NEW WEEKEND LIFE FOR ‘ALL THINGS CONSIDERED’

A new $100,000 grant to National Public Radio will ensure that the weekend edition of the popular news program “All Things Considered” will continue after October and that it will be available to a great number of public radio stations, according to NPR.

“This generous gift from Waste Management Inc. confirms that ‘All Things Considered’ will continue as a seven-day news service for listeners across the country,” NPR President Douglas J. Bennet Jr. said.

“What’s even more important,” he said, is that with the help of the Oak Brook, Ill.-based company, NPR “will now be able to lower the one-year fee that subscribing stations have agreed to pay.”

“This will make the program affordable to many more of our public radio stations,” Bennet said, and thus will “help make it available to the widest possible listening audience.”

NPR decided to launch its own fund-raising effort six weeks ago after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting rejected a request for an additional $1.2 million in discretionary funds from its fiscal 1986 budget to assure the future of the news show and other cultural programming.

NPR’s marketing plan called for the news programs to be made available only to those public radio stations that contributed funds for a one-year subscription. The fees were based on a sliding scale that ranged from $500 to $4,000, depending on the size of each station’s non-federal contribution.

However, the funding plan raised concerns that smaller, less well-heeled stations would not be able to participate.

“There are many stations located in small communities and economically distressed areas which cannot afford to participate in this buy-back arrangement,” said Ruth Hirschman, general manager of KCRW-FM in Santa Monica.

Hirschman’s station and WBUR in Boston also made commitments to raise additional funds.

With the $100,000 underwriting grant announced Friday, NPR now says that it can reduce the subscription fees, making the show affordable to more stations.

NPR has said that it needed at least $500,000 to continue the weekend program this fall. To date, its fund-raising efforts have raised at least $360,000 in station pledges and $60,000 in commitments from several foundations and private donors. With the new $100,000 grant, the funding totals at least $520,000.

“We believe that intelligent radio listeners should have available on weekends the same quality and depth of National Public Radio news reporting that they can hear during the week,” said Harold Gershowintz, senior vice president of Waste Management. His company is involved in the disposal of solid and hazardous waste.

But some station managers, such as Hirschman, believe that the station pledges and private contributions do not relieve CPB of its responsibility to public broadcasting.

“It would be a disaster for this project to go forward without the involvement of CPB,” she said. “They have a responsibility to contribute as well.”

Even before the Waste Management contribution, NPR’s board of directors had voted last week to continue production of the weekend news show and the cultural programs that NPR also said were jeopardized by inadequate funding.

NPR said that 217 public radio stations--two-thirds of its members--have signed up to carry its arts and performance programs, accounting for $431,000 of the total $661,000 needed to produce them. NPR hopes to raise the remaining $230,000 from private donors and additional subscriptions from other stations.

“The prospects for securing the balance required are very positive,” Bennet said.