Commentary: Kill NPR To Save It

The best way to end meddling

Jack Shafer at slate.com writes:

Like its commercial competitors, NPR cancels unpopular shows and chases audiences with programs it thinks will be hits. Like any commercial network, it boasts about the size of its audience. It markets itself aggressively. It defines itself by growth and expansion. One sign that NPR no longer considers itself "public radio" came this summer, when it changed its name from National Public Radio to NPR.

Having come this far, NPR should go all the way and remove its fingers from the public pocket. Only by making itself independent of government funding will it become independent of government meddling. First step: Cut that 2 percent in federal money from the NPR budget. Second step: Put the member stations on notice that the $90 million that CPB ships them each year will be zeroed out in five years, and tell them to adjust their budgets accordingly.

But how will NPR and NPR member stations survive? Public radio's extinction would suit me fine, but I understand that many listeners would be lost without it. So here's my plan: The stations should proceed in the direction they've been traveling since the 1980s, only move faster to become more like the commercial operations they already resemble. Kill those annoying underwriter announcements and replace them with real advertisements for real money.

Read more here.

Also read:

Journalism’s antiquated rules create humorless automatons like NPR’s Vivian Schiller (Dan Calabrese, North Star National)

Why NPR Matters (James Fallows, The Atlantic)