History of public media
After 50 years, NPR upholds public broadcasting’s founding values
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NPR was incorporated Feb. 26, 1970, marking a new stage in the growth of a public media system rooted in education.
Current (https://current.org/series/rewind/)
This series features scholars of media history looking back at both familiar and lesser-known chapters in public broadcasting’s evolution. “Rewind” is presented in partnership with the Radio Preservation Task Force, an initiative of the Library of Congress.
NPR was incorporated Feb. 26, 1970, marking a new stage in the growth of a public media system rooted in education.
The New York station may not have survived the Great Depression without help from the federal government.
During his 35 years at Indiana State Teachers College — now Indiana State University — Clarence “Doc” Morgan also trained scores of future broadcasters.
To one viewer and parent, competitive pressures and fading institutional knowledge have compromised the show’s “gritty urban utopianism.”
A group of bilingual radio stations founded in the late 1970s “helped distinguish Spanish-language and bilingual broadcasting as a form of advocacy.”
From the 1940s to the 1970s, dozens of U.S. public radio stations featured French cultural programming that “let us know that the French people like us and vice versa.”
“The tone of operations was business as usual in virtually every sense despite the strong waves of tear gas through the building.”
Rusty Hassan has seen shows and stations come and go during his long career on Washington, D.C., airwaves, and he’s still at it.
The globetrotting quality of public media is neither new nor politically neutral and has roots in the earliest days of American broadcasting.
Current is happy to announce an update of our book A History of Public Broadcasting, with a projected publication date of 2021.