Just home from scouting trail for an upcoming bicycle hash. As I pedaled I listened to NPR through earbuds … well, mostly: when Will Shortz came on with his weekly Puzzler segment, I switched to the local alternative FM station, KXCI. I’ve had the urge to change stations during the Puzzler before, but this is the first time I’ve acted on it. I used to love this show. Has it changed? Or is it just me?
Maybe it is. Just me. Would NPR broadcast the Puzzler if Will Shortz didn’t have a large, dedicated following? No, of course they wouldn’t. And how about Ken Rudin, the Political Junkie? He must have an audience too … but here I’m on safer ground, consistency-wise, because I’ve never been part of that audience. The day after the presidential election Ken Rudin’s already calculating the odds for the next horse race four years down the road. It’s fingernails on a chalkboard to me.
God knows I’ve bored my reader(s?) with rants about NPR’s corporate-Republican bias. There have been several times when I’ve changed stations during the middle of the Diane Rehm show, particularly when she gives equal time to religious small-brainers on topics like evolution, vaccinations, or global warming. Just the other day I swore off Steve Inskeep of Morning Edition, on the grounds of being a smug villager.
As with Will Shortz’ Puzzler, I’ve gone sour on other formerly-beloved NPR entertainment shows. I used to listen to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion every week. Now the only part of the show I still listen to is the News from Lake Woebegone monologue. The skits with six people talking at once in monotone drawls? The guy who punctuates skits with mouth-noise sound effects? Garrison singing? Thanks, I’d rather eat liver. And Tom and Ray on Car Talk? Dudes, do you have to laugh and chuckle at everything?
Of course there are NPR shows I couldn’t do without, so I still contribute something every pledge drive. Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland. Fresh Air with Terry Gross. This American Life with Ira Glass. Science Friday with Ira Flatow. Tech Nation with Moira Gunn. Writer’s Almanac. The Thistle & Shamrock. Star Date. Splendid Table. Earth & Sky. Hearts of Space. So much goodness.
If I were a wealthy philanthropist I’d start an NPR affiliate with just the good shows: the ones mentioned above plus All Songs Considered, JazzSet, The Annoying Music Show, Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s As It Happens. In between shows I’d play jazz. It would be radio heaven.
As you can probably surmise, I grew up with radio, maybe more so than most baby boomers. We didn’t have a TV in Missouri and Illinois when I was little. We lived in Germany in the mid-1950s, again without a TV, but we had Armed Forces Radio, which played 1940s radio serials and situation comedies. Kids my age back in the States were watching Howdy Doody and I Love Lucy; I was listening to Inner Sanctum, Amos & Andy, and The Great Gildersleeves. When I was 13 and 14, living in Laramie, Wyoming on the high plains at more than 7,000 feet above sea level, my dad and I built a Hallicrafters shortwave kit radio. I strung a single-wire antenna from my basement room up to the roof of the house and then over to the top of the garage; every night I’d tune in to signals bouncing off the troposphere from the other side of the world: Voice of America stations broadcasting into Russia and Eastern Europe, Radio Moscow itself, China, Burma … I even listened to military jamming signals coming in on the shortwave bands. Radio has always been a Big Deal to me.
When Donna and I were first married, living (again) in Germany, it was the age of pirate radio stations floating in the Irish Sea and the English Channel, beaming new music into Europe back when BBC and Deutsche Rundfunk wouldn’t touch the stuff. Later, in California, we listened to the first underground FM stations.
Until I was 50 or so, I’d almost always have a radio on, playing NPR or music in the background. Ten or twelve years ago background music started to become an annoying distraction and I quit listening to it. But NPR news and talk? Still on whenever I’m working in the garage, driving the car, riding my motorcycle, or pedaling around on my bicycle. I have radios everywhere.
When Donna and I first started thinking about where we wanted to settle down after leaving the Air Force, I reluctantly ruled out my home town, Cape Girardeau, because back then you couldn’t get NPR there. That’s how important this stuff is to me.
But now that I’ve turned against background music and have started to turn against certain NPR shows, I worry. Will the day come when I value silence above all else? Will the day come when I turn off the radio for good?
Is radio getting worse, or is it just me? I hope it’s radio getting worse. I don’t want it to be just me!