After weeks of appeals, public radio stations nationwide have chosen their new midday programming to replace NPR’s 21-year-old call-in show “Talk of the Nation,” which signed off last week.

For the moment, NPR has lost some midday real estate. The replacement program it is offering — an expanded two-hour version of “Here Now,” an existing newsmagazine from Boston’s WBUR-FM, which NPR will now co-produce — will be carried by 302 stations, starting on Monday. These stations include seven of the top 10 markets and 16 of the top 25, according to NPR.

“Talk of the Nation,” by contrast, attracted 3.53 million listeners weekly on 407 stations, including nine of the 10 largest markets and 21 of the top 25, NPR said. (New York City’s WNYC did not carry “Talk of the Nation” and is not broadcasting “Here Now,” but the new show will be heard on some suburban stations.)

Another program that has also tried to expand its midday distribution, “The Takeaway” from WNYC and Public Radio International, will now be heard on 190 stations reaching almost 55 percent of the country, up from 82 stations two months ago, WNYC said.

Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s chief content officer, called the new “Here Now” lineup a huge success. “We’ve exceeded the goals we set,” he said.

Charles Kravetz, WBUR’s general manager, said that the lineup hit “the numbers we needed to reach to pay for the expansion of the program.”

While “Here Now” costs more to produce than “Talk of the Nation,” Mr. Wilson said NPR is sharing the financial risks with WBUR. Already, WBUR has added Geico as a corporate underwriter, Mr. Kravetz said.

“Here Now” will tap into NPR’s reporters and its online blogs like “Code Switch,” but both Mr. Wilson and Mr. Kravetz said contributions from local stations would be crucial. A hastily assembled contributors’ network of 15 stations nationwide, which will eventually grow, is meant to “make sure that the program has a very broad geographic sound,” Mr. Kravetz said.

Phoenix’s station, KJZZ-FM, is part of the contributors’ network, but is also working with “The Takeaway” on content-sharing, and on assembling joint reporting teams with other stations on topics like energy. The old model of buying an NPR program and simply broadcasting it is “dated” in the digital era, said Jim Paluzzi, KJZZ’s general manager. His goal, he said, is to “have more and more of the midday produced by us live,” with contributions from all the collaborators.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/media/public-radios-midday-show-to-include-local-contributions.html?partner=rss&emc=rss