If you are a fan of Morning Edition and All Things Considered, you are in for a rude awakening tomorrow (Nov 17, 2014)
Both shows are going to start to sound a lot more like commercial radio. Both shows are a adopting a new “show clock” that determines when things like station breaks, sponsorship messages (they’re not ads, damn it!) occur. There will be three news breaks per hour, longer sponsorship ads, and more Fox News like features being pushed onto local stations.
Here is a useful story about the changes from a station in Hawaii. Ideally, the show clock should be invisible to the listener, but with hard breaks, content has to be edited to fit into the rigid schedule.
http://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/content/program-clock-changes-npr
These changes are very much related to this:
http://www.npr.org/2014/10/17/356998435/in-forcing-out-senior-executive-new-ceo-mohn-puts-stamp-on-npr
Flipped on Morning Edition (it is still morning in Oregon) and was greeted by a lesson in my racism – the woman was interviewing a black man with 8 year old dreadlocks who is upset that people look at him. At one point she asks him what he would do if his son said he was going to grow dreadlocks – before he answers, she says “I wish we were not on radio” as his face contained some important reaction to her question.
Radio is not TV without the pictures.