All Songs Considered: NPR's first web-only series, hosted by Bob Boilen, features the musical breaks that lift and separate reports on All Things Considered.

All Things Considered: Three new hosts joined NPR's evening newsmagazine in 2002-03, giving producers a new chance, and new help, to renovate the show. ATC celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2001.

American Routes: See Music—popular breeds.

Car Talk: Ray and Tom Magliozzi generate a contagious glee during their program about people and cars, Car Talk. In the 2000 election campaign, both of the brothers ran for President. In 2004, the hosts and producers were working on a planned animated series for PBS.

Children's radio programming — Rabbit Ears Radio: Microleague Multimedia was the new owner of Rabbit Ears Radio, the storytelling program for kids. In 1996, the program went through hard times with its previous owner, which fired its entire staff.

Commentators: The idiosyncratic aural essayists on NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition don't get paid much up front for their blurbs, but they gain a huge, literate audience that may someday buy their books.

Commentators — Andrei Codrescu: NPR apologizes for remark by its iconoclastic commentator.

Commentators — Kathryn Tucker Windham: Do you know how to kill a rattlesnake by spitting? How to make a frog house?  Kathryn Tucker Windham, a storyteller from Selma, with help from her cohort, Sam Hendren of Alabama Public Radio, introduces Alabamans and others to the rural life, and rural fantasy life of the past.

Documentaries: If you didn't hear the early NPR documentary "Sugaring" at some point, it may seem familiar anyway—the respectful observation of rustic Americana that you've heard in many pieces since then, but with a pace and reverence that invited a brutal parody by Garrison Keillor.

Norman Corwin: Norman Corwin, a great producer from America's "golden age" of radio, is having a comeback on public radio.

Day to Day: NPR's new midday show and its first newsmagazine since 1987 hit the air in July 2003 after months of hype and behind-the-scenes preparation.

Democracy Now!: Amy Goodman's daily talk show for Pacifica became a major attraction for two dozen politically progressive stations. Goodman was named a Media Hero at the left-wing Media and Democracy Congress in 1997.

Drama: NPR is hoping audience research will find a way to make radio drama work with its audience.

Health programming: Public radio's medical programs deal with a subject of nearly universal interest—health—but each in a different way. Current Contributing Editor Geneva Collins listens as they go out on their weekly house calls.

Derek McGinty Show: One of public radio's rising stars left public radio in 1998, ending his weekday Washington, D.C., talk show, which went national on NPR in 1997. In a 1994 profile, a boss recalled McGinty was comfortable in the talk-show chair at WAMU-FM even before he was hired.

Ethical issues: Current's Gray Page cites a range of ethical issues that have arisen in public broadcasting, including conflicts of interest and management misbehavior.

From the Top: It's a classier, classical version of Star Search: public radio's From the Top, a weekly series that features very talented young musicians from around the country.

Generation-X and public radio: How much do Gen-X kids listen to public radio? Nada, if you assume the "as if!" stereotypes. But researchers in the Audience 98 project said many young listeners are already tuning in, and they're not so different from older pubradio fans. Marketer J. Mikel Ellcessor said the field needs to pay attention to generational differences in values, brought out in an interview with demographics specialist J. Walker Smith. See the give-and-take from several issues of Current.

Health news coverage: Dozens of public radio producers (and now public TV) get aid for their health coverage from the foundation-funded Sound Partners project, which asks only that the journalists consult with a community organization.

Indecency: Two Democrats on the FCC — one of whom is running for the Senate — asked the commission to crack down on broadcast indecency in 2001. Two radio stations, including a public station in Portland, Ore., were fined for airing hip-hop songs that the FCC staff found to be indecent. Two years later, the FCC rescinded its $7,000 fine against KBOO in Portland, Ore., after determining that the Sarah Jones song "Your Revolution" was not offensive after all. Jones had sued the agency, claiming that it violated her First Amendment rights.

Lost and Found Sound: Throughout 1999, independent producers led by the Kitchen Sisters have worked with NPR and listeners across the country to find extraordinary recordings from the past century for playback in Lost and Found Sound segments, airing Fridays on All Things Considered.

