Corporate Shills

["samba -" <sambacomet@hotmail.com>]

  I've worked at several NPR stations over the years,and been familair 
with 
them from the start of All things consideredand CPB. Sure there are still 
locally originated shows on local stations some of which are excellent,but 
NPR doesn't have to won anything to be corporate shills. There is still 
local choice ,but there's ben an  organized push for expansion and lot's 
of 
pressure on locals to compete harder for the money to pay for increasingy 
expensive ( and increasingly watered down ) NPR satelite feeds.Check out 
how 
much of their news repoprting involves interviewing journalisists from 
commercial media. Check out how often they interview someone about 
whatever 
hollywood movie is getting the big PR push.,how often they report on 
things 
from Televisions,and play soundclips from corporate commercials,embedded 
into supposed news reporting.
  As the cost of NPR programming to local affiliates has gone way up,they 
push their affiliates to do station ID breaks every 8 or 10 minutes-(the 
old 
school major network model) and all the affiliates do these breaks at the 
same time They all do their fund drives at the same time.They are 
encouraged 
to compete for listeners with other station in local markets in ways 
coordinated by NPR.  The guy who used to head Voice of America headed Corp 
for Pubic Broadcasting.I could go into more detail,but that's probably 
enough. I still salute the people who do music programming on these 
stations 
because they love the music.
 > Unfortunately NPR is a corporate shill now too.
This is a common misunderstanding.  NPR doesn't own any stations.  They
sell their product to "affiliate" stations.  AFAIK it's mostly (all?)
news and talk, etc., not music programs.  Please correct me if I'm
wrong.  It is up to the individual stations to decide how corporate vs.
how off the wall/adventurous they wish to be with their music
programming.  If the stations where I volunteer are any indication, most
of the music programming you hear on non-commercial FM stations are
locally produced; syndicated shows like Echoes and HoS not withstanding.

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