Soundscapes: the Evolution and Challenges of National Public Radio
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FALL 2 0 0 6 Carnegie Results is a Soundscapes: The Evolution and quarterly newsletter Challenges of National Public Radio published by Carnegie If only the order in which radio and television had been invented and exploited had been reversed, so that there had first been television and then, bursting Corporation of New York. out in the second half of the 20th century, radio! How delighted and entranced and overwhelmed we would all be by radio! and we would say, “What a mar- It highlights Corporation- velous thing it is, you can get the programs and you don’t have to watch it!” —Peter Goldmark supported organizations and projects that have hile radio had existed as a medium of mass produced reports, communication for nearly half a century, the arrival of National Public Radio programming to the U.S. air- results or information waves in 1971 marked the beginning of an era of radio Wbroadcasting that would provide American and international listeners with of special note. unprecedented, enriched access to information. Today, NPR produces more than 130 hours of weekly programming, including 34 original shows, distributed and broadcast via satellite through 810 member stations in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico. An average weekly national audience of 26 million people listens to NPR. Its signature show, All Things Considered, is second only to Morning Edition—also an NPR staple—as the most listened-to program on public radio. Much of NPR’s programming is available on the Internet via its web site and a highly successful venture into podcasting begun just a year ago. Sirius satellite radio’s five million subscribers can listen to two NPR stations. NPR broadcasts in 147 countries and, while other major U.S. media have reduced their global presence in recent years, NPR has expanded its number of for- eign correspondents and bureaus. August 2006 saw the opening of its seven- MORE > teenth international bureau, matching the number to scores, tens, hundreds of thousands of listen- the Washington Post now operates abroad. ers, one to all. It’s the same paradigm as the town Aiming to be both innovative in terms of its crier, as the Gutenberg printing press, to a hun- programming and aggressive in disseminating dred readers of the Bible to a high-speed newspa- content, NPR’s combination of editorial consis- per press, to a community of readers.” tency and rigorous revenue management have To explore the educational potential of radio, helped the organization hold its own against com- from 1929 to 1936 Carnegie Corporation of New mercial and noncommercial competitors as well York made grants totaling nearly $400,000, help- as today’s dominant medium—television. ing launch such ventures as the National Advisory “We all know the images that television pres- Council on Radio in Education (NACRE), which ents are phenomenally powerful,” says Kevin Klose, worked “to further the development of the art NPR’s President and CEO. “Those images are of radio broadcasting in American education.” repeated many, many times, and they hardly ever The idea of educational—now public—radio has lose their sense of power or immediacy, and that’s a always aligned perfectly with the Corporation’s visual reality. But precisely because we cannot use mission, mandated by its founder, Andrew a camera—a camera is an observer and is, to some Carnegie, of promoting “the advancement and extent, inert—radio can be extremely inquisitive diffusion of knowledge and understanding.” and probing in ways that television cannot.” NACRE championed the idea of radio sta- Alongside its effectiveness, Klose also takes tions providing informational programming, for pride in NPR’s funding formula, which includes example, fifteen- or thirty-minute segments on member-station pledge drives, private foundation such topics as “Our Government,” “Our World sponsorship and corporate underwriting. “Nobody Today,” “Fundamentals of the Law,” “Short is funded the way we are in this country,” he says. Course in Finance” and “Language Lessons” “The idea of something that is voluntarily funded (German, Italian, Spanish, French). By 1932, delivering such wide-ranging and powerful ser- NBC and CBS affiliate radio stations had pre- vice to millions of Americans is a great statement sented some 96 lectures on economics, psychol- about the power of public radio.” ogy, vocational guidance and government, with the University of Chicago Press distributing more Beginnings than 260,000 copies of supplemental pamphlets and books. While educators and the U.S. public f NPR has helped determine the sound- demonstrated a budding interest in educational scape of American radio as many believe, radio, it was not enough to sustain the medium I its influence is rooted in the fundamental on a long-term basis. Before disbanding in 1937, need of men and women to communicate, to NACRE declared in an internal review that efforts exchange ideas and information. Kevin Klose to promote radio as a source of educational pro- says radio represents “the oldest information para- gramming were “experimental and demonstra- digm in the history of humanity: one transmitter tional in character.” 