THE PUBLIC RADIO WARS : BATTLING FOR THE ELITE EARS

There’s nothing like dwindling resources and the politics of big egos to brew up a humdinger of a war . . . and public radio’s got one.

Now in its adolescence, public radio in America has become the battleground for two tough armies locked in an undeclared civil war. But the battle between St. Paul, Minn.-based American Public Radio and Washington-based National Public Radio is far too genteel to descend to the level of a blood-and-guts shooting war.

Publicly, the generals of the two rival networks won’t even acknowledge that they’re fighting.

“I wouldn’t call it a war, but there is a political rivalry within the public radio system which I consider most unfortunate and unproductive,” says NPR President Douglas J. Bennet.

“Some people have suggested that (we are at war with NPR), but American Public Radio is simply taking the position that we will use the best ideas represented to us to offer the finest programming to our affiliates,” says APR President William Kling.

The spoils of this unspoken but desperate war for the airwaves are no less than 300 public radio affiliates across the United States that attract as many as 9 million listeners a week.

That public radio attracts a generally upscale, intellectual audience is a given. What other medium would make stars of a cultural maven like NPR’s Susan Stamberg and a countrified New Yorker magazine contributor like APR’s Garrison Keillor?

Corporate America, which increasingly supplies the production grants necessary to keep public broadcasting alive, knows who listens to public radio, so it is no wonder that the rival networks are fighting to increase their share of the listener elite.

Unlike commercial radio or TV, public radio stations can, and do, affiliate with more than one network. Until recently, most U. S. stations have carried both APR and NPR programming. In Los Angeles, both classically formatted KUSC-FM and jazz-formatted KLON-FM have carried NPR news staples such as “All Things Considered” as well as APR music offerings that fit in with their respective programming.

But KUSC made a break a week ago that could affect the entire balance of power in the public radio wars. The classical powerhouse quit NPR Sept. 30, taking both of its satellite stations in Thousand Oaks (KCPB-FM) and Santa Barbara (KSCA-FM) with it.

In his formal statement severing his stations’ ties with NPR after an association that dates back to the founding of that network in 1970, KUSC General Manager Wallace Smith was unusually and brutally candid about his decision to abandon National Public Radio and remain affiliated only with American Public Radio, its 3-year-old upstart rival.

“Unfortunately, NPR began to consider itself the sole source of public-radio programs,” he said. “The leadership of NPR failed to recognize the emerging talent at local public radio. They began to believe that they were the only reliable source of quality public radio programming in America. They failed to acknowledge the fact that good public radio programs could emerge from places outside of Washington, D.C.

“Like all bureaucracies, they began to feed on their own sense of self-importance. They found it difficult to believe that cowpoke stations in places like St. Paul, Minn., with hokey radio shows like ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ could provide quality programming that would capture the imagination of audiences for public radio throughout America.”

In short, concluded Smith, NPR’s own short-sighted arrogance set it up for its current pitched battle for the public airwaves. The battle began in 1982, when KUSC joined forces with stations in New York, Cincinnati, San Francisco and St. Paul to create American Public Radio.

The roots of the war date back even further.

Both sides trace the conflict back to NPR’s creation in 1970, at a time when public radio most often meant college deejays and campus news departments. These low-power stations were the laboratories where students learned the mechanics of broadcasting, in much the same way that campus newspapers taught novice editors and reporters the craft of journalism.

Based on the recommendations of a Carnegie Commission study, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission set aside many of the frequencies on the far left side of the FM band for the creation of even more such stations--both on and off campus.

The idea was to mandate a national broadcast system comparable to that of the more venerable British and Canadian Broadcast companies. Such a system would be a central system for getting information to all Americans in time of war or national emergency. In times of peace, public radio would be a national cultural treasure house, dispensing arts and music programs as well as news and information of the highest caliber.

With offices and studios set up directly across the street from the CBS Washington bureau, National Public Radio went on the air late in 1970.

Almost from its beginning, the crown jewel in the NPR schedule has been “All Things Considered.” The national evening news magazine hosted by Susan Stamberg and Noah Adams is what most listeners equate with public radio, even though it represents only a fraction of the total NPR output.

The afternoon drivetime news program--delivering profiles, comedy, behind-the-news features and commentary--was so successful that it spawned an a.m. clone six years ago in “Morning Edition,” with host Bob Edwards.

