I hate to join a fray such as this one, but NPR/VPR are long-standing pet peeves of mine. Why, you ask? Okay, if you insist....
NPR I think that the actions of NPR in 2000 when the FCC planned to opening up low-power FM for free licensing to local non-profit stations is reason enough to not afford this organization the benefit of the doubt. This was perhaps one of the only things to liberalize ANYTHING that came out of the Bush-42 Executive Branch, and our friends at NPR were right there to stop it. These are a lot of links, just read the first unless you are really interested. http://www.fcc.gov/Speeches/Kennard/Statements/2000/stwek080.html http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/27/business/fcc-heads-for-showdown-with-congress-over-radio-plan.html http://www.npr.org/about/press/000406.lpfmlegislation.html http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webtag=ab-pirateradio&tid=170 NPR was one of the most outspoken and persuasive opponents of the FCC plan, succeeding in preventing the creation of hundreds or perhaps thousands of non-NPR affiliate community radio stations. [The FCC rule changes would have reduced the required engineering for new radio stations under a particular wattage]. VPR I enjoy quite a bit of the VPR programming, but their locally produced content is around 20%, maybe not even that high. [It was higher in the pre-Vogelzang era, but mostly because they played concertos for three hours every morning.] That has to be compared to stations like WGDR (75+% locally produced) and WDEV (again, 75+% local content). When I listen to the VPR fund-raising I would swear that these guys and their tote-bags are responsible for every minute of the broadcast, not for one hour (repeated twice a day) on weekdays and a lot of weather reports. And how do they make a 90-minute newscast into a 150-minute newscast? *feh* Andy ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, 11/7/2009 1:47am To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Source verses Destination... And I should add, I think VPR's goverment funding is less than 10%, last I heard - I can honestly say that the threat of loss of government funding is not an influence on content at VPR. Asa