2 Then, as now, commercial broadcasting was broadcasting. The idea was floated to Carnegie king. Statistically and legislatively, the country’s Corporation, which led to the creation of the preference has always been for-profit enterprise. Carnegie Commission on Educational Television The Radio Act of 1927 dealt with the regulation of two years later. Charged with studying the prospects “all forms of interstate and foreign radio for developing noncommercial television broadcast- transmissions and communications within the ing “of diversity and excellence,” the Commission United States, its Territories and possessions.” This was endorsed by President Lyndon Johnson. “From legislation—reaffirming the federal government’s our beginnings as a nation we have recognized that earlier declaration of its ownership of the airwaves, our security depends upon the enlightenment of while at the same time allowing private interests our people; that our freedom depends on the com- to operate broadcasting facilities under licenses it munication of many ideas through many channels,” issued—did not allocate any channels for Johnson wrote. “I believe that educational television educational programming. has an important future in the United States and Attitudes hadn’t changed in 1934, when throughout the world.” Congress created the Federal Communications Headed by James Killian—a former president Commission (FCC) and gave it jurisdiction over the of MIT and science advisor to President Dwight radio (and later television) spectrum. And in 1945, Eisenhower who later became director of the when the FCC was awarding frequencies to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (1968–1974)— fledgling television industry as well as to radio sta- the Commission produced a landmark report in tions, it allocated only 20 of 100 radio channels for January 1967, Public Television: A Program for noncommercial purposes. Action. The Commission’s recommendations, cover- The first listener-supported model was Pacifica ing independence, funding, oversight, and reach, Radio, established in 1946. Its maiden station, KPFA were underscored by its central conclusion that “a in Berkeley, went on the air three years later, just as well-financed and well-directed educational televi- television sales and viewership were taking off and sion system, substantially larger and far more perva- making this flashier medium a fixture of American sive and effective than that which now exists in the culture. Given television’s ascendancy, formalizing United States, must be brought into being if the full public broadcasting and finding effective ways to needs of the American public are to be served.” compete with TV in delivering information and Implicit in the report was a belief in the intel- entertainment presented a formidable challenge. lectual and cultural yearnings of the American public who, the Commissioners suggested, would Many Ideas, Many Channels welcome educational broadcasting as a means of gaining “a fuller awareness of the wonder and the n 1964, Ralph Lowell, a Boston philan- variety of the arts, the sciences, scholarship, and thropist and founder of WGBH educational craftsmanship, and of the many roads along which Itelevision and radio, began making a case for the products of man’s mind and man’s hands can be the formation of a commission to evaluate public encountered.” 3 James Reston wrote in The New York Times began going through standard legislative proce- that the Carnegie Commission report was “one of dures. The Department of Health, Education, and those quiet events that, in the perspective of a gen- Welfare (HEW), now the Department of Health eration or even more, may be recognized as one of and Human Services, was charged with codifying the transforming occasions of American life.” the new legislation. It was during this period that National Educational Radio, a division of the the entire existence of NPR hinged on the fate National Association of Educational Broadcasters of two words. The preliminary bill included the (at the time, public broadcasting’s primary advo- words “and radio” after most mentions of “televi- cate organization) noted the public interest stirred sion.” As the bill progressed, those words would up by the Carnegie Commission report and be intensely debated: Radio proponents obviously undertook a study of radio, which was funded by wanted the words left in, while public television’s the Ford Foundation. Published in April 1967, The supporters, buoyed by the prospects of a “Public Hidden Medium: a Status Report on Educational Television Act,” campaigned to keep the bill radio Radio in the United States (New York, 1967), free. “Those fighting for public television thought pointed out that the nation did have an existing including radio in the bill would drag down the infrastructure of noncommercial radio stations, legislation and reduce funding for television, ” but that they had marginal funding and most were explains Bill Siemering, a charter member of able to broadcast only a few hours a day.