Almost all NPR programming is preproduced, highly edited and scripted. If the reporter goes “out on the street” to talk to people about some topic, they’ll talk to 50 people, then select the 2 or 3 people closest to their narrative, then edit it down and add music and recorded information, tying it up with a bow picturing it as what “the public is saying”, when it is really just the point of view the show wants to project. It’s all done way ahead of time – nothing is spontaneous.
There has been a notable exception – “Talk of the Nation” – it’s a live midday phone call in show. People talk about the story in the news today – while callers are typical NPR listeners and the calls are probably screened thoroughly, it is still live and there is a live exchange of ideas.
Well, that’s about to end. NPR has become podcast centric, and live callin doesn’t match the model of on demand downloads.
So radio keeps walking away from what makes it unique – live two direction communications. Facebook and twitter now own that niche. Once it isn’t live and people learn to listen to podcasts in their car, there is no reason to listen to over the air recorded radio programs.
WCSP 90.1 in Washington, DC has call in shows. It is the audio of the C-SPAN tv channel. I don’t listen/watch so often but believe they still take calls without screening them and without the standard 7 second delay. They can do that on cable… perhaps the FM broadcast has a delay and a bleep for bad words, not sure.
It really is a good place for unfiltered opinions, they really listen to callers and let callers say pretty much whatever they want.
http://streamingradioguide.com/streaming-schedule.php?stationid=9051
http://streamingradioguide.com/streaming-schedule.php?stationid=58274
http://streamingradioguide.com/streaming-schedule.php?stationid=58275
The thing I like is C-SPAN doesn’t talk over the audio or feel they need to tell me what the speaker meant.
They also hang around until the bitter end of an event or news conference. They don’t bail early in order to get Heidi movies on the screen.
NPR’s programming always reeks of college level über left multicultural masturbations. Every produced segment starts with stock narrative (read progressive), “man on the street” spew, and “random” ambient “street noises” of “colorful” cultures to fill your head with “knowledge” and gettin down wit da struggle. This is their boilerplate anti-White European propaganda which I stopped listening to when my skull fully hardened.
I never heard Talk Of The Nation because I have better things to do than listen to NPR, like self-mutilation or baking cookies. It’s time for NPR to find some nice sugar daddy to cover the bills for their tepid and insulting tripe.
The BBC has a similar program called “World, Have your Say”, with callers all around the world calling to comment on the day’s events, usually revolving around how the United States is destroying the world.
The programme is distributed in the United States via PRI which is a competitor to NPR – they basically distribute BBC programming.
My bad – I completely missed this. PRI ended distribution of BBC programming in the US last year
http://www.pri.org/bbc-world-service.html
Distribution is now handled by American Public Media, the competitor to NPR created by Minnesota Public Broadcasting
http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/press/archive/pr_0323.12.html
I was about to recommend their “World Cafe” music show, but your comment inspired me to first check and I found they have not been distributing it since 2005. I still recommend it. It is hosted by David Dye, WMMR alumni circa the Bill Vitka and Al Santos era.
http://www.npr.org/people/4717757/david-dye
How Minnesota Public Broadcasting and APM came to be such a big player in public radio is an interesting story all by itself. It all happened after Garrison Keillor threw out a spontaneous suggestion that people write in to get their free Prairie Home Companion calendar (which didn’t exist) and all hell broke loose.
http://streamingradioguide.com/blogradio/?page_id=1989
Never really a fan of Keillor. Have listened and enjoyed the show from time to time. For me, I will always get a smile when I recall his flash of brilliance in describing that fictional town as a place “where all the children are above average”.
Until I started trying to build out the public radio section, I didn’t get the connection between public radio and NPR. NPR doesn’t own or operate radio stations – they produce and distribute programming.
PRI and American Public Media also sell programming to public radio stations. Relatively little government money goes to NPR and they would survive just fine without it. The flow of money is indirect – the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds local TV and Radio stations, which then use that money to buy programming from NPR. Right Wing politicians like to say they’re going to cut off funding at election times, knowing it is a meaningless gesture. If you really want to do that, end funding of the head of the snake – CPB, which means also killing PBS
Yeah right.. technically true.
And the government isn’t printing money either. It created a Corporation known as the Federal Reserve Board and it prints whatever money Congress wants to spend by buying the Treasury bills from the Treasury Department (not directly, but through third parties that generally make a profit.)
“Follow the money” as they used to say during Watergate.
Oh it gets better – the Fed creates money that doesn’t exist to then buy US Treasuries – and then the US Treasury is paying interest to the Fed for money that doesn’t exist.
But the real inside deal is Repos “Repurchase Agreements” where the Fed lets banks park something like a $ trillion in securities overnight to grossly misrepresent their liquidity.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed04.html
They park them at book value rather than market value as a hidden bailout.
From the president of Fleckenstein Capital:
“Regarding the Fed, 2008 and the financial crisis, I’ve recently read almost all of the books released in the last year on that subject and I’ll have a little to say about that tomorrow. For now, let me just note how surprisingly good I found Ron Paul’s End the Fed. I have always agreed with his major points, but prior to reading his book, I had thought of him as a bit of a gadfly. I did not appreciate his true grasp of the underlying fundamentals of economics and moneyprinting, and how “it all works.” Ex his tolerance for certain conspiracy theories, I find his views to be the same as mine. His book is mandatory reading for anyone wishing to understand how moneyprinting makes the country worse off.” from http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/46438.html
Politics and personalities aside, it is really the Bible on how the Fed works today.
“and Bob’s your uncle” as they like to say in in the UK. 😉
Unfortunately, their sugar daddy is Uncle Sam.
When Voice of America was created, it was specifically prohibited from broadcasting to the American people because it could be used as a propaganda tool…. so Congress started funding PRI/NPR.
I generally avoid their talk/news shows, but find they do have some good music shows…. might as well enjoy what you can since all the federal tax money you have ever sent to Washington in your lifetime is much less then they got out. 😉
Yeah, got to agree with your premise that radio needs to focus on things that makes it unique. I listen to Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s, The Splendid Table, aired Sundays on a local NPR station. She has some interesting interviews with 2-4 guests about their expertise on food, wine, book or something to do with food oriented lifestyle. Then after the guest spots, Lynn takes about 3 or 4 callers per program. No bickering, just lots of friendly exchanges.