Touring the dial of public radio's future

To most public radio listeners around Puget Sound, it matters little who’s actually producing the popular shows heard on local stations such as KUOW, KPLU, and KBCS. Clock radios and kitchen receivers bring Morning Edition and Marketplace Morning Report. In the car on the way home it’s All Things Considered. Doing weekend errands, This American Life, Studio 360, and The Splendid Table fill the miles and minutes between groceries and soccer games. It all comes out of the same speakers.

Beyond the handful of local folks who actually work in public radio, the behind-the-mikes stuff is just so much shoptalk — but not for Seattle lawyer Linda Larson.

Larson, a native of Bellevue and graduate of the University of Washington and UW Law School, is a partner at the Marten Law Group, where she specializes in litigation of environmental issues. She’s also a longtime public radio enthusiast who was recruited in 2001 to join the board of Public Radio International (PRI). Now, as public radio (and radio in general) faces serious challenges to its survival, Larson has just been elected to a two-year term as chairwoman of the PRI board. (Disclosure: Larson was also an investor and boardmember of Crosscut in an earlier, for-profit incarnation, but has no connection with the site now.)

Larson says her interest in public radio stems from “a personal belief that intellectual freedom and access to information is critical to democracy and to having healthy communities and healthy community debate.” She was serving on the Seattle Public Library board when she came to the attention of PRI.

Unlike the typical listener, Larson knows that most shows on public radio are produced or distributed by one of three big players. Washington, D.C.-based National Public Radio (NPR) is the biggest and best known, producing Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Car Talk, Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!, hourly newscasts around the clock, and many more programs, including several heard on both KUOW and KPLU. Though much smaller than NPR, American Public Media, founded in 2004 by Minnesota Public Radio and based in St. Paul, Minn., is best known for distributing the weekly live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, but also produces and distributes such programs as Marketplace, The Splendid Table, and, until it was canceled earlier this year, Weekend America (all heard on KUOW).

PRI, founded in 1983 as American Public Radio, is based in Minneapolis and produces or distributes programs including This American Life (heard locally on KUOW and KPLU), The World (co-produced with WGBH and the BBC and heard on KUOW) and The Takeaway, a relatively new morning program produced in New York in partnership with WNYC and carried in the Seattle area by KBCS 91.3 FM.

There’s definitely competition between NPR, APM, and PRI, Larson says, and it isn’t always friendly: “It depends on the day.” There’s also a history of conflict. Minnesota Public Radio and PRI collaborated to develop Marketplace in 1989, but parted ways when Minnesota Public Radio decided to produce and distribute Marketplace on its own. It was then that Minnesota Public Radio created its own distribution network — American Public Media — for its other programs, also previously distributed by PRI.

History aside, the fiercest competition nowadays is for dollars, which means getting as many stations as possible to carry programs. That generates revenue for PRI, NPR, and APM in two ways. First, local stations pay fees in order to carry national programming, so the more local stations that PRI, NPR, or APM can persuade to carry their shows, the more money these producer/distributors can make. Second, in addition to fees paid by stations, the more stations that carry a particular show, the more NPR, APM, or PRI can charge national sponsors.

While PRI and APM programs are evening and weekend fixtures on many public radio stations, NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered have long dominated “drive time,” the lucrative weekday morning and afternoon periods when the most ears are pointed toward radio speakers.

Which is why Larson is so excited about PRI’s recent entrant into the morning battle. The Takeaway is designed to be less formal than Morning Edition, to appeal to a younger demographic, and unlike Morning Edition (which often repeats complete hours) to be broadcast live even for West Coast listeners. KBCS carries The Takeaway from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m., with the first two hours live and the third a repeat (known in the business as a “rollover”).

That The Takeaway is broadcast (mostly) live here is important to Larson, who as a Seattleite is especially sensitive to the needs of West Coast listeners. She bemoans that local listeners often have to settle for broadcasts of Morning Edition and All Things Considered made up entirely of rollovers. Larson takes the West Coast perspective pretty seriously; she’s also irked that PRI’s The World is a few hours old when it’s heard each day at 3 p.m. on KUOW.