GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS

posted by James Reel

The Washington Post reports good news about National Public Radio’s growing audience, but bad news about its dwindling budget:

The audience for NPR's daily news programs, including "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered," reached a record last year, driven by widespread interest in the presidential election, and the general decline of radio news elsewhere. Washington-based NPR will release new figures to its stations today showing that the cumulative audience for its daily news programs hit 20.9 million a week, a 9 percent increase over the previous year. The weekly audience for all the programming fed by Washington-based NPR—including talk shows and music—also reached a record last year, with 23.6 million people tuning in each week, an 8.7 percent increase over 2007. … More than half of NPR's daily audience comes from its two "core" news shows, "Morning Edition" and the evening "All Things Considered." "Morning Edition's" average daily audience, 7.6 million, is now about 60 percent larger than the audience for "Good Morning America" on ABC and about one-third larger than the audience for the "Today" show on NBC. The favorable audience data, however, hasn't spared NPR from the budget woes that are affecting almost every news organization in the nation.

You’ll find the full article here