NPR’S ‘WEEKEND EDITION’ : AN ALTERNATIVE TO SATURDAY BLAHS

Saturday mornings have long been the domain of Bugs Bunny, the GoBots, Little League games or tennis and orange juice at the club.

But for a growing number of adults across the country, Scott Simon’s ability to induce both common people and major newsmakers to stumble and stammer and finally puzzle out their lives at his microphone has provided an intelligent and often irreverent alternative to the traditional Saturday-morning menu of mindless stimulation.

As host of National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition” (heard locally from 8 to 10 a.m on KCRW-FM, 89.9), Simon, 35, often puts together as many as 14 pieces a week, ranging in subject from a Texas billionaire to Mother Teresa, from a 50-year-old woman just learning to read to a crack addict determined to warn children away from drugs.

“We like to do pieces about what people believe and how they change their lives because of what they believe,” Simon said during a recent trip to Los Angeles, “stories about how people re-create themselves and why they are inspired to do what they do. When people hear themselves talk, they realize things about themselves that they haven’t put into words before. That’s what interests us.”

Two years ago, Jay Kernis, the creator and producer of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” asked Simon to help him create a Saturday-morning news show that would “sound like the American weekend.”

At first, Simon and Kernis felt they were expected to do wine reviews and cooking segments--useful information for a Saturday morning. “We were worried about that,” Simon said. “We wanted to be fun and entertaining, but we didn’t want to be a yuppie shopping show.”

What they really wanted to be was an amalgam of all that was good about every broadcast and print journalism package they had come to admire: Edward R. Murrow’s “See It Now” and “Person to Person”; the variety and adventure of NPR’s own news programs, “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition”; the sense of “standing for something” evident in Bill Moyers’ best work, and the drama of live “Nightline”-type interviews.

And to tie it all together, they’d strive for one singular, graceful voice, so that at its best, “Weekend Edition” would achieve on the radio what the New Yorker achieves in print.

Since the premiere of the Washington-based program in November, 1985, though, what has characterized the show most is Simon’s compassion, inquisitiveness and interest in people, personalities and motivation.

Robert Siegal, NPR’s former news director and now the host of “All Things Considered,” once, only half jokingly, called “Weekend Edition” a show about the moral life of America.

But Simon is neither a holier-than-thou moralist nor an evangelist. Though he is a practicing Quaker and refuses to cover executions, he is, he says--first, last, and at least for now--a journalist. He has covered wars from the front line, only after the fact worrying that the soldiers he was with protected themselves--and him--by killing people on the other side.

And he prides himself on never shying away from asking the tough questions. “When I interviewed Mother Teresa, the person I admire most on this planet, I asked her the most obnoxious theological questions I could think of,” Simon says. “As a journalist that’s what I had to do.”

Not every story on “Weekend Edition” is heavy on religion, morality or in-depth probing. While Simon and Kernis look at the weekend as a time when listeners have a chance to reflect and digest the implications of the way some people behave, they also relish Saturdays as a time for fun, whimsy and relaxation.

One minute NPR correspondent Daniel Schorr will be blasting his caustic comments on the Iran- contra scandal or U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf. The next, Simon will be talking to former White House press secretary Larry Speakes about his obsession with old Elvis Presley songs.

While other news shows covered the recent British parliamentary elections by profiling the candidates and talking about unemployment in the North and opulence in the South, “Weekend Edition” offered a hilarious piece about the rival political parties’ theme songs. This story revealed that Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative party had commissioned Andrew Lloyd Webber to write its theme music, and it featured a Thatcher impersonator belittling her rival Labour party’s choice of music.

“The Labour party has Handel,” the impersonator raged in her uppity Queen’s English. “A foreigner. Not only is he foreign, he’s German. Not only is he German, he’s dead. That’s what the Labour party represents today--dead German composers.”

“Scott and I are having the time of our lives,” Kernis says. “We all need a little irreverence. The times call for it. People everywhere are standing up and saying, ‘This is the right way; this is the path.’ We also need people to stand up and say, ‘Oh yeah? Are you sure?’ There are lots of parades and lots of emperors out there today who have had very bad advice from their tailors. We aren’t here to throw stones, just to point out some of the loose threads.”

Simon, who after more than 10 years at NPR is, according to Kernis, the best writer at the network, seems at home pointing a jaded microphone at those badly dressed emperors. But he is still, he says, a bit uncomfortable with the role of news show “host.” His critics point out that he often steps on his interviewees’ lines with inane interruptions such as uh-huh, and Simon concedes that he is far from the ideal on-air personality.

“I have this high voice that is sometimes way up here,” he says in an exaggerated falsetto. “And our editor has this joke that goes, ‘We told Scott to stop saying uh-huh during his interviews, and he just said, uh-huh. ‘ “

But about 1 million people listening on more than 214 stations across the country find Simon’s chats with “Weekend Edition” regulars Schorr (on politics), Elvis Mitchell (on film) and Ron Rapoport (on sports) lively and insightful.

The audience feedback and encouragement for broadcasting as much personal and hard-edged material as possible keeps this man--who says he might otherwise be working with autistic children--reporting on stories from around the world each week.

“I could see myself (still) doing this show in five years,” Simon says. “It provides something valuable. The sound on the radio enables us to share something about other people with our audience. I find that gratifying. But all that being said, it’s true that you only get one time around. Maybe I should break off in a new direction.”

Simon acknowledges that he sounds like another Garrison Keillor, who recently left his radio show after 13 years, or Ted Koppel, who has hinted that he may leave “Nightline” some time soon. But both Keillor and Koppel made the cover of Time or Newsweek before calling it quits. And Kernis, who says the success of “Weekend Edition” has already surpassed their wildest dreams, is dreaming of nothing less for his philosophical host.

“If Ted Koppel can be on the cover of Newsweek,” Kernis insists, “then we see no reason why Scott can’t make it there too.”