it seems to me, I’m just an amateur listener.)
Anecdotally, I was a huge supporter of PBS for years and then I noticed a distinct effort by them “to give both sides a voice” when that other voice was fascism of the GOP. It showed up on all their channels, particularly the Newshour which was one of my mainstays.
They continue to give voice and time to these nutjobs and the thing is IT’S NEVER GOING TO WORK. Caving to the Repubs never will reinstate your funding. They will drink champagne on PBS / NPR’s demise.
But the other thing giving voice to the unreasonable does is it dries up funding and donations. I pulled mine over a decade ago and my decision is reinforced regularly when I happen to be in the car with my wife b/c she’s a fervant listener.
Agreed. It was frustrating and embarrassing to hear them (and PBS NewsHour) contort themselves to pointlessly pretend that Trump’s daily false claims about anything he was asked about might somehow turn out to be true.
They’re historically great believers in the Fallacy of the Golden Mean, and they have a long history of ending all unpleasant stories with cliches about “healing,” which drives me nucking futs.
Sorry to bring it back to PBS, but the both sides format in NewsHour killed my interest. Here’s a crazy idea: When you have a topic to discuss, how about bringing actual experts on the subject? Don’t just trot out the left and right pov with equal time and weight.
I appreciate the responses from everyone. I realize that my initial post is somewhat sparse. I find myself putting into words exactly why I think shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered have changed. I don’t think it’s because of allowing both sides of the aisle, per se. See…I never had TOO much of a problem with NPR getting a perspective from some on the right. I appreciate the insight from frequent non-crazy Conservative voices like Jonah Goldberg. But when you let a combative douchebag like John Bolton on the program (20 years after the Iraq invasion, John Bolton says he'd do it all over again : NPR), that’s a bit much. However, Steve Inskeep did keep Bolton’s bullshit in check for the most part, so I don’t think it’s the fact that they’re just letting the Right spew false bullshit without challenge.
No, unfortunately I think it’s me getting older and becoming a cranky old man combined with the fact that there seem to be a lot fewer journalists that can fill the microphones of Renée Montagne, David Greene, Rachel Martin, etc. And there are also far fewer people out there who can effectively communicate an idea or a point of view when being interviewed. I feel like I hear a lot of softball questions and floofy answers, and oftentimes I feel like I’m hearing an interview on a late-night talkshow instead of a news radio channel, where there’s not a true Q&A going on.
I parted ways with NPR during the first Trump campaign when they wouldn’t call a spade a spade, but recently have come back precisely because it seems to me they have learned to push back. Not perhaps as hard as I’d like, but it definitely doesn’t seem as bad as it was there for awhile.
For coverage of the Trump indictment, they specifically said that if Trump was to give some sort of statement or speech afterwards, they would specifically not cover it as they have been burned repeatedly and have decided as an org to not give him the free media anymore.
Half the reason I tune into NPR is to listen to the BBC news hour - those are some real presenters. I’d love to have someone like Lyse Doucet at NPR, but they just aren’t going to be that way. I find Mary Louise Kelly on All things considered to be kinda…my least favorite host of that show with her attitude of “Game of Thrones is just another show about old white men talking”.
My local stations do some great work - WBUR hosted Car Talk, WGBH produces Frontline. WBUR has great coverage of all local issues if I’m interested, which is nice if you care about more local politics - the mayor of Boston is on the 11AM talk show monthy, etc.
Historically this was true of me as well, though my schedule no longer aligns quite so well with that plan. I agree wholeheartedly that it’s some of the best news content on the station.
Podcasts man, podcasts. I miss it “live” most of the time too (especially the 2nd show later in the day), but it’s the one news show I want to catch up on.
Oh come on, the whole damn point of radio is just being able to turn it on and not fiddle with my audio player or phone. :) If I’m going to mess with podcasts during my all-too-short (for this purpose) commute, I’ll try to catch up on all those episodes of Mike Duncan’s Revolutions I still haven’t gotten to!
I do a lot of walking (see the thread of accountability) and a lot of coding, so I have a fair bit of time to listen to podcasts during the day. If you’re stuck talking to people then I can see why you wouldn’t have time.
That’s a good podcast use case and it’s something I should really be doing a lot more often. My current residence sadly doesn’t lend itself but that’s one more reason we need to move.
You must be a lot better than I, if I’m coding or writing I can’t concentrate on anything else - half the time I don’t hear it when people call my name. I can put on music, since it’s fine if that fades into the background, but I’d miss 90% of the content of a podcast that way which would kind of defeat the purpose. This is also why I don’t have much use for audiobooks.
So my wife and I are driving to the in-laws last weekend and the announcer on WVPB said something like, “Coming up next is Car Talk,” and my wife and I both let out an audible gasp of surprise before he corrected himself and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know where my mind pulled that from. We haven’t had that at 11am for years.” And my wife and I both yelled, “MOTHERFUCKER!!!”
I’ve listened to NPR for 30 years, still give some money. Yeah, it’s changed over the last 10 or so years and mostly not in ways I like. I’ve attributed it to them trying to reach a younger audience, which I can understand. Not sure that’s working for them…my 20-something daughters aren’t engaged. Most of their good stuff (and some of their people) seem to have migrated to podcasts. SiriusXM has a PRX channel that’s turned me on to a few.
For me the first shock was when NPR cancelled “Talk of the Nation” around 2014 or so. That show typically picked one topic, usually current affairs and ran with it for the whole hour with guests who knew what they were talking about. On Fridays it was “Science Friday” and somehow that shitshow survived but became much worse. That used to be a focused program with only a few in-depth topics per show with…you know…scientists… but even by then it was dissolving into the 5th-grade Science Digest that jumps from blurb to blurb that it is today, talking half the time with reporters instead of scientists, and with an annoying host who inserts lame jokes and comments that seem to often embarrass the guests who aren’t reporters.
“Fresh Air” is still hanging on, and even with Terry Gross hosting fewer of them the other hosts are good. But that’s always been a crap-shoot. I listen to the intro and if it’s a celebrity guest I usually go elsewhere. But when it’s a news topic it is usually very good.
I find myself often just changing the station during the morning and evening news programs. Big news things are fine but often leave me looking elsewhere for more.
When there’s a general topic that interests me they do not go into the depth I think that they should, it ends in 5 minutes and leaves me with more questions. Many times they sign off and I’m thinking “…AND??..” I feel like I wasted my time listening to it.
BBC News Hour rocks.
I have a stack of Car Talk cassette tapes that I need to transcribe to digital.
