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| J.EmilionFlores photo for NYTimes |
NPR’s “Morning Edition” has one of the most peculiar formats
of any morning show on radio or television: it’s split between the East Coast,
with the co-host Steve Inskeep in Washington, and the West, with Ms. Montagne.
The director cues Ms. Montagne through a videoconferencing system, and the
co-hosts routinely add what they call “splits” to their scripts, so that they
share the responsibility for introductions and interviews. “We are functionally
sitting next to one another,” Ms. Montagne said, yet by staying on separate
coasts, they are reflecting the audience’s geographic diversity.
The format is working for “Morning Edition,” the
highest-rated news program on radio, which is holding onto its audience at a
time when declines are the norm across the fractionalized media landscape. The
program is adapting to the Web by letting listeners download episodes to music
players and by taking photographers and videographers along on reporting trips.
“We want to replicate ‘Morning Edition’ in all the other
spheres that our audience is likely to reach us,” said Madhulika Sikka, the
program’s executive producer, who was promoted last week to oversee all of the
NPR news division’s reporters and editors and help set its news agenda. The
public radio organization will start a search for a replacement producer soon.
All this might surprise people who still associate “Morning
Edition” with Bob Edwards, who hosted the program since its inception in 1979
and was pushed out by NPR in 2004, months shy of his 25th anniversary. The
decision was widely criticized, and some claimed that the program would fail
without him. But it has actually thrived, thanks in part to the co-host
arrangement, which split up some of the work and freed Ms. Montagne and Mr.
Inskeep to occasionally take the show on the road.
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