BOSTON — NPR is ending the 21-year-old call-in radio show “Talk of the Nation” and will encourage local stations to replace it with an expanded version of “Here and Now,” an afternoon news broadcast that is produced here, the organization announced on Friday.
The plan is the product of discussions that began more than two years ago between NPR and some of its biggest member stations. For the middle of the afternoon the stations wanted a magazine-style news show along the lines of “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” the two bookends of most stations’ weekday schedules.
“Here and Now” fits that description. The program, produced by the Boston University station WBUR, started locally in 1997 and began to expand nationally in 2001. Until now, it has been distributed by a rival programmer, Public Radio International, but starting this summer, it will be distributed by NPR instead.
NPR will work with WBUR to turn the one-hour “Here and Now” into a two-hour show, with contributions from NPR’s news staff and other local stations. A co-host, Jeremy Hobson, will join the program’s current host, Robin Young.
The longer version of “Here and Now” is to start on July 1, immediately after “Talk of the Nation,” currently broadcast in two segments from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern time, bows out. The program is be produced from noon to 2 p.m. and then updated as needed until 4 p.m. for stations that carry it later in the afternoon.
But “Talk of the Nation,” which was an early platform for high-profile hosts like Ira Glass and John Hockenberry, will not necessarily go quietly.
As fans cried “say it isn’t so” on social networking Web sites on Friday, the show’s host since 2001, Neal Conan, said in an e-mail to staff members, “I’m proud that we go out on top, with record station carriage and the largest audience in the program’s history.”
NPR officials denied that the organization’s budget deficit of $7 million spurred the decision. They portrayed the change as a move away from opinion and toward straightforward storytelling. Among stations, there has been a “hunger for a stronger news presence in the middle of the day,” said Charlie Kravetz, WBUR’s general manager.
Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s chief content officer, said, “Together, we’re addressing both what the audience is looking for and what member stations have been looking for.”
NPR previously started a midday newsmagazine called “Day to Day” in 2003, but it was canceled in 2009. While that newscast was one hour long and was produced out of whole cloth by NPR, the expanded “Here and Now” will be an extension of what WBUR is already doing.
NPR began to pitch “Here and Now” to stations on Friday morning. The program is currently broadcast by 182 stations, though many of them are small; of the 25 biggest radio markets in the country, only 8 carry it. Partly for that reason, it reaches only about 1.35 million listeners a week. (That total counts all the people who hear the program at any point during the week.)
“Talk,” meanwhile, which mixes long-form interviews with calls and e-mails from listeners, is broadcast by 407 stations and reaches 3.53 million listeners.
The Friday version of “Talk of the Nation” — “Science Friday with Ira Flatow” — will still be distributed.
The organization said that Mr. Conan, an NPR reporter and anchor since 1977, would depart after “Talk” ended, although he was welcome to stay on. On NPR.org the most popular comment on the decision came from a disappointed fan who praised Mr. Conan for asking “the questions that pop into my mind as I am listening,” not softballs.
“I think Neal is NPR’s best,” the listener wrote, “and I will very much miss his work.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/business/media/npr-to-end-talk-of-the-nation.html?partner=rss&emc=rss