The network also began delivering up the kind of in-depth documentaries on social problems and the human condition that won its reporters and producers major prizes and firmly established NPR as a journalistic trend-setter. Its documentaries covered issues as broad as ecology, foreign relations and health and as esoteric as “The History, Sociology and Psychology of the Elevator,” “Facts and Fiction of the Grizzly Bear” and “Bag Ladies and Winos.”

Its news-gathering reputation became so successful that many listeners may have overlooked the fact that NPR also offered music and drama. During the ‘70s, telephone-line transmission gave way to satellite technology, enhancing NPR’s ability to quickly deliver everything from Broadway musicals and the Boston Pops to Bach, Beethoven and Basie.

But, by the 1980s, the string of a few dozen college stations that NPR originally served had grown to more than 200. During NPR’s decade of growth, those stations had also been growing in terms of both listeners and financial resources. Most of them began occasionally producing a documentary or orchestral performance broadcast on their own . . . and doing it without much help from the congressionally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

NPR, on the other hand, became increasingly dependent upon the CPB, its critics now contend. In the last five years, the network’s dependence on CPB has dropped in proportion to increased corporate and individual contributions, but even now more than 50% of NPR’s annual $23-million operating budget continues to come directly from the federal government. At the same time, most stations operate virtually free of direct government support.

In California, where Gov. George Deukmejian cut off all public broadcasting subsidies two years ago, stations depend almost entirely on listener subscriptions, private grants and college subsidies. CPB grants this year to KUSC, for example, come to only 11% of its revenues--a percentage that has remained constant for at least the last three years, according to Smith.

With the advent of the Reagan Administration in 1981, a new wave of fiscal conservatism came to Washington. The once-generous CPB began refusing annually to increase its support for both public television and radio. It took two more years before the funding inertia came down full force on NPR’s leadership.

Under then-President Frank Mankiewicz, NPR began casting around for alternative funding and eventually found a series of high-risk, high-tech investment projects that--combined with its traditionally loose management practices--very nearly bankrupted the network.

One proposal involved the cooperation of NPR member stations. They would use a high-frequency portion of their radio signals, known as “sidebands,” to broadcast specialized information sent by NPR satellite to each station. These broadcasts, offering sales tips or stock-market information to special-interest audiences, would be heard only over customized receivers available to subscribers who would pay a healthy subscription fee.

Another scheme involved overnight transmission of similar information via satellite to a station that would then automatically record it all on tape cassettes. The following day, a subscriber would pick up his cassettes and play them in the car or listen on his Walkman while jogging.

“At the time they were trying to sell this stuff to us, we were told that it would be as big an electronic innovation as color television,” said Dave Creagh, former manager of NPR affiliate KLON-FM in Long Beach and now manager of a new public radio station in Baltimore.

But none of the alternative funding schemes worked. In fact, most of them only put a larger drain on the already-depleted NPR finances. NPR Ventures Inc., the 5-year-old subsidiary company that Mankiewicz created to oversee these profit-making projects, was finally dissolved this summer without ever earning a dime for NPR.

Throughout this period, NPR management did nothing to tighten its budget. Staffing and production continued to expand and the symbol of NPR profligacy--the company-issued American Express card--continued to be doled out to employees as though the recession era of 1978-82 did not exist.

By June, 1983, when the rest of the country was coming out of its economic doldrums, NPR was taking its belated plunge. The American Express cards were recalled too late and, that month, the NPR board of directors reported that the network was more than $7 million in debt.

Mankiewicz and most of his lieutenants resigned. The CPB grudgingly voted a bailout loan and NPR turned to its only real asset to ultimately save it from bankruptcy: its affiliate stations.

The stations responded, partially out of a sense of fear and desperation that they might lose their primary source of programming. They raised several million dollars to help keep the network going at the same time that they helped pay back the CPB bailout loan. Now, two years after that summer-long crisis, a sleeker, leaner NPR seems well on the way to a full recovery.

But it wasn’t without a heavy price.

Most of NPR’s performance programming--its music and radio drama--has been pared back. And, more importantly, many of its veteran news staff are grumbling over funding cutbacks.

Worst of all, NPR stations from Alaska to Florida learned that another network was out there to serve them during the summer of 1983 and that the desperation they felt about losing NPR might not be warranted after all.

At about the same time NPR began to founder, a neophyte network in Minnesota had begun to put a few of its programs on the air, giving public stations across the country an alternative to NPR programming. Unlike National Public Radio, American Public Radio did not depend upon government funding to keep it afloat. APR simply asked its affiliates to pay a relatively small basic annual subscriber fee and, then, an additional stipend for any program that they might want to carry.

The stations paid, APR prospered, and NPR geared up for war.