Today’s May 