NPR Verses Commercial Radio Shows

Project description
Cannot use any secondary sources.
Answer all of the questions in one full page.

In Depth: NPR Verses Commercial Radio Shows
Pre-Exercise Question: Why should taxpayer money support National Public Radio (through the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting) in the United States when it could probably be supported solely by
Corporate sponsorship and private donations?
In this Critical Process, you’ll compare newscasts of NPR’s Morning Edition or All Things
Considered and those of their affiliates with morning and afternoon newscasts of commercial radio
stations in the same market.
Find your local NPR affiliate (check W to find a nearby station) and a local news/talk
station (usually on the AM dial). Compare and contrast the stations’ coverage by taping afid listening to
the same hour on the same day during the morning or afternoon “drive time.”
1. Description: Develop a profile of a full hour of news from each station; including the total time
of news verses commercials/promotions/corporate sponsorships; the number and length of
news stories; and the news-story topics.
2. Analysis. What are the major differences between the news programs of the NPR affiliate and
those of the commercial news stations? Look for patterns.
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3. Interpretation. Do you think the fact that it is nonprofit and publicly supported makes a
difference in the content and the length of the station’s news stories? Were longer stories more
comprehensive and thoughtful? What do the differences mean?

4. Evaluation. Morning Edition and All Things Considered draw three to four million listeners a day,
more than twice the number of people who read the Wall Street Journal or USA Today. Based on
31,, these news programs, does NPR deserve some kind of public-funding mechanism that could
keep it free of advertising? Do you think there is a difference in the kind of news and delivery

provided by a noncommercial program verses a commercial one?
iffy Suggestion: For a class project, students should work in pairs, with each responsible for
V recording a newscast at the same time.
Engagement. If you’re interested in the kind of journalism found on NPR, you may want to
f?” pnsider becoming involved in the Next Generation Radio training project. Co-sponsored by NPR
number of journalism and media organizations, the project enables budding radio
ists to report and produce their own radio stories.
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