I listen to NPR. If you want to be informed and don't want to spend hours reading the newspapers, you can listen to NPR while driving to and from work and hear all you need to know about what's going on in the world. Other than that, I am not enamored of their editorial policy which manifests itself in 15 minutes of coverage to proponents of their point of view and about 10 seconds to the opposing side. They also choose to cover issues that appeal to left-wing political extremists with only the occasional story of interest to the right-wing.
Now I would have thought that my daughter-in-law who hails from just such a left-wing political background would love this station, especially "All Things Considered." Last summer I was driving her home and listening to NPR when she told me that the announcers and news readers had no inflection, showed no excitement or interest and she couldn't understand how I could keep listening to the station. I have become so used to this type of radio reporting that I didn't really understand what she was talking about and was surprised that she could talk in such a manner about the liberal holy of holies.
NPR has always had these little non-ads that are really ads in a format calculated to specifically skirt the ban on commercial advertisements broadcast on publicly funded radio. Public radio requires a specific format much like the "tombstone" ads that appear in the financial papers announcing a successful underwriting of a bond or stock which gets around the appearance of a solicitation by hewing to a set of standard rules. The radio format has the announcer saying that programming is supported by such and so who does this and that with more information at this phone number or that web site. Very straight laced. Every once in a while they manage to get a bit more information in than is strictly allowed and recently these extras have proliferated and the number of these adlets per hour have greatly increased.
I am guessing that the more the information contained in them increases, in order to stave off the possible accusation of commercializing these ads, the more they feel the need to announce them in the most deadpan inflection they can manage, making the regular news announcers seem frenetic by comparison.
Which leads me to the kicker. I have noticed that they now have one woman, with the most wooden aspect ever heard on broadcast radio, record all these ads. The ads are then played one after the other and have become more annoying than even the loudest most obnoxious window or car ads on commercial radio
Just one more reason to hate National Socialist Radio.
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4 comments:
NSR that is what I should call. My spouse has taken to listen regularly to NSR because their reports are more in depth, which they are if you can filter them properly through a healthy conservative filter.
they also have the stupidest names.
sitirius? huckenberry? and my favorite, adora udoji?
I can't even figure out how to spell these names, they defy all spelling rules, and all exceptions to the rules.
i also like their thoroughness but not their slant. though the other day they had a cute segment: a "watch" at Lincoln's grave site to see if there was any rolling activity underground, in response to a comment someone made about the the (rightly stated)continued corruption of Lincoln's home state.
i love npr
and i love the name soterios (he's actually nyc)
soterios once interviewed the ladies from "the magic garden," a chatty childrens tv show similar to "mr rogers neighborhood." On the tv show, after the ladies sang a little song, they would face the camera and greet children by name - a neat trick to play on a four year old. Like "good morning sara [wave]"; "good morning, freddy [big smile]"
so soterios said when they were on his radio show, i would watch and watch and you never said my name.
so they both said, on the radio, in happy voices, "hello soterios!"
i love npr
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