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I love NPR. I'm glad they're doing well, and hope they will continue to make quality programs. But one of the major advantages which has set them apart for me

• domenicd 7y ago
  As someone who only vaguely remembers NPR from their childhood, my primary association of NPR is with their podcasts. And those things are full of ads. So I initially found this post very confusing. I guess in the past there might have been something called NPR which did not have ads?
  • Townley 7y ago
    This wasn't the case as recently as a few years ago. I used to listen to the podcast version of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me exclusively, and remember musical interludes that immediately went right back to the show. One time I was driving in the car at just the right time and heard Wait Wait Don't Tell Me on the radio for the first time (as opposed to in podcast form) and was startled that there were ads. Now of course there are a ton of ads, but I remember being surprised by how NPR seemed to be a holdout to the Mailchimp/Casper/Blue Apron-fueled ad craze.
    • war1025 7y ago
      As someone who thinks Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is the absolute worst pile of garbage NPR has ever produced, what do people see in that show? Honest question. Found this review [1] a few years ago and was glad to find I wasn't the only one who couldn't stand that apparently much beloved show. [1] http://www.imnotlaughing.com/index.php/radio/46-wait-waitI http://www.imnotlaughing.com/index.php/radio/46-wait-waitI
      • jimmyvalmer 7y ago
        Amen to that. Anodyne snark becomes cloying quite quickly. Big thumbs up to production staff of "How I Built This". Huge thumbs down on Guy "exaggerated incredulity" Raz. Also on the shit list: moth radio hour and ted radio hour (damn you Guy Raz!) And a resounding meh to that most sacred of NPR institutions: car talk. Neither funny nor helpful.
      • dredmorbius 7y ago
        WWDTM was amusing for its first few years. It had the "new kid on the block" vibe, and countered much of the too-serious-by-half general sense of NPR. Having the morning news announcer, Carl Kassel, as the announcer, in a very non-serious role, was also amusing. That held up for most of the show's first decade. But yes, the bloom's off the rose. The show is now 21 years old, it's an institution itself, is no longer a refreshing change-up from normal programming, and comes across as increasingly crass rather than clever or irreverant. Worst was realising that several of the panelists were far better in their off-show personae than on, a fact and awareness which had failed to penetrate WWDTM's format and shtick itself. I stopped listening years ago.
      • shrikant 7y ago
        I'm a big fan of WWDTM, because I find it funny. IMHO, it's the second-best podcast I listen to. It's relatively light, doesn't take itself too seriously, doesn't pretend to be a serious quiz, and the guest panelists are good enough in the small doses that's dished out.
    • Consultant32452 7y ago
      I wonder if the ads are put in there by the local distributor. In my area NPR radio station has no ads except when they run a campaign asking for donations.
  • cortesoft 7y ago
    NPR was established by an act of congress, and was meant to provide for a public radio system. It never had ads until recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR
  • war1025 7y ago
    They always say "We don't have ads, we have underwriters". I think the difference being the sponsor has copy that the announcer will read, but they can't do all the annoying audio effects that traditional advertisers use. Personally, I don't much mind it. Gotta pay the bills somehow. Maybe depends where you are, but NPR is big here in central Iowa (iowapublicradio.org). I think it's pretty big in Minnesota as well.
    • yostrovs 7y ago
      It's the double standard hypocrisy that's troubling many. You're either a publicly funded medium that doesn't run on ads or you're not. Currently, my impression is constant corporate sponsorship designed to make said corporations look good with pauses to raise more money from the public. During the pauses the sponsorship ads don't run so you feel like you are the sponsor.
    • StevePerkins 7y ago
      That distinction has been steadily eroding. Over on their television broadcasting counterpart, the PBS NewsHour plays straight-up commercials from financial planning firms prior to each episode now.
    • C1sc0cat 7y ago
      Isn't having the talent do the add read, worse than playing in professional adverts. or I am spoiled by the BBC.
      • war1025 7y ago
        I think the difference is they limit it to sort "Mission Statement" type blurbs, instead of "COME TO JimBob's CHevy for GREAT DEALSS!!!!"
  • scarface74 7y ago
    NPR was initially funded by the government. I would much rather any media be ad supported than government supported. Given a choice between dealing with business motives and government motives, I trust government a lot less.
    • dbingham 7y ago
      You should really distrust them equally. They're effectively one in the same in our current society. Who do you think is paying the government representatives to make business friendly choices that enrich their friends?
      • scarface74 7y ago
        The difference is that I trust businesses whose motive is purely logical - make money - a lot more than I trust government run by people who either have “cultural interests” that are directly opposed to my views and very existence. Business doesn’t have the power to take money, property, liberty, or my life.
        • dbingham 7y ago
          ...you've never read much labor history, have you? Business has the power to do all of those things. And has _frequently_ exercised that power through out history. The fact that it isn't right now (or is to a lesser and less obvious degree) is the result of government exercising its power to keep business in check. Those laws that government is still (half heartedly) enforcing are a hold over of a time when the people had more control of the government, and business less. ...also, while we're here... what cultural interests are opposed to your very existence? Genuinely curious. As someone of Jewish heritage, I'm well familiar with ideologies opposed to my very existence, but I'm curious what specific interests you're referring to and on what basis you believe they are opposed to your existence.
          • scarface74 7y ago
            That if you are not a White Christian you don’t belong here and you are not a true American or that you are a second class citizen that shouldn’t be treated equally by the justice system. There was always the undercurrent of it - especially in the south, but in the current political environment, it’s very front and center. Again, I am not saying that it is a majority of Americans but because of the electoral college and the allocation of 2 seats in the Senate regardless of population, that viewpoint has an outsized voice right now.
• pembrook 7y ago
  > I try to avoid advertising as much as possible, and it's sad that they are one more place it's invading. It's unfortunate that internet people have been falsely conditioned to believe the people who create the media we consume shouldn't be paid. Oh, but you will gladly pay for quality, ad-free content, you say? Unfortunately, based on the numbers I've seen at media companies I've freelanced for, this only works out for a tiny minority of creators. Unless you are the NYT (housing 1000+ journalists) or Ben Thompson (an outlier with a super high income audience), the number of listeners/readers/etc willing to pay is astonishingly low. When people say they will pay in surveys, most of them are flat out lying. Here's a recent example: https://tim.blog/2019/07/11/why-im-stopping-the-fan-supported-podcast-experiment/ https://tim.blog/2019/07/11/why-im-stopping-the-fan-supporte... It turns out, a vast majority of people who complain about ads will not put their money where their mouth is. I say bravo to NPR for looking out for the sustainability of their excellent work. I happily listen to ads to sustain their content. I have full confidence they will continue to report with the same independence they've always had.
  • Alex3917 7y ago
    > It's unfortunate that internet people have been falsely conditioned to believe the people who create the media we consume shouldn't be paid. I mean if I happily give away all my blog posts for free under creative commons, why is it unreasonable to expect most other people to do the same? People who derive value from the Internet should just create one or two things per year to give back, whether that's a blog post, an app or website, open source software, or something else. I do think there is a need for a small percentage of people to create content full time. But at the same time right now there is also a huge oversupply of content, and we'd probably all be better off if 95% of it went away.
  • ahmedalsudani 7y ago
    Your parent comment said nothing about paying in order to avoid ads and made no assumptions about any of the points you responded to. It was just lamenting ads.
    • pembrook 7y ago
• makotech222 7y ago
  NPR is corporate propaganda for people who think their above the type of propaganda you see on FOX news. I use to listen religiously for about 3 years, until the 2016 election. The way they talked about the democratic primary, it was very very obvious they were biased towards favoring Hillary. They were telling outright lies about Bernie and his policies. Haven't listened to them since, but I've seen stories about how much worse they've gotten. I think they're mostly funded by the Koch's.
  • masonic 7y ago
    It goes back much further than that. They took a distinct left turn after the 1994 election.
  • yostrovs 7y ago
    You didn't notice any other bias from NPR? I listen to it all the time and only for the bias to know what's in the minds of a certain slice of society.
  • StevePerkins 7y ago
    I think the myth of any "balanced" news source is exactly that, a myth. All human organizations have an internal culture, and that produces bias. My view on public broadcasting is that its culture is CLEARLY left-leaning. That is, I don't think you could get hired and build a career in that world if you were known to be politically conservative or libertarian. Subconcious bias is worn on their sleeves, and they do tend to ensure that it always gets the last word (e.g. see virtually any interview segment involving gun control or illegal immigration). However, I also think they TRY to be objective in their content. Even if there may be bias in story selection or story structure, I think they try to provide the building blocks so that you can think for yourself. One POV might consistently get the last word, but the other perspective(s) are represented in a segment. Anyway, this topic and thread were on my mind, because I happen to be in the middle of reading the book "Listener Supported", a book on NPR history from longtime insider Jack Mitchell. The last section in the book deals with criticisms of bias that NPR has received over the years. Mitchell is pretty candid in acknowledging public broadcasting's progressive roots and culture. However, I was surprised that most of the discussion involved attacks on NPR from the LEFT! A lot of people feel the same way as parent comment. Not that NPR is culturally right-wing, in the same manner as Fox News. But rather that its bias is not sufficiently left-wing. Or that it's a "trojan horse", appearing leftist yet subject to manipulation and too much a servant of the status-quo. This perspective is interesting to me, if a bit frightening. Particularly reading the claim "they're mostly funded by the Koch's", and not seeing a SINGLE person on Hacker News counter that 8 hours later. In reality, David Koch has only made donations to the PBS show "Nova", has never donated a dime to NPR, and this is such a prevalent fake news trope that Snopes has had to cover it: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/koch-brothers-buy-npr/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/koch-brothers-buy-npr/ You think about this sort of thing being right-wing material, spread by old people on Facebook. It's sobering to see its inverse here.
• lr4444lr 7y ago
  They're government funded, aren't they? Doesn't that mean people playing politics with that funding, pressure to appoint connected people, and editorializing stories that might reflect badly on Congressional members of their oversight committee and budget? Even on the charitable side, aren't a few of their donors largely outsizing most others? Are their workers unionized? I don't think being ad free or nearly so is any guarantor of independence.
  • sircastor 7y ago
    NPR mostly has gotten is funding through payments by public radio stations, who mostly get their funding through pledge drives. There is a little funding that comes from the government.
  • rc_kas 7y ago
    About 15% of NPR funding comes from government grants.