2005 Annual Report - Radio Content Analysis

Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) started in 1967 as a college radio station out of Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minn. Today, MPR has won, according to its Web site, "800 journalism awards - including the Peabody Award and the Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Gold Baton Award, in 2001."³⁹

The reach of Minnesota Public Radio has gone far beyond its primary region of Minnesota and parts of Michigan, Iowa, Idaho, North and South Dakota and Wisconsin (with some Canadian listenership). MPR created a national production and distribution umbrella - American Public Media. - that carries some 20 national programs and specials and whose programming reaches some 13 million listeners weekly. That would be an audience increase of more than 8 million listeners since Spring 1998.⁴⁰

By its own figures, MPR "serves a regional population of five million people, and with more than 83,000 members, it has the highest percentage of listener membership of any community-based public radio network in the United States. With 690,000 listeners each week (an increase of some 44% since 1998), it has the largest audience of any regional public radio network."⁴¹

MPR is perhaps best known for the very popular A Prairie Home Companion, now distributed by its American Public Media entity.

Marketplace, MPR's daily business show, has "the largest weekly audience of any business program on radio or television," according to its 2003 Annual Report.⁴² The show, along with the nine-minute Marketplace Morning Report (aired during NPR's Morning Edition) attracts some 7.9 million weekly listeners and is carried on more than 340 stations nationwide. By July 1, 2005, Marketplace will start being distributed by American Public Media rather than MPR.

In addition, American Public Media's news and information offerings include the radio magazine show Weekend America and the innovative Speaking of Faith. Billed as "a weekly national conversation about belief, meaning ethics and ideas,"⁴³ Speaking of Faith takes topics that are considered to be narrow in their appeal and turns them into interesting, often engaging radio.

It was with that concept in mind, creating the kind of "driveway moment" radio that public radio has always reached for, that Minnesota Public Radio began experimenting with what it has called "public insight journalism." Using its online site, it asked the public questions regarding current events, examined the feedback and used the results to create stories the staff felt would be more topical and relevant to their audiences. The network was also one of the organizers of the first national public radio collaboration, "Understanding America after 9/11," which brought together 270 stations and networks "to create a nationwide conversation through documentaries, special reports and global call-in programs."⁴⁴