2005 Annual Report - Radio Content Analysis

While some voices were being added to radio's traditional over-the-airwaves, one of the medium's best-known voices was removed; 2004 will be remembered in part as the year Bob Edwards left NPR.

The decision by National Public Radio to replace Edwards as Morning Edition anchor was one of the year's more peculiar media stories. Edwards's distinctive voice had been the trademark of Morning Edition since its start in 1979. The host was not, NPR kept insisting in the furor surrounding its decision, fired from Morning Edition. NPR executives announced that as of April 30, 2004, they would be reassigning Edwards to a position of senior correspondent, a vague title that NPR had previously given to such former host personalities as Linda Wertheimer, Juan Willams and Susan Stamberg.

The decision to remove Edwards - in the middle of many affiliates' spring pledge drive periods - inspired, according to published reports, some 35,000 complaints to NPR, a statement on the floor of the Senate, several newspaper editorials and the launch of SaveBobEdwards.com. Edward Chapman, founder of the Web site, also spoke of organizing boycotts of NPR underwriters and pushing for the removal of government funding of NPR.

An article on Minnesota Public Radio's Web site quoted Mike Jungmann of the Minnesota network's listener services describing viewer reaction as "very strong" and adding, "Most of the calls we've received have been 'How could you? How dare you?' and we encourage them to contact National Public Radio."²⁹ Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe wrote that one woman who wrote to NPR "actually compared the bad news of Edwards' departure to her simultaneous diagnosis of a possible cancer and asked herself: 'Which is worse?' "³⁰

Talk of withholding member contributions and boycotting fundraising activities reached a significant enough stage that Edwards himself placed a letter on the NPR Web site asking listeners to continue supporting NPR and its member stations. On the Minnesota Public Radio Web site on April 1, Bob Collins quoted Edwards as saying that NPR "is one of the best news organizations in all of journalism and it has to continue to grow and thrive and prosper. I've been part of building this up for over 30 years and to have it come tumbling down over me is distressing."³¹

But as vocal as Edwards was in his effort to help, the network was mostly quiet. The reasons behind NPR's decision have been publicly vague. Privately, insiders at the network say the silence stems in part from a desire to avoid criticizing Edwards for fear that it would make the situation worse. There was apparently a feeling that he had become intransigent about attempts at innovation on the program. USA Today's Peter Johnson noted that the change came "amid a reassessment of programming at NPR, where executives are discussing how to use a $200 million bequest…from Joan Kroc, wife of McDonald's founder Ray Kroc."³²

The question then becomes why NPR would feel the need to reassess programming, in spite of the money from the Kroc estate, when it is one of the few major media institutions in the country that has seen steady audience growth. Morning Edition at the time of Edwards's removal was the nation's number one morning show, with almost 13 million listeners. Edwards suggested on WNYC's On the Media, "Maybe they feel that even though we've doubled the audience in the last 10 years, it could have been tripled, quadrupled?"³³

NPR leadership spoke a great deal about plans to refresh all of the network's programming. Statements in various news articles and by various people indicated that the shift at Morning Edition to two hosts, one doing the show from NPR's Washington, D.C. headquarters and the other anchoring from NPR West in Los Angeles, reflected the network's push to be a news outlet better able to react to breaking news and do more reports from the field.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were often mentioned as evidence that NPR was unable and unprepared to deal with a news event of national proportions in a climate where broadcast outlets like CNN and others are able to go immediately to live feeds. According to the New York Times, NPR was replaying a taped broadcast at the time of the attacks and did not break in with special programming until 10:00 a.m., more than an hour after the attacks began.³⁴

NPR, however, disputes this timeline. According to NPR’s internal account, the station covered the first plane attack in the newscast at 9:01. Then at 9:22, it broke into its regular programming with a live two-way discussion with a reporter from their New York City member station. That live reporting lasted until 9:49. Regular programming then resumed until 10:00 when the station began its “special” coverage. NPR producer Melissa Gray, who was directing Morning Edition that day, suggested in correspondence with the Project that some of the misunderstanding came from the designation “special coverage.” “We did not officially call our earlier coverage from 9:22 to 9:49 ‘special,’” says Gray, “but it was there.” (Later, NPR would win a Silver Baton and a Peabody for the quality of that programming and another Silver Baton for its reporting on the war in Afghanistan.)

Whatever the case, in March 2004 the network created a new position, managing editor of national news (for which it hired a former editor and senior vice president of The Baltimore Sun, William K. Marimow) and increased the visibility of NPR West by increasing the number of programs being hosted or co-hosted from the Los Angeles studio. In addition to housing one of the co-host chairs for Morning Edition, NPR West was home to the midday news show Day to Day and to the magazine-style Tavis Smiley Show.

But in November of 2004 Smiley, whose program launched in January 2002, announced his resignation from NPR. In his resignation letter, Smiley noted that his show, which ran on 87 stations, "attracted more than 900,000 listeners, 29% of whom are black. That's almost triple the network's overall black demographic."³⁵

Smiley said publicly that his decision to leave NPR was not financially motivated, but a conflict of expectations. In the November letter, Smiley wrote that "NPR's own research has confirmed that NPR has simply failed to meaningfully reach out to a broad spectrum of Americans who would benefit from public radio, but simply don't know it exists or what it offers."³⁶ Smiley was dissatisfied with the amount of money being spent to promote his show, according to some published accounts.

NPR was reportedly caught off-guard by Smiley's decision to leave. An AP article by Lynn Elber on January 10, 2005, quoted David Umansky, an NPR spokesman, as saying the network was "eager to renew his show and remains intent on expanding its minority audience."³⁷

Roughly a week after Smiley's departure, NPR announced its hiring of Ed Gordon for News and Notes With Ed Gordon, a daily public-affairs program aimed at the African-American community and set to start in late January. Continuing what might be turning into a trend in NPR programming, Gordon, a contributing correspondent to CBS News's 60 Minutes, will be based in New York and joined by a still-unnamed West Coast co-host.

Even with the increased West Coast visibility and new programming, NPR listeners might still find it difficult to detect any audible changes in NPR - either in the kind of stories and reporting the network is doing or in the smooth, even tone (occasionally parodied) of its anchors, hosts and announcers.

It may be too early in NPR's proposed evolution for changes to be noticed. Torey Malatia, general manager of WBEX-FM, Chicago's public radio station, was quoted in an October 19, 2004 article by Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune as saying that "It's way too early to talk about either ratings or fundraising impact," but adding that "there's no longer the rush of outrage the station felt during the spring pledge drive" after the Edwards departure was announced.³⁸

And it may be that NPR continues to benefit from its commitment to long-form journalism and its particular brand of entertainment programming. NPR offers listeners the kind of lengthy news stories truly not widely available in any other broadcast format. Even the upstart satellite radio has recognized that fact. XM's public station, XM Public Radio, is built from programming from terrestrial public radio stations: Minnesota Public Radio, Boston's WBUR and Public Radio International. The station's schedule includes popular public radio shows like This American Life, Whad'Ya Know? and The Leonard Lopate Show.

Listeners learned in late July of 2004 that they would be able to continue spending part of their mornings with Edwards. The former Morning Edition host announced that he would be leaving his senior correspondent position to start a new morning radio program on XM Satellite Radio. (The Bob Edwards Show, to the disappointment of some of his fans, is not a Morning Edition-styled news show but an all-interview program.)

Starting on October 4, 2004, his new one-hour program was broadcast opposite Morning Edition. Has this created a bitter rivalry?

Well, maybe in the same low-key tone of a public radio announcer: Edwards spent part of his debut broadcast encouraging listeners to listen to Morning Edition first and join his show afterward.