Midday programming: Talk shows are competing for carriage on stations that want to boost their audience in the midday slump between Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Minority programming: See Tavis Smiley Show.

Music — popular breeds: A new breed of public radio station is settling on the rootsy frontier of pop music, playing blues, roots, alternative, folk and world music — most anything short of Top 40 rock. Current critic Dave Bunker listens to four national programs with musical mixes that illustrate different ways pubradio may develop a new pop-music format.
World Cafe’s polished AAA stream,
American Routes’ bumptious New Orleans jambalaya,
the community radio rock party of Rock ‘n’ Roots, and/or
the ultra-hip crypto-pop of Sounds Eclectic.

Music — American Routes: A new public radio series that debuted in spring 1998 paints a landscape of American music. PRI's American Routes, hosted by Nick Spitzer, got an enthusiastic welcome from a CPB program funding panel.

Music — diversifying the audience: The manager of a major public radio station in Los Angeles has quit his job after ending the station's controversial experiment in expanding "classics" music. Hobbled by newly revealed money problems and continuing controversy among listeners, KUSC-FM retreated from the eclectic music format that Wally Smith had hoped would make classical music relevant to young and multicultural Angelenos. Critics said Smith's innovative format imposed ideology on musical judgment and chased away potential listeners.

Music — Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz: On Grammy night 2004, her musical peers (and lesser musicmakers) saluted the "timeless legacy" that Marian McPartland has given to listeners in 25 years of Piano Jazz on public radio. The series is one of public radio's most popular and longest-running music shows and has influenced a new generation of young performers. A longtime fan, Current Contributing Editor David Stewart, wrote an appreciation of Piano Jazz for its 20th anniversary in 1999.

Music — selection through audience research: A growing number of public radio stations are researching audience reaction to music in an attempt to keep listeners tuned in after the NPR news. "Modal" music research has spread to jazz stations, and is a foundation for three classical stations that have begun sharing their programming via satellite. But critics say the research limits listeners' exposure to musical variety and heritage. In a 1999 commentary, Maine Public Radio's Dave Bunker proposed a middle-ground strategy for music selection.

Music — opera, subject of controversy among programmers and fans: The manager of the public radio station in Roanoke, Va., was fired in 2000 after cancelling Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and then objecting publicly when his licensee reinstated the Saturday tradition. Disputes over the Met arise regularly around the country because of a stand-off between programmers, who say that few classical music listeners want to hear opera, and the Met, which allows broadcasts of its season only if they're aired live, at a potentially popular Saturday listening time, when the curtain rises in Manhattan.

Music — experimentation in music production and presentation: Classical music programmers in Denver and Los Angeles, and jazz programmers in Pittsburgh and Boise, are jointly producing satellite music services for public radio. Until 1996, the Los Angeles station, KUSC was the site of Wally Smith's experiment that mixed other genres of music with classical.

Music — a drummer's double life in jazz: Composer/drummer Jae Sinnett says he's getting his new disc played on jazz stations around the country not only because it's good, but also because he knows what deejays want. He's a deejay himself, five nights a week on a public radio station in Norfolk.

Music from the Hearts of Space: A leader among independently distributed public radio programs is Stephen Hill's weekly flagship for new-age or "space music"—largely supported by the sale of recordings in the genre it has promoted for years.

National Geographic/NPR Radio Expeditions: Radio professionals say Radio Expeditions is an ongoing showpiece of good use of the medium. In 1999, the NPR-National Geographic Society coproduction used archival tape to remind listeners of the daring and curiosity behind past NGS explorations.

Native American radio: A new Hopi public radio station has signed on in Arizona and a Yakima station is preparing to debut in Washington state.

News — World Radio Network and NPR: In 2000, two months after welcoming China Radio International's news programs to the World Radio Network compliation that it distributes to stations by satellite in this country, NPR had WRN remove them. Broadcasters debated whether it was better to stay clear of news that violates Western journalistic standards of independence or to keep a knowing ear open to the news as China hears it.

