News-Record.com

"NPR, whose original mission was largely to serve underserved markets such as African Americans, appears to be batting oh-for-two in its latest efforts."

I always thought NPR was an unbiased organization that was designed to appeal to all Americans who support it through tax dollars, not just one special interest group. If that's not the case, then perhaps NPR should go private.

I had hoped that a by-product of the AHA would have been, for one example, a kosher butcher in Greensboro. It didn't happen.

Downtown dwellers want a big grocery store. It hasn't happened yet either.

In both cases, apparently the numbers don't justify the undertakings for those businesses. It *could* be (when one speculates, one risks the chance of being wrong) that the audience wasn't big enough to make the shows "hits."

Perhaps this isn't WFDD or NPR's fault. Perhaps the audience didn't tune in. Do they not share some responsibility -- or -- is it, like the grocery store or butcher shop, that there's not enough marketshare to make the endeavor popular enough to sustain the cost?

I think they should have showed more patience with Gordon's show. I liked it alot. Smiley has more star quality and a bigger personality, but Gordon was always very prepared and informative. 0-2 is right, they should have kept both.

I particularly enjoyed and will miss some of the financial advice and analysis. They had a terrific little series on the housing market.

As Sue notes, there's no such thing as an underserved market. If there is a market, it will be served. Instead, PBS tries to simulate a market that it would like to serve: a rainbow coalition of high-minded sophisticates who like classical music, droning commentary, and gnostic revelations unfit for the masses.

Unfortunatly for them, the tribe of people who actually like classical music and droning commentary is small, disproportionately white, and overeducated. The opera crowd, basically.

The tribe of PBS wanna be's is larger. The people who "don't watch TV" and purport to listen to PBS is much larger that the actual group that performs these behaviors. The reason, I think, is that people like to watch TV but don't like to listen to NPR.

My personal theory is that people listen to NPR for about two minutes each week--just enough to be able to drop in a "I was listening to PBS the other day" nugget into their conversations on a regular basis. Otherwise, I can't square the frequency with which I encounter such conversational nuggets with the low ratings of NPR.

Well, they did tune in to Tavis Smiley's show; not nearly as much to Ed Gordon's.

That's because Smiley had an audience from his dalliance with capitalist TV at BET. Since the possibility of Ed Gordon's existence had not occured to anyone prior to his debut on PBS, no one listed to him. It's like the tree falling in the forest.

Don't you love anti-intellectualism? And a snide subtle racism? Come one, why can't blacks or Asians or Latinos enjoy classical music? Many whites like rap and jazz and r&b and salsa. It's about exposure and education.

As I said, I'll miss the show, as a white listener, because they offered conversations and insights I find missing in the discourse of our local elcted officials and, I am sorry to say, amongst our school parents in their many arguments.

Certainly they can enjoy it, and some do. (Asians do disproportionately.) I'm not banning black people from listening to NPR or classical music, only observing that they generally don't. Is your suggestion that black people aren't "educated" until they're "exposed" to classical music? That smacks of subtle racism.

On Ed Gordon's profile, Brian, Gordon built his career at BET and, in fact, predated Tavis Smiley there. He is not an unknown, especially to black audiences.

Brian:
On black people and Asians and classical music, I'm not quite sure where you get your statistics?

Actually, education is helpful for anyone who wishes to get more out of complex classical music (and other mulit-harmonic, polyphonous strains of music) than merely the melody (if it has such...some forms of "modern music" do not). Pop, country and rap seem, to me at least, more directly appreciated (which is fine, too...just different). I also can't see how limiting exposure to either Western classical music or in-depth, considered, intelligent talk radio can be anything but good for those of any race, myself included. Which is why I say I will miss these programs.

The reasons most people in NC don't listen to classical music are myriad. In NY and CT, there are multiple stations that carry it, some not even "public radio"! I am not sure of your reference to Asians "disproportionately" enjoying clasiscal music. Do you mean disproportionately compared to Caucasians worldwide? But Asians vastly outnumber all other ethnic groups, don't they?
If you mean in the US or NC, you may be speaking from anecdotal experience and specifically referring to students taking courses at college who are vsiiting from Asia. Or of a narrower demographic embracing Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans and perhaps Korean-Americans. I am less certain the Montagnards of Vietnam locally or from Malaysia/Indonesia/Cambodia, etc. would be highly indicated in such a sample.

It is likely, I suggest, that the level of parent and family education is highly correlated with the focussed and sought-after listening of classical music.