UMaine professor authors book on future of public radio

ORONO – A University of Maine professor has written a book about the development and possible future of National Public Radio.

NPR has more than 20 million listeners in the United States and more in other countries via the Internet, satellite and other technologies. The organization that debuted in 1971 with its trademark afternoon news program, “All Things Considered,” has endured political battles, unseasoned leadership and funding problems to become one of the country’s most prominent news organizations.

But NPR must continually adapt to new technologies and competing audio services that offer more choice for listeners, said Michael McCauley, associate professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine.

McCauley analyzes NPR’s development and offers suggestions for its future in a new book, “NPR: The Trials and Triumphs of National Public Radio,” published by Columbia University Press. He uses his analysis to offer a new perspective on the role of radio news in a democratic society.

“Simply put, NPR may be better off to phrase its content in a way that enhances ‘monitoring’ or ‘sampling’ – as digital media do – instead of continuing to offer a volume and intensity of radio material that tends to induce information overload. This becomes much more important as public radio content becomes better established on the Web, satellite radio, terrestrial digital stations, “podcasting,” and other new technologies,” McCauley said.

The book combines historical analysis and commentary based on McCauley’s many interviews with people central to NPR’s history, as well as primary data from the National Public Broadcasting archives, presidential libraries and other sources. It describes the role of nonprofit organizations, including universities, in educational broadcasting from radio’s tumultuous early years through passage of the landmark Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.

When that act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson, noncommercial radio was a poor cousin of the commercial industry. In fact, a 1968 survey of noncommercial station managers found that a typewriter was the first thing many of them would buy with new federal funding.

Only 73 of America’s 457 noncommercial stations were then able to meet the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s minimum funding criteria in terms of transmitter power, number of employees and hours of broadcasting. Today, NPR has more than 780 affiliated stations and has become the number one brand, signpost or symbol of quality in the public radio industry, wrote McCauley.

NPR’s 34-year history has all the earmarks of a good drama – strong personalities, funding crises, political manipulation, forays into new technologies and changes in leadership. McCauley touches on these elements and describes major developments related to them. They include key points of tension between news and cultural programmers, NPR’s often contentious relationship with affiliated stations and the programming imperatives that led to the removal of Bob Edwards, Linda Wertheimer and Noah Adams from their featured positions with “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”

Key to NPR’s success, wrote McCauley, was the ability to better understand its listeners and develop programs to meet their interests. NPR listeners are distinctive because of their level of education. Nearly 60 percent hold at least a bachelor’s degree. These people also have higher-than-average incomes, and two-thirds of them fall into the baby boom age group.

Looking to NPR’s future, McCauley points to challenges in leadership, audience appeal and new broadcast technologies. “NPR’s primary task, for now, is to hold onto its present-day core audience, while freshening up the sound of its signature programs whenever possible,” he wrote. NPR is already taking advantage of satellite, wireless and Internet-based audio services. As new technologies lead to changes in listener habits, McCauley noted, broadcasters who fail to keep up risk losing audiences and revenues.