News — new leadership for NPR's news division: Current talks with Jeffrey Dvorkin, the network's v.p. of news and information, about expanding news coverage outside the Beltway, sensitivity to minority views in the newsroom, and celebrity news. NPR hired Dvorkin in August 1997 from Canada's CBC. He succeeded Bill Buzenberg, news chief for seven years, who left earlier in '97.

News — The End of Life series on death and dying: NPR aired a major year-long project called "The End of Life: Exploring Death in America." The network gave one of its top producers a six-month leave from his regular job to oversee the series of 25 pieces for All Things Considered and other news programs.

News — Middle East coverage: Boston's most-listened-to outlet for NPR News programming, WBUR, lost more than $1 million in member and underwriting donations after pro-Israel activists began a boycott of NPR's Middle East coverage. Pro-Palestine partisans, meanwhile, pointed to news that an NPR Middle East correspondent took speaking fees from a pro-Israel group. A public TV website was also shot down by pro-Israel critics in 2002 for what they regarded as its one-sided view of Palestinian history.

News — Monitor Radio: Public radio's second national news service (after NPR) shut down at the end of June 1997, after the Christian Science Monitor ended its longtime subsidy. The church announced in April that it would sell or close down the service.

News — NPR's newsmagazines, All Things Considered and Morning Edition: Are NPR newsmagazines not all they could be? Or once were? Few programs are more widely admired in public broadcasting — or in radio journalism — than ATC and its younger sibling Morning Edition, but there's a restless murmur among the faithful that the newsmagazines need a tune-up after all these years. And in an interview with Bob Edwards, the longtime Morning Edition host talks about a few changes he'd like, plus the continuing rewards and aches of his very-early-morning job.

News — Day to Day: NPR's midday news show had to grow up fast. The network launched it in 2003 to answer a growing demand for newsier daytime programming.

News — Debate over in-depth reporting at NPR:
NPR ignited a long-smoldering identity crisis in its newsroom in October 2002 when it laid off Daniel Zwerdling, a veteran investigative reporter whose work exemplifies pubradio's in-depth, sound-rich journalism. While the network has greatly expanded its hard-news reporting capability, as demonstrated in the days after Sept. 11, many NPR stalwarts warn that decisions favoring hard news sacrifice its distinctive sound and depth. In 1998, then-news veep Jeffrey Dvorkin pledged to keep longer, sound-rich stories on the air.

News — errors by reporters: Their missteps in two cases gave ammunition to dedicated critics of NPR in 2002. The network reminded one of its Mideast correspondents that she shouldn't accept speaking fees from a pro-Israeli group. And the network's president admitted error in a news report about the FBI's anthrax investigation that seemed to connect a conservative Christian group with the mailing of spores to two Democrats in Congress. Months later, the Traditional Values Coalition accepted a second on-air apology by NPR.

News — The World: Public radio's new evening newsmagazine with an international outlook, The World went national in April 1996. Millions were raised for the joint PRI/BBC/WGBH project, which debuted in five test-markets four months earlier. [Current Briefing.]

News — Lewis Lapham's challenge to journalists: "I'm just curious: how do you propose to carry on the struggle against the Disney Company?" This was Harper's Editor Lewis Lapham's kickoff question for a 1995 discussion with public radio journalists.

News — 2000 election coverage: In his first two months as news director at Florida Public Radio, Buzz Conover supervised coverage of two hurricanes and one of the longest election nights in history.

News — Sept. 11, 2002 in retrospect: A year after the attacks, the first project of the systemwide Public Radio Consortium offered 30 hours of terrorism-related documentaries and other programming to stations. A series of short audio docs about the people of the World Trade Center resumed earlier in 2002 on NPR's All Things Considered. Public radio's Lost & Found Sound team began working to collect audio artifacts in 2001.

Political bias in public radio: Bill O'Reilly, host of a right-leaning show on the Fox News cable network, said the proof of NPR's left-leaning bias is that it hasn't invited him to talk about his books on pubradio. And conservatives objected when an NPR reporter seemed to connect a Christian group with the mailing of anthrax to two Democrats in Congress.

Public Radio Weekend: Producers have piloted Public Radio Weekend, a program service they hope will bring audiences to weekend middays.

Opera: see Music — Opera

Radio College web site: How do you prepare for a life of unscheduled travel, uncertain income and potentially long-delayed recognition of your work? A public radio freelancer, Robin White, maintains a web site, Radio College, that provides the how-to (and why) for nascent independent radio producers.

Religious programming: How much religious content is appropriate in public radio? A Current Briefing follows the issue, which was a live one for several stations in recent years.

Saturday entertainment programming: NPR has added Anthem and Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me to the Saturday lineup in an effort to keep the audience drawn by A Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk. [Earlier story from 1996.]

The Savvy Traveler: Public radio's Rudy Maxa (The Savvy Traveler) adds a public TV series in 2001 — probably the first ever produced in high-definition video — while public TV's Travels in Europe host Rick Steves switches to a new producer.

Schedule changes: Changing programs in a public radio station's schedule often turns into a stressful conflict between stations' objectives and some listeners' favorite media habits. In Wisconsin, the producer of a local program enlisted state legislators in opposing a time switch for his program. And in Boston, fans of a music program fought a long battle to bring it back to WGBH, even after another station picked it up.

Station sound and personality: Say you're starting two new stations serving Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and you want to connect it with its listeners and make its sounds surprising. What would you do? Jay Allison, founder of the forthcoming WCAI and WNAN, put the question to some 30 producers, programmers and public radio leaders, and got a rewarding array of suggestions.

Talk radio, public radio style: When pubradio talk show hosts and producers gathered in 2002, the first question that came up was whether their shows were journalism. "We had better hope they are," wrote Minnesota Public Radio talk host Katherine Lanpher in a Current commentary. As in most talk radio, the listeners are the show for the growing numbers of talk hosts on public radio. But the audience and the content are distinctly different on the public stations. See also Midday programming.

Talk radio, The Connection: Christopher Lydon, acclaimed host of WBUR's The Connection, and his producer started their own production company after failing to win part-ownership of the show in 2001. They had been on paid leave for two weeks since demanding half-ownership in the program.

Tavis Smiley Show: By early 2003, Tavis Smiley's morning talk show was heard on 56 stations, including nine in the 10 largest markets, making it one of NPR's fastest-growing new shows—reaching far beyond its original constituency of pubradio stations with majority African American audiences. When Smiley started the show with NPR in 2002 he aimed for a sound that's authentically black without being "too black" to bring in some white listeners. Smiley worked with NPR and a group of stations to develop the show.

This American Life: Ira Glass's fresh, crisp, low-fat, curiously pleasing weekly show from Chicago isn't for everyone, but it has gathered a big flock of fans who say it has what more pubradio shows should aspire to have. Glass, the executive producer and host, described the program's radio principles in a 1998 lecture sponsored by Minnesota Public Radio. Hollywood, too, wants what the series has, and in 2002 Glass struck a "first-look" deal with Warner Bros. for movie rights to stories from the series. Current profiled the producer and the program in 1997.

UFO talk show: Space aliens, and their secret covenants with the federal government, are subjects of a weekly talk show on the public radio station in Harlingen. Tex.

Values of public radio programming: What's so great about public radio, anyway? A group of public radio program directors created a list of "core values" that tries to define what distinguishes public radio. Now the Public Radio Program Directors Association is teaching producers and p.d.'s how to apply the core values to creating and judging local news and classical music programming.

Weekend programming: Jim Russell, longtime head of Marketplace, is leading a project called Public Radio Weekend to help "fix" the weekend audience slump. Meanwhile, local producers in Ohio and Alaska are trying their own mixes of entertainment and information for listeners' weekend moods. An earlier burst of weekend activity in the mid-'90s led to the invention of Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me. With Anthem it joined the lineup in January 1998. Public Radio International worked up American Routes, an annotated tour of American musical history. Also competing to tickle weekend listeners is Michael Feldman's long-running comedy quiz Whad'Ya Know?