NPR’s Cuts

NPR’s announced cuts in services and staff are deep; unless I’m forgetting something, the deepest since the financial crisis that nearly brought the network down in the early 1980′s. It’s particularly painful because NPR (and public radio, in general) is enjoying one of its biggest weekly audiences ever.

But these are difficult times and NPR has acted prudently to protect its financial position, going forward. The NPR roster of programs has sprawled in the past five years, and some recent investments haven’t paid off in terms of station carriage and listening. This doesn’t mean that the programs were bad, or that the staff lacked talent. But any wise steward of resources will, as quickly and painlessly as possible, end or retool the experiments that don’t work. And in an economic downturn, it makes double sense to focus on the core services.

Day to Day and News and Notes will end early next year. More than 60 people will leave NPR, including a few of the most well-known voices of NPR programs over the decades, a couple of whom I’ve heard, in one capacity or another, since I began listening to public radio at the age of 13.

Local stations around the country have also cut positions and there will be many more such announcements over the coming year. Each job loss represents a talented human being who is being turned loose into a falling economy. This is all quite painful, but let’s hope that the pain we experience now is a downpayment on the future growth and success of NPR and public media.