Current.org | Q&A with Bob Edwards, part 1

We've got the journalism down, but I've got problems with our radio

Current Q&A: Bob Edwards

Originally published in Current, May 25, 1998

Bob Edwards has presided over NPR's Morning Edition since the program's first broadcast in 1979 -- when the big story was the taking of American hostages in Iran after the fall of the Shah. For nearly two decades, Edwards' unmistakable voice -- so smooth it seems to drape over the ears, rich, with a slight Kentucky drawl and always that ironic edge -- is the first sound millions of Americans awaken to every day.

In May 1998, in his office on the third floor of NPR's Massachusetts Avenue headquarters, Edwards chatted with Current's Jacqueline Conciatore and Steve Behrens about the morning program, NPR's early days, and his role as a host. This man who rises at 1 a.m., every weekday, admired the "magnificence" of sleep, recalled Red Barber's gift for radio, and responded to those nasty comments about NPR hosts that critic Greil Marcus made in the New York Times in March -- only briefly dissing Marcus for his musical tastes. Edwards also confirmed that NPR may launch a weekend sports program he would host.

Edwards initially griped a bit about the course of his morning. "We had a lot of two-ways with our foreign correspondents today," he said sourly. "They don't seem to be able to do reporting for Morning Edition. They can do it for All Things Considered." But then he settled back, long legs sprawling, to share some of his professional history.

He left his previous employer, Mutual Broadcasting System, when it tried to break its union, he said, and came across NPR when he combed through the phone book, calling "everything with 'radio' in its name." The call got him a gig as an All Things Considered newscaster; a short time later, he became a host with Susan Stamberg. He jokes: "This place was very young -- they had no standards. So they gave me a job."

In those early days, NPR's news department played second fiddle to the arts side:

Edwards: News, we were kind of -- the bad boys. We were the pesky ones. We didn't run things here. It was a whole different place.

I wanted it to be a news organization. In fact, the first year I was here, I was plotting to get a real broadcasting job. I was here to get a check. That's how I felt about it. And then after a year I realized this was quite an interesting place, and if it just had a few more newspeople we could really make a go of this thing. And they started coming in, one after another. Totenberg, Siegel, Buzenberg, Cokie, Scott -- in they rolled, it was like an army.

Current: You were brought in as Morning Edition host on a sort of emergency basis. What had happened?

Oh, just a disaster. We, on All Things Considered, had a lot of anxiety about this new morning program because we ruled the roost, and here was this new group cutting into our time. So [NPR] hired a whole staff, and they spent a year planning Morning Edition. They actually did research and found out how people listened to programs in the morning. So you figured they'd be real organized. But they didn't get around to doing a pilot until a week or ten days before their projected air date, Nov. 5, 1979. They had promised stations a show, so they had to deliver. They sent out the pilot over a line to all the stations. And there was just unanimous feeling that this could not go on the air. It was like a bad local television program in a small market -- very chatty hosts.

No, I think it had a lot to do with the producers. Susan [Stamberg] and I were listening to this as we were preparing that day's program -- this would have been in October -- we're just smiling, you know, no problem here, no problem at all. And the next thing I knew they were in my office asking me if I'd do this program for 30 days -- 30 days -- until they could get new hosts.

They drafted me and Barbara Hoctor, who was working on Weekend All Things Considered. We were used to that two-host mode -- Susan and I had done it for years on All Things Considered -- so that's all we knew to do.

I got into it and enjoyed it. About four months into it, Barbara decided to leave; she had a sick child. And we realized this was a different kind of program, a modular program that stations were cutting into and out of, and they had local hosts. So there were too many voices. So we decided just one host.

Were there some things about the original research that didn't survive, that turned out to be mistakes?

You just learn to do things better, do them differently, or stations give you feedback. For example, we don't billboard the program, because you never know what a local station's carrying and what it's not. So the first minute of the program, we have to say something, what do we say? It was all fluff, you know, "This is National Worm-Rot Day." Instead of telling you what's going on in the world. We fixed that. But we still do birthdays.

