NPR has long been one of those things where I know it when I hear it.
Or at least, I think I do. Sometimes I’m more certain than others (specifically the times someone on the radio says “this is NPR,” which is either a curious act of deception or a confirmation that what I’m listening to is, in fact, NPR), but for the most part, if I hear somebody talking in quiet, soothing tones through my car speakers, I assume it’s NPR.
It turns out it isn’t quite that simple.
NPR has also long been one of those things where I don’t know what exactly it is.
I’ve had a vague notion that it’s funded by the government and private donations and a unique sort of advertisements, but its origins and all that have remained a mystery until now.
On this front, it turns out I was right, but as with the first stance, again, it isn’t quite that simple.
NPR has its roots in the days of LBJ’s Great Society. While I don’t know enough about the Great Society to say whether the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 was part of the Great Society or whether any particular acts were part of the Great Society (Was it a philosophy? A specific set of policy proposals? Too many Wikipedia articles for today), it certainly aligned with that school of thought, with President Johnson declaring upon signing
“It announces to the world that our nation wants more than just material wealth; our nation wants more than a ‘chicken in every pot.’ We in America have an appetite for excellence, too. While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man’s spirit. That is the purpose of the act.”
I’m not qualified to say whether the act (which also led to PBS existing) is achieving its goal, but here we are. We have NPR (And PBS! Which we aren’t discussing right now.).
What the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 immediately created was the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a non-profit funded almost entirely through the federal budget that supports public television and radio, primarily through grants to PBS, NPR, and local stations.
NPR itself came to exist sometime between 1967 and 1971. In April of that latter year, it aired its first broadcast. NPR only produced and distributed content (such as All Things Considered) until 1977, but then it absorbed the Association of Public Radio Stations in a merger. After this point, my impression is that NPR was in charge of running its member stations, but there’s probably more nuance than that.
Regardless of what the arrangement was from 1977 to 1983, things changed significantly in ’83, when NPR found itself in such a financial debacle that Congress stepped in. After the resulting restructuring, CPB money began bypassing NPR and flowing directly to local stations, which now air NPR content via subscription. Another (seemingly important) piece of this restructuring resulted in NPR sharing its physical distribution system (the Public Radio Satellite System) with other public radio content producers, giving those producers the ability to distribute nationally.
As you may have caught in there, there are other public radio content producers, so what you hear on your local public radio station is not exclusively produced by NPR. It may be produced by the station itself. It may be produced by NPR. It may be produced by some other organization entirely. A lot of the content I associate with NPR is not actually created by NPR.
NPR does have member stations (and is run by them—each member station has one representative with one vote at NPR’s annual board meeting), and while it’s possible there are public radio stations out there who are not NPR stations (the definition of a public radio station seems, at this level of research, to be somewhat vague), my impression at this time is that it’s a safe bet that at least half the stations we think of as public radio in the United States are NPR member stations. It might be a lot closer to 100% than 50%, but I’m an NIT blogger trawling Wikipedia, placing the exact number outside my scope at the moment.
I make this clarification because, as I mentioned, I was uncertain how public radio is funded, and, looking the most recent data on Wikipedia, it seems NPR member stations are, speaking extremely generally and based on anecdotes rather than raw data, roughly 30% supported by government funding (state, local, federal, CPB, public universities and other public educational institutions, etc.), with the rest coming from pledge drives and “underwriting spots”—those advertisements that aren’t technically commercials. These underwriting spots (one of public radio’s signature features) are subject to particular rules regarding how exactly they can and can’t promote goods and services. Whoever created these rules probably had good reasons, possibly including the knowledge that these peculiar pseudo-ad’s would clue people in to the fact they were listening to public radio. These rules are why NPR’s commercial breaks sound so different from the Kars 4 Kids jingle.
NPR itself is about half-funded by its member stations’ subscription fees, with almost the entirety of the other half coming from private donations, non-government grants, sponsorships, etc. It does receive some federal funds through CPB grants, but those are a minute portion (2% or so) of the organization’s overall revenue.
Since NPR receives governmental funding, and was created by the federal government, it bears asking whether NPR is biased.
The answer, of course, is yes—everything involving human decisions has its biases. Still, at least in examples cited by Wikipedia, NPR has gotten grief from both the “right” and the “left” over the years, which isn’t the most effective way to look at things, but isn’t meaningless. Again, this is an area where Wikipedia isn’t going to fully answer your question. You aren’t reading an academic journal. You’re reading The Barking Crow.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention podcasts, a medium in which NPR is a dominant figure. NPR-branded podcasts are, indeed, produced by NPR—not its member stations. Of everything I’ve covered today concerning NPR, this is probably the most straightforward.
*Please imagine this next part spoken in a quiet, soothing voice while you sit on the carpet-like upholstery of your friend’s mom’s uncomfortably warm car*
That is NPR.
Wikipedia articles enlisted in this search for knowledge:
NPR
Public Broadcasting Act of 1967
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Public Radio Satellite System
