Vendetta Against NPR

To our international readers, NPR- National Public Radio USED TO BE my favorite radio station on earth. Until now. Or until, as of recently, when it began to totally blow. So I really love classical music and instead of the tv constantly blaring, as a kid, my parents usually had the radio on all the time and it was always on NPR. They had just the right mix of stuff- news in the mornings till about 8 am, classical music by request, news from 11-1, classical music, news/radio talk shows from 5-7 (ish) then it was jazz nightly followed by this New Age-y music show and then back to classical after about 11 pm. So primarily music. This makes me happy. But over the past few years, there is less and less music being played and more and more talk, talk, talk, jibber jabber, it never ends.

They seriously have news and talk programming until about 9 am every day. Then around 11 am it starts again. Around 1:30 the music MIGHT start back up, or they might just keep yammering on all afternoon with one of their weekly shows like "Money Matters", "Focus on the Family" (hey, this is South Dakota- we are just as red as any former confederate state), "Garden Hotline" (kill me), whatever other yammering show they've got going on. It's more jarring than listening to "Love Lockdown" on perma-repeat. When I am working- be it on homework, housework, writing, or internet surfing, about 80% of the time I would prefer to be listening to classical music. I do not prefer to listen to the different varietals of blue crab grass that grow in sunny or shady spots.

I love gardening. I love to hear about it, read about it, etc. But not when I'd rather listen to classical music to keep focused. They also have kind of done away with some of the cooler programming that I did enjoy listening to. They used to do radio shows a kin to radio serials back in the 1940's- with mysteries or soap operas or whatever. This was totally entertaining. They also used to have daily astronomy updates that went along with the weather updates. There was a guy who had a poetry/essay half hour, it was all a whole lot more entertaining than hour after hour of hearing about former PResident Bush's new home in Dallas. Does anyone really care?

I appreciate NPR for being a credible and reliable source of international and national news that is fairly unbiased and rather informative. That's fine. But I don't need it for hours at a time. I don't need a daily hour and a half blitzkrieg from NPR's "National Report". Thank God they haven't gotten rid of Prairie Home Companion or Car Talk- I think the whole station will have gone amuck by then. Just bring back some more music, please! I listen to the radio so I don't have to buy more cd's and songs. Granted, there are internet radio stations and Pandora, but I'm not always in the mood to put that much effort into my radio listening.

Does that make me a lazy American? Whatever. I have an official grudge against NPR now. I may even start some sort of grassroots efforts to get them to play more damned music. After I'm done with my homework that I have to do listening to some random classical music cd on repeat, that is. Grrrrr.

Peaceout-

Chatterbox Sara and the spawnling (aka the baby in my belly)