And you still fit that little anecdote into the theme music every morning. You've said that you like that.

Yeah. It's the toughest writing I do, trying to get that down to 23 seconds. But look at the program -- it's Bosnia and Somalia and death and starvation, and people need a break. Frequently it's the one thing they remember -- the crook who writes his hold-up note on his own deposit slip.

What do you call that tinkly, swoosh sound that comes in right before the theme?

It's just part of the theme. We call that a post, a place I come in and where I end. You'll notice I'll try to end at the same beat of music each time -- there's a little crescendo that comes in.

It was the '70s. NPR couldn't afford to hire experienced people, so the people they hired were kids. I was one of the older kids, at 26; and in two days I'll be 51, and I'm still one of the older kids. So we all grew up together. And because we were young it had a kind of dormitory quality here. You know: young people not making much money. In the halcyon pre-AIDS days, when dating culture was quite different, so it was wild. And wonderful. Great fun. Consequently, quite a few of us met our spouses here.

Well, a lot of things changed, but having nothing to do with NPR. AIDS being one. All of us getting married and having children. And the culture of every workplace has changed. Feminism has changed a lot [of practices and habits]: There are men who don't even speak to women unless they're spoken to, and then only the most inane pleasantries are exchanged. This place has lawsuit-itis, as you know. So, I hate to say it, but it's a grim place. But I don't think that's peculiar to NPR. I think most offices are grim.

Some people are nostalgic for the way NPR used to sound on the air. You've heard the criticism that NPR programming has become too difficult, too staid and too safe.

I go both ways on that. If you heard the tapes, you might be less nostalgic. There would be the occasional brilliant piece of journalism, and in between would be a lot of stuff that you really don't need to get through the day.

Some of it. And there were also the little featurettes that were fine when you heard them once, but when you heard the same thing coming back again and again -- quilting bees, dulcimer makers. God knows how many dulcimer makers we had to do. We were big in the folk arts.

So what happened was the journalism got so much better, and it pushed out everything else. But, see, that's not bad. I'm a newsperson, I like that. At the same time, I understand what people are saying about predictability. You need Red Barber, not another Red Barber but somebody like him who must be listened to, who just keeps you from putting your hand on that button to go to something else. Certainly Bailey White falls into that category, for me anyhow. She's funny and surprising, and you don't know where the story's going. That's what you need. That's radio. We've got the journalism down. I've got no problems with our journalism. I've got some problems with our radio. I think we can be more interesting in a radio sort of way.

Is there a sense, though, that there might be an opportunity for change now that [news vice president] Jeffrey Dvorkin has come in?

I don't think it depends on who's in and who's out. Everyone here wants more listeners, everyone here wants a more entertaining and informative program. Every day is a chance for change. And no one has said, 'No, I don't want to hear that idea.' That's one reason I stayed. You can still, if you're the summer intern, have an idea here, and it's not only entertained but they're likely to turn to that intern and say, 'Fine, go do it.' That still exists, so I'm still here.

When you're assembling the show, most news sources on this side of the ocean are asleep. Doesn't that limit your producers?

Last night, the House passed by one vote legislation that lifts restrictions on the banking industry, and the first that public radio listeners heard about this was this morning. We've had Whitewater breaks and Ken Starr breaks. I've come in here many a time and seen Nina Totenberg cutting together a piece. I've seen Nina come in from parties in evening dresses.

We'll get people out of their beds and set them up to talk to me live the next morning. This is Washington. You've seen people shy of being in front of microphones? Or at least on the telephone -- at least we'll give them that: they can sit in their jammies and talk to me and then go back to bed. You can get any member of Congress. Boy, they will cancel anything to be able to be on somebody's radio program. [He laughs.] That's no problem.

Ah, Mr. Marcus. Well, I'm not going to be terribly upset that I don't appeal to a guy who liked the Sex Pistols.

