Page 302 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Nat onal Publ c Rad o | 1

aMeriCan PuBliC Media
One of the most notable recent trends in public radio has been the development of “super-
stations” whose signals, relayed by repeater antennas and satellites, may cover statewide
areas or reach across the United States. The first, and leading, public radio superstation is
Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), which extends into seven states and Canada. MPR originated
with KSJR, a classical music station located northwest of Minneapolis, in January 1967. Under
the leadership of William Kling, the station developed a regional news service and formed
MPR in 1974. Within a year, MPR operated six stations around Minnesota. MPR greatly
benefited from its association with A Prairie Home Companion, establishing a marketing
operation in 1981 to sell merchandise related to the program, and was a principal partner in
the formation of American Public Radio in 1983. By the end of the 1980s, MPR controlled 17
stations, including operations in North Dakota and Idaho.
MPR spent much of the following decade expanding and consolidating its operations. In
a controversial move, it took over KPCC in Pasadena, California, in 1999. In 2004, MPR broke
off from PRI and formed American Public Media to distribute its leading programs to sta-
tions, including A Prairie Home Companion and Marketplace. American Public Media also
offers a syndicated classical music service to public radio stations. Its defenders laud MPR’s
expansion and professionalism, while its detractors fault it for focusing on entrepreneurial
activities and edging out smaller, localized stations. Its success has ensured that MPR has, in
many ways, set the agenda for public radio in the United States.

ThE 1990s anD 2000s
NPR had come of age by the mid-1990s. Newsweek hailed NPR as “the New
Yorker of the airwaves,” and President Bill Clinton told an assemblage of NPR
executives and funders, “I’m just an NPR kind of president.” NPR’s coverage of
the first Gulf War raised its listenership by 30 percent, and more of its news
and public affairs programming focused on Beltway politics, establishing NPR
as a player on the Washington scene. By 1997, Morning Edition and All Things
Considered alone consumed 40 percent of NPR’s budget. As it targeted opinion
leaders and wealthy audiences on the local and national levels, underwriting
announcements became integrated into public radio programming. The system
became increasingly reliant on companies engaged in controversial policies and
activities, such as Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, and Wal-Mart, who see
public radio sponsorship as an inexpensive and effective form of “damage con-
trol” for their corporate images. Public radio increasingly promoted programs
like Car Talk, which, in addition to showcasing corporate funders, created op-
portunities for merchandising spin-offs. Consultants framed “audience service”
in terms of listener dollars raised per program; by this logic, Car Talk was the
most important “service” offered by public radio.
NPR’s occasionally tenuous finances were stabilized when it received a
$236 million windfall from the widow of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc in
2003. Yet NPR has hesitated to share its fortunes with stations. Instead, the