I don’t find NPR’s style to be “monotone enunciative droning” at all. I find it to be relaxed and conversational.
I’ve been listening to NPR for so long, I can no longer listen to commercial radio. Commercial news readers sound like oily used car salesmen. And deejays sound like mental patients.
The few BBC news programs I’ve heard (“World Have Your Say” and other programs broadcast on public radio), I get that “incincerely enthusiastic” vibe. I keep thinking “Why are you trying to sound like cheezy deejays? This is serious radio!”
I prefer the laid back, conversational style of NPR.
Love - Kai Ryssdal. He always sounds like he’s having a good time
Hate - Michele Norris. Every interview she asks questions that are meant to be “prying” in some way - I don’t mind the questions, it’s the way her voice goes somehow deeper and quieter that annoys the heck out of me.
Nina Totenberg is really great when she’s giving the dramatic readings of the court transcripts. I think she’s really getting into it. The guy I can’t stand is Steve Innskeep, who has to stress the end of every sentence, whether it needs it or not: “Now, let’s meet Bob Jones, a farmer in Sioux City, Iowa.” Cut it out!
The only person on NPR who annoys me more is Renee Montaigne, who waits until they have 2.5 seconds left to ask some incredibly detailed question, so she has to cut off the person in mid-reply. She even knows she’s doing it: “In the few seconds we have left, do you believe in God, why or why not?” “Uh, well, I just-” “I’m sorry, that’s all the time we have left.” Argh!
My absolute favourite NPR talkers are Terry Gross and Ira Glass. I also like a lot of the other voices, although I agree that many of the men are difficult to tell apart. That doesn’t bother me, though.
I dislike Diane Rehm, but more for her interviewing style than her voice.
I also dislike Cokie Roberts, both for her grating voice and the absolute superficiality of her “analysis.”
But HAL actually has feelings, emotions, conflicts, fears. I get the impression from their minimalist inflection that NPR readers are nothing more than automatons translating from a tape which have to be wound up in the morning. Sometimes it seems like they’re some kind of alien invasion force, and taking over radio programming is just the first stage in their neferious plan to subvert us by lulling us into a deep emotionless state of ambivalence.
I also get annoyed by the little dinging sounds they make in between topics.
I’ll readily admit that morning DJs and radio talk show hosts are worse. In general, radio went rapidly downhill after they cancelled “The Shadow”, and I haven’t seen much of a reason to listen to it since.
One thing I’ve noticed is that when it comes to music on NPR, the DJs seem to match the speed of the music. Announcers on NPR stations that play a lot of classical music are pretty laid back, and the guy from Echoes (musical “soundscapes”) is like auditory Valium. I sometimes wonder how many fallen-asleep-driving accidents he’s responsible for.
On the other hand, someone like David Dye on the World Cafe brings the best of both worlds between traditional NPR announcers and commercial FM DJs - he won’t make you fall asleep, but he won’t make you lunge for the dial, either.
I’ve been listening for what you describe the past few days and sorry, but I’m not seeing it. Yes, they, as a group, enunciate clearly and without much regionalism, but that can be said of most news announcers on both radio and TV. My biggest problem is with the men when I’m driving, since the higher voices of women cuts through the wind noise better.
It’s a studied conversational, natural tone, but refreshing amid the hucksterism of commercial radio, whose announcers are merely performers intent only on holding their listeners’ attention through rhetorical devices they seem to have learned at Famous Announcers School. Whether or not the NPR people write their own copy, I get the feeling they understand it. The voices on commercial radio and TV news convey vacuousness only.
I can no longer listen to commercial radio announcers–their voices are too stressed, too strained to get you to listen–too hyped. They seem to be yelling all the time or being snarky or trying to be funny. How about just speaking? That’s why I like NPR. They just talk to you.
I’m not fond of Nina Totenberg, but Cokie Roberts drives right up a wall. She’s so damned smug (IMO-no, I have nothing concrete to back that up).
I also like that announcers on NPR speak in complete sentences and tend to avoid jargon or slang.
Dick Gordon is somewhat on my nerves-he tends to interrupt his interviewees with long digressions.
The one NPR person I cannot stand and will not listen to is Jerome MacDonald. His voice is horrible-both nasal and shrill at the same time. I miss Gretchen Helfridge from “Odyssey” a ways back-she had a great radio voice.
Terri Gross and Ira Glass remain favs, as does Peter Segel and Michael Feldman. The news guys are fine, too.
I only wish I could still hear him. I love Wait Wait, but I hate that now none of the 3 public radio stations in the Charlotte market carry Whad’ya Know? any more.
I remember one scary morning about a year ago when he got the Mother Of All Throat Frogs during the news read. He turned down the levels for a moment to clear his throat, then resumed reading, but his voice had just gotten worse. I can barely describe the sound in words, but it was painfully demonic-sounding. He was running out of time, so just had to keep reading until the end. Poor guy.
Ira Glass drives me up a wall, quietly, soothingly. He’s taken that halfhearted reedy urban monotone I’m-not-a-radio-professional delivery and hardened it into an absolute schtick. As in, if you don’t talk that way you don’t get on his show.
Carl Kassel sounds like a capital-A Announcer. NPR could use a little more of that. That’s one reason he’s so good doing the goofball bits on Wait Wait.
The one time Korva Coleman did WW I was surprised how flat-out flirtatious she sounded doing a take on some vapid bimbo. Obviously a woman with a few not-so-sensible shoes in her closet.
The one pubcaster voice I absolutely lust after is Laura Knoy’s - warm, clear, musical, intelligent and 120% feminine. A few spots on C-SPAN reveal she doesn’t look too shabby either.
You’d love the regional announcer for Alabama Public Radio. He’s got a slight southern twang which he does not try to hide and sounds like the sweetest guy in the world.
There is definitely an NPR “style.” I’ve had to learn it over the last six years. My previous experience was in commercial radio. Now I’m an announcer on an NPR station. It took me several years to absorb that “feel.” It’s less about announcing at people and more about intoning information to listeners. There’s another guy there from commercial radio, and he’s never going to get that NPR sound. He sounds like thousands of FM announcers. That’s why the GM doesn’t like to hear his voice on the station much, it sounds just like commercial radio, if somewhat toned down.
So while I also don’t hear robots or droning, I hear a style that is informed and well-spoken, without the sales pitch.
I still remember the shock I got the first time I hit the NPR button on my car radio and got treated to Car Talk - a shock, but a pleasant one! Strong accents for public radio!
Give Schorr some slack - how are you going to sound when you’re 91? He does speak in that sort of galumphing off-inflected half-mumble I associate with thoughtful Jewish New Yorkers, but one can hardly single him out for that.