I think there's a couple of things going on there. He paid me a lot of compliments, although he didn't mean to. I remember [original producer] Jay Kernis telling me when I started this program, "You should sound like you were here yesterday and you're going to be here tomorrow, and no matter what's going to happen, the sun is going to rise tomorrow." And the attitude also should be, "We've seen 'em come, we've seen them go, there'll be more after..." Well, that's exactly what Marcus accused me of doing.

Indeed, there's all this bad stuff going around out there [in the news]. But it isn't the end of the world, the sun will rise tomorrow. That is what a host should do. Without being happy-talk.

There's the familiar-guy or familiar-woman quality to the host. People are groggy in the morning, radio goes on, "Hey, there's Bob. Okay. We'll get on with it." That's part of the job. That's why I try to make as many shows as I possibly can. I don't like being away, because you get the substitute and you feel cheated. It's not that I'm so special, because when I listen to other programs I feel cheated if the host isn't there. Even if it's Rush. It's that familiarity. It's not that he's necessarily your friend, or that he's going to cheer you up, but he's going to give you the straight stuff.

Marcus obviously wants involvement. He wants someone who's involved with the news and cares about the fate of what he's talking about. That's fine, that's Pacifica. I'm not that person. I think we should be detached. I don't want my fingerprint on the story. I don't want people knowing what I believe, how I believe, and he doesn't and that's great. That's perfect.

He loves Terry Gross, and well he should. Now see, Terry's not doing the news bulletin. Terry's doing interviews with entertainers and authors and that's a whole different job and she does it magnificently.

Perhaps more than any other NPR host you define "NPR" in the minds of listeners. There's a strong connection there. What are the upside and downside to that?

Well, I enjoy it. I like being a spokesman for NPR. NPR is something I believe in, so it's something I can go out and speak on with some enthusiasm and passion. And much more so now than when I began here, because, just look at the state of radio. You've got Imus or Stern or the Morning Zoo or me. And radio's gotten very crude and sophomoric. Those various zoos across the country are taking their cue from Stern and I'm very sad about that.

You know, Stern can make me laugh. I just feel terrible about it when I do. But I think you have to be a 12-year-old boy to really get the full value. And Imus I enjoy.

Yeah, and he wants our audience. I see that very clearly. We are on his radar. He wants NPR listeners. Everyone wants NPR listeners, but Imus is the one who's made a concerted effort. Imus and [Washington all-news station] WTOP, maybe other places, but 'TOP is very frank about this in ads, you know, slamming us. And I can tell in Imus's choice of guests, that he's saying. "Come here, and you'll still get public affairs and you'll be entertained as well." I think that's real competition.

That's what I can never get them to understand upstairs. This is the big problem I have with this place. They don't know they're in the radio business. They'll talk about being a nonprofit. Well, you know, if we're in the nonprofit business, then the Red Cross and the PTA are our competition.

Not advertising because we can't afford that. But there are ways of publicizing programs. Look at all the little column items where all those people show up. That doesn't just happen -- someone's working them to happen. We used to have someone here whose full-time job was to arrange interviews with newspapers and magazines. Interviews with the hosts of these programs and the principal reporters. It doesn't happen anymore. For all I know, no one's writing about us.

We are selling books, we are selling CDs, we're selling everybody's goods, but we're not selling us. You know, the suits see our competition as PRI. And I don't. I see our competition as Dr. Laura and Stern and Imus and Paul Harvey, Rush.

But what would you do besides making sure people know that you're out there on the dial? You wouldn't change the programs to make them more like Dr. Laura?

No, no no no no! Hello, no. We have 8 million listeners. We hit 8 million and we stopped. And that's 8 million by word of mouth, which is phenomenal. But we're a nation of what, 160 million. There's a lot more we can get. I think we could be doing 20, 25 million easily.

I think re-establishing the public information department would go a long way toward accomplishing this.

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