Michigan radio, our local public radio broadcaster, has recently started running a new half hour program called “Today, Explained;” a daily “daily news explainer podcast.” I am not a fan. One host presents the dry facts of whatever story, the other expresses too much insincere (IMO) emotion in reaction to the story (as though hearing it for the first time) and throughout music is used heavily to reinforce the “mood” of the story. Bleh!
I have listened to NPR for years, and their web site is my homepage. I go there for news, but after years of listening I have gotten tired of the mannerisms and verbal tics that now just seem overwhelming on the radio. So most days I only have it on as my alarm clock and listen only for the 30 minutes or so it takes for me to get SSS’d and dressed.
Also true is that these days I am pretty much sticking my head in the sand when it comes to details of political stories, which is NPR’s strength. I don’t want to hear the Nth repetition of some sequence of events that has happened so often before and that is presented breathlessly as the latest “can you believe this?” thing. I wish there was at least one more good radio source of news that I could go to sometimes.
I listen to my local station (WBEZ, Chicago) regularly during the day, while I’m working at home (I can stream it on my Alexa). I particularly like “Fresh Air” during the week, and “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!” on Saturdays.
Germany has something similar, Deutschlandfunk. I rarely listen, but a friend of mine often sends me web-links to their programs on music which are generally quite good.
We also have Deutsche Welle, but that’s mostly for broadcasting in foreign countries, in different languages.
I listen to NPR stations (we have two, plus one of them also has a Classical station) pretty much all the time I’m in the car, and all Saturday and Sunday morning that I am home.
In the Boston area we have very good local programming to supplement the national shows. In the late morning and early afternoons I often have to choose between two shows on WBUR and WHBH when I would like to listen to both.
When I lived in Kansas City, the local programming wasn’t great. And the hostility of people toward NPR was “interesting”
I usually listen to WAMU, the Washington DC station, when I’m driving. It’s pretty good overall, although as mentioned above, some of the hosts have strange verbal tics, like the Saturday guy with the exaggerated HAW HAW HAW laugh. And I wish the reporting were broader - almost all of their stories are U.S.-focused, and mostly politics.
Two events changed my relationship with NPR: the reaction to prank-activist James O’Keefe’s punking of NPR’s fundraiser Ronald Schiller, and NPR’s realization that it’s audience was aging/dying baby-boomers.
The GOP always had federal funding on its hit list, but the shift to corporate donorship increased. You could just hear the attached strings being plucked through the speakers.
The shortcomings of youth were on display in the youth-inclusive new fare. True, the ancient reruns of My Word were stodgy and stuffy, but you had to have some education to play along. Ask Me Another was so hipster self-congratulatory, and all you need to follow it was having sat in front of the TV as a kid in the 80’s.
The real killer was when the dumped classical music on the early 2010’s. I understand that from a marketing standpoint, but it was a cultural loss.
Also, because I live outside Atlanta, there was the inside vs outside the perimeter (the interstate which rings the city proper) that’s always a factor in living here. For its own reasons, Atlanta’s NPR station pulled its focus within the ring, while the satellite stations outside played college sportscasts and anodyne cooking shows.
Because it’s a public institution, the pro-classical music fans who made a protest Facebook page posted its public stats: 16 employees; eight unpaid interns and eight society-page personalities making $100K to call their friends on the phone for donations. Not a good look.
In that case, may I recommend Says You! It’s somewhere in between My Word and Ask Me Another. I think they’re in their off season at the moment; the last few weeks have been reruns from the show’s early years. The original host passed away a few years ago. It’s kinda nice to hear him again. I’ve been to a few tapings, and you could even hear me yelling out an answer in one episode.
Every week, more radios are tuned to Says You! than any other appliance.
I can’t stand NPR. Dry as a popcorn fart, and twice as stinky. The only thing worse than boring monotone droning on and on about Stuff I Am Not Interested In, was when my wife would insist on telling me about shit she was listening to. You know, by droning on in monotone, but adding her special flourish Peggy Hill like insight. This is some Second-Generation Don’t Give a Fuck Old Bullshit right here. Oddly, PBS is just about my favorite TV station.
I have NPR on in the background pretty much all day while I’m working from home. It’s on when I’m in the car as well, but I’m not in the car that much anymore since I’m working from home.
In the Sacramento area, Capital Public Radio operates two stations, one focusing on NPR news/talk (with a little bit of music content on the weekend), and the other focusing on music (a mix of classical and jazz). Running two separate stations of course requires more funding, though.
To clarify: NPR is a content-provider, and does not have any stations. Their content is sold to listener-supported so-called “public radio” stations, which is why those stations have those beloved on-air fund-raisers. There are other content providers that have other programs, like PRX (This American Life, Reveal, Snap Judgment, The Takeaway).
If this seems like a nit-pick, there’s this: when someone’s local station dropped classical music, it was nothing to do with NPR, except that the station probably switched to mostly NPR programs. We have a listener-supported classical music station in my area that has no NPR content, only classical music.
Here in Chicago, we have two separate public-broacasting/listener-supported organizations:
Window to the World, which operates both WTTW (Chicago’s primary PBS television station) and WFMT (a classical music radio station)
Chicago Public Media, which operates WBEZ (Chicago’s primary NPR radio station), as well as having recently acquired the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper (and, by extension, the Straight Dope and the SDMB)
My understanding is that, other than a few short news updates during the morning show, WFMT’s programming is purely classical music. WBEZ runs a few music-oriented programs, but is generally news and talk, from various public radio sources.
The market used to have a second classical music station, as well: WNIB, which was sold, and changed formats to classic rock, in 2001.
Agree, I listen to a local public radio station that periodically reminds everyone that they are not an affiliate of NPR – and they do mostly classical music and jazz.
Weekends, I used to record NPR’s “Car Talk” and “Whaddya Know” to listen during the week while commuting. Since they are gone, I haven’t found another show as entertaining.
Public radio is the only kind of radio in the United States that produces anything worth listening to. Commercial radio is a wasteland of anger, hatred, and the same forgettable music over and over punctuated by braying disc jockeys and crass commercials.
News, in particular, is done better by N.P.R. than any other kind of broadcast outlet.
Indeed, public radio has an impressive array of entertainment, science, interviews, and information.
It used to be that I spent most of my waking hours with public radio on in the background.
However, these days, I rarely listen to the radio. I listen to my favorite public radio shows in podcast form.
I find it to be extremely boring as well. The only time I ever listen to it is when I’m forced to (e.g., when I’m riding in a car where the driver has chosen to listen to it). It’s OK for listening to news, but mostly they have boring human-interest stories. One memorable example was about promposals (when high school kids ask their classmates if they’d like to be their date to the prom). Who gives a fuck?
filler required by discourse!