NPR Achieves Record High Ratings

To me, this is great news. I listen to NPR almost every day at work or at home. News and analysis from all sides of any issue without all the screaming or accusations. I am an especially big fan of the Diane Rehm Show. She's an icon and no one on her daily panel of guests gets away with falsehoods because she calls them on it and demands proof. I love her. Now this.
From today's WaPo:

At a time when newspapers, magazines and TV news continue to lose readers and viewers, at least one part of the traditional media has continued to grow robustly: National Public Radio.

The audience for NPR's daily news programs, including "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered," reached a record last year, driven by widespread interest in the presidential election, and the general decline of radio news elsewhere. Washington-based NPR will release new figures to its stations today showing that the cumulative audience for its daily news programs hit 20.9 million a week, a 9 percent increase over the previous year.

The weekly audience for all the programming fed by Washington-based NPR -- including talk shows and music -- also reached a record last year, with 23.6 million people tuning in each week, an 8.7 percent increase over 2007.

While almost every news organization saw its audience spike during the political campaign last year, NPR's surge continues a trend that goes back to at least the fall of 2000, when the organization began aggregating audience data from hundreds of affiliated public stations across the country. NPR saw a big audience increase after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has added listeners since. Its audience has grown 47 percent since 2000, according to figures from Arbitron.

"When people discover us, they seem to discover us for good," Ellen Weiss, NPR's senior vice president for news, said in an interview yesterday. "They stay with us."

More than half of NPR's daily audience comes from its two "core" news shows, "Morning Edition" and the evening "All Things Considered." "Morning Edition's" average daily audience, 7.6 million, is now about 60 percent larger than the audience for "Good Morning America" on ABC and about one-third larger than the audience for the "Today" show on NBC.

The favorable audience data, however, hasn't spared NPR from the budget woes that are affecting almost every news organization in the nation. In December, NPR cut 7 percent of its news staff and eliminated two daily newsmagazine programs, "Day to Day" and "News & Notes."

On weekends there's a gardening show, and The Splendid Table for people who love to cook and eat, and of course, A Prairie Home Companion, among others. Read the rest at the link above. then tune in and if you like what you hear, consider becoming a member of your local station to help close the budget gap.

More later.
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