NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO (NPR) is a private, nonprofit corporation serving more than 640 member radio stations throughout the United States. At the start of the twenty-first century, National Public Radio served 16 million listeners weekly via its U.S. stations; ran NPR Worldwide for listeners in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa, and American Forces Network for overseas military personnel; and broadcast throughout Japan via cable. It had news bureaus in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, London, and Moscow, and part-time correspondents worldwide. Music programming included classical music, jazz, blues, and contemporary African music. Talk shows included the humorous Car Talk, as well as political and social programs.

NPR formed in response to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which authorized federal financing of public television and radio. Founded in 1970, NPR initially served primarily as a producer and distributor of programs for public radio stations. It won critical acclaim for its thoughtful, in-depth news programming, such as the evening news magazine All Things Considered, which debuted in 1971, and Morning Edition, which began in 1979. In the late 1970s, NPR began providing its member stations with program promotion, training, and management assistance, and in 1979 it set up a satellite system for program distribution. In its early days NPR established a reputation with news and information programming. All Things Considered combined news headlines with reports from NPR staff members and part-time correspondents, and often included offbeat features. Reporters did lengthy profiles of prominent newsmakers and covered such topics as rural life and the ravages of drug addiction, bringing about a new style of radio reporting that relied on sound, not just narrative. Many of the NPR reporters credited the influence of Edward R. Murrow, the noted CBS correspondent of earlier years who had placed a microphone in the London street to allow audiences to hear World War II bombings. Murrow's style of reporting had disappeared from commercial radio, where tight formats discouraged long stories.

From its widely heralded early decades, NPR has made changes that some critics charge have compromised its originality and even its integrity. From 1983 to 1986, the organization underwent a severe financial crisis that nearly bankrupted it. In order to survive, NPR dismissed more than a hundred employees and instituted tough financial controls. The crisis also prompted a fundamental change in the financing of public radio. The federal Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) granted a loan to NPR and then began funneling public money to individual public radio stations, which used the money to acquire national programming. The move was intended to give public stations a greater voice in the governance of NPR and other program suppliers. Since the early 1980s public radio as a whole has relied less on government support and more on contributions. By the early twenty-first century, critics of NPR charged that its increasing corporate sponsorship had softened its news, which was becoming more like commercial news outlets, and that it increasingly focused on entertainment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collins, Mary, Murray Bognovitz, and Jerome Liebling. National Public Radio: The Cast of Characters. Washington, D.C.: Seven Locks Press, 1993.

Eksterowicz, Anthony J., and Robert N. Roberts, eds. Public Journalism and Political Knowledge. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000.

McCourt, Tom. Conflicting Communication Interests in America: The Case of National Public Radio. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999.

Wertheimer, Linda, ed. Listening to America: Twenty-Five Years in the Life of a Nation, as Heard on National Public Radio. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

JamesKates/d. b.

See alsoMass Media ; Talk Shows, Radio and Television .