MEDIA NA ŚWIECIE Zeszyty PRASOZNAWCZE Kraków 2020, t. 63, nr 1 (241), s. 97–113 DOI: 10.4467/22996362PZ.20.007.11515 www.ejournals.eu/Zeszyty-Prasoznawcze/ Books on the Air: the Cultural Mission of Public Radio in the United States Rafał Kuś B orcid.org/0000-0002-2930-6447 Instytut Amerykanistyki i Studiów Polonijnych Uniwersytet Jagielloński ABSTRACT This paper is an attempt to answer the question about how missionary cultural program- ming duties are carried out by the American National Public Radio (NPR). For almost fifty years, NPR has been an alternative to the programming of commercial radio broadcasters, filling the gaps present in their schedules. But do listeners in the United States still need the American public radio today, in the times of an abundance of digital audio broadcasters? This article, focused on NPR literary broadcasts, and on the WAMC network’s “The Book MEDIA ŚWIECIE NA Show” in particular, was based on intensive interviews, conducted with employees of public media institutions in Upstate New York during the spring of 2019, and content analysis of radio broadcasts. Results of the study indicate that American public broadcasters do play a significant role in the promotion of reading. Keywords: radio, public media, United States of America, public mission, literature The very notion of “public” media emerged for the first time in American polit- ical discourse in the 1967 report of the Carnegie Commission1. Established two years earlier as an attempt to study the state of the U.S. educational television broadcasting, Carnegie Commission put forward the idea that the social respon- sibility of electronic media involves not only academic instruction and vocational training (hence “educational”) but also improving the nation’s life in a variety 1 It should be emphasized that non-commercial and listener-supported radio broadcasters existed in the United States long before the 1960s reform. An example of those would be the famous Pacifica network (established already in 1946). 98 RAFAŁ KUŚ of other ways. According to the report, public television was supposed to “arouse our dreams, satisfy our hunger for beauty, take us on journeys, enable us to parti- cipate in events, present great drama and music, explore the sea and the sky and the woods and the hills” (Carnegie Commission 1967, p. 13). Although the impact of the Commission’s proposal has been, as expected, watered down by the parti- san bickering in Congress, and radio broadcasting was added as an controversial afterthought (Golka 2004, p. 85) to the text of the resulting Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the mission of the U.S. public media has remained pretty much the same since then. The aim of this paper is to explore how present-day American public radio fulfills the imperative of delivering quality (“excellent and diverse”, in the words of the Carnegie Commission) cultural programming to listeners all across the United States. Its focus is on literary radio shows, providing information about premieres and translations, giving airtime to authors and editors, and generally informing the U.S. public about new events in the world of books. A special emphasis was put on WAMC Albany’s “The Book Show”, hosted by Joe Donahue and broadcast by many public radio stations in the United States, which was used as a case for study. The main research questions discussed here concern whether public radio is able to realize this role effectively and whether the American public still needs this kind of cultural service in the modern day flourishing media environment. The study was conducted, in the spirit of methodological pluralism, with the use of both quantitative and qualitative research techniques: intensive interviews with employees of public media institutions in Upstate New York, carried out during the spring of 20192, were used as the primary method of research, with content analysis of “The Book Show” episodes and other radio broadcasts as subsidiary procedure. MEDIA ŚWIECIE NA The Medium Radio is sometimes considered a medium that is increasingly obsolete and unable to keep up with more modern means of mass communication. Who needs tradi- tional audio broadcasting in the age of the ubiquitous, breathtaking interactive multimedia? It should be emphasized however that researchers of mass communi- cation can downplay radio significance only at their own peril as this basic method for spreading information has proven many times its amazing capability to adapt to new technological and market conditions (a case in point would be the transfor- mation of radio from the main platform for distribution of family content to a more 2 This paper, based predominantly on material gathered during its author’s semester-long stay at Utica College, couldn’t have been prepared if not for the generous support from the Joseph P. Furgal Fund as well as Don and Sally Majka of Utica, New York. Special acknowledgements goo t Professor David Chanatry of Utica College, who was crucial in establishing contacts with NPR and PBS stations in the region and to the many public media professionals whose kindness and willingness to help made this whole project possible. BOOKS ON THE AIR: THE CULTURAL MISSION OF PUBLIC RADIO… 99 mobile and personal, secondary communication technology in the early 1950s, after the emergence of television as the dominant medium in the U.S. (Campbell, Martin, Fabos, p. 154–156). Writing about today’s radio, David Hendy suggests that when compared to other, more flashy media technologies, “its profile in the social landscape is small and its influence large” (Hendy 2000, p. 3). Therefore, one of the presumptive hypotheses of this paper is that radio broadcasting still has an import- ant role to serve in the contemporary society of the United States. The American system of public radio broadcasting is a vast network of over 1000 individual non-commercial radio stations, spread across the United States. In the popular understanding, it is sometimes used synonymously with the National Public Radio (NPR), the largest producer and syndicator of current affairs and cultural programming in the U.S. Unlike the U.S. public television – PBS, NPR does produce some of its shows (Witherspoon, Kovitz 2000, p. 33)3. It should be emphasized however that NPR is merely one of several major organizations serving American non-commercial radio stations (among such entities as American Public Media, Public Radio International, and Public Radio Exchange). Its roots may be traced back to the complex plans of audiovisual media reforms of the 1960s, best embodied by the Carnegie Commission’s work and undertaken as a reaction to the various ailments of commercial radio and television that could be clearly seen by the U.S. public by that time (Kuś 2013a, p. 228–229). Unlike the European public media, which are usually funded from relatively few sources such as state subsidies, license fees, and commercials (or any combination of the above), the financing of the American public broadcasting system can be most accurately described using an extremely diversified pie chart, including donations from the public, CPB4 support, funds acquired from various foundations, universities, local organizations, etc. (Kuś 2013b, p. 75–90). Since no part of the network’s budget can come from commercial MEDIA ŚWIECIE NA communication (with the quasi-exception of “underwriting”5), National Public Radio broadcasters do not compete directly with their for-profit counterparts, searching instead for programming niches left out by commercial stations, in what is known as the “monastic” model of public media (Jaskiernia 2006, p. 39). Every week, NPR broadcasts reach 105 million Americans via diverse platforms such as traditional wireless receivers, smart speakers, mobile apps, the NPR.org 3 It might be argued that this high public visibility of National Public Radio today stems from the fact that it is responsible for production of some of the country’s most iconic shows, including “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition”, carried by virtually all public radio stations in the United States. 4 CPB (or Corporation for Public Broadcasting) is a non-profit corporation established under Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, designed to be both the main distributor of federal money and a barrier against direct influence of Washington authorities on the United States public media system. 5 “Underwriting” is sponsoring of individual public media shows by private companies, allowed under Communications Act of 1934 and subsequent acts of law. Drawing from the illustrious traditions of corporate patronage of American cultural institutions, it has nevertheless attracted much criticism over the years. See: Kuś 2009. 100 RAFAŁ KUŚ website, and social media. National Public Radio is also the U.S. leader among podcast publishers, with “over 20 million people downloading NPR podcasts every month” (About NPR 2019). A convenient way of reaching NPR digital content (distributed both by streaming and as podcasts) is NPR One: an application launched in 2014 and available on Apple App Store and Google Play. Among the most popular and influential shows of National Public Radio are “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition”, both general interest, nationally-distributed current affairs programs. NPR and its affiliate stations are also responsible for the production of many other broadcasts, aimed at different audiences and focused on various social, cultural, or scientific problems, both from the local and global perspec- tive. It should be noted that broadcasting schedules are determined by individual stations, which choose from vast catalogs of programming provided by NPR and other syndicators; one could argue that in the U.S. public broadcasting the power is concentrated on the local level, within the individual stations (in contrast to the generally more centralized European public networks). This allows for significant differences between broadcasting profiles of the many U.S. non-commercial radio stations and for precise tailoring of their offerings for the needs and expectations of listeners.