Since my local NPR station (WHRV) has changed its lineup, I now have the opportunity to listen to With Good Reason, a weekly interview show under the auspices of The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. This is a surprisingly good, surprisingly local interview show; I’ve heard several episodes and have been impressed. I’ve enjoyed it more than the national What's the Word?, put out by the Modern Language Association, and far more than Counterspin or The Bioneers. I more or less enjoy Selected Shorts, although as my listening time does not exactly coincide with its airtime, I often find it more frustrating than enjoyable. I have heard one episode, or most of one episode, of StoryLines New England, which was an unexpected pleasure for this erstwhile New Englander. Also hearkening back to my Boston days is the Cambridge Forum, which is a magnificent combination of parochialism and national scope, getting Hub Man exactly right (or rather, the Cantabridgian version of Hub Man, whose headline would read “World Ends, Hub Man Thoughtful”.
My point, if you haven’t picked up on it yet, is that there really isn’t any reason for a good public radio news station to enslave itself to NPR, to repeat an hour of Fresh Air or (Lord forbid) The Connection. I’ve no substantial beef with NPR, although they seem to be a bit sleepy compared to PRI, and American Public Media appears to have stolen the annoying Marketplace and broadcasts the superlative Splendid Table. No, it’s just that more and more, what we ask a public radio station to do is to sift through the available stuff and pick out a good variety of the good stuff. If your local one doesn’t do as good a job as you like, perhaps you should give them a nudge (and some money), and point out that it won’t be too long before you can just load up a day’s worth of shows to your iPod before heading out in the morning, and do without the local station entirely. And nobody wants that.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.