Word: npr
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...moment, APR's main problem is that people confuse it with National Public Radio. As APR Manager Rhoda Marx notes, "NPR was the only game in town for so long that the press and the public are locked into thinking of it as a generic rather than a brand name." Created in January 1982 by five major public radio stations (WNYC of New York, WGUC of Cincinnati, KQED of San Francisco, KUSC of Los Angeles and Minnesota Public Radio), APR has never produced its own shows, like NPR, but has acquired, distributed and marketed cultural programming to public radio...
...staff, who nevertheless are bearing the brunt of the cutbacks. Never a flush organization, NPR can withstand some painful fiscal austerity, but the blows this crisis have dealt to the energy and enthusiasm that made the station what it has become, will be harder to repair. One former employee describes "a sense of real doom that NPR will never be the same again. That an era is over." The overwhelming listener support pledged in the fundraiser delivered a badly needed shot in the arm to the staff, but many are still disillusioned and angered by the events of the past...
Complaints that management has been insensitive to employees and concern over the quality of programming are new and highly destructive troubles for NPR. When these worries (perhaps more common in commercial endeavors) haunt a network that has flourished on cooperation and high quality, it doesn't leave a hell...
This is not a eulogy for NPR. The network continues to produce two outstanding news shows with one of the most talented staffs in the business. What's more, the listener support that poured in during the three-day fundraiser attests to the fact that people do recognize quality when they hear it. (Close to home, Boston public radio station WBUR raised $255,000, by far the largest amount given by any station...
...seem, are contradictory almost by definition (at least judging by the bulk of commercial radio). Free enterprise has fostered a lot of developments, but artistic quality has never been one of them. It's why artists found patrons, why scholars seek tenure, and probably why the federal government funded NPR in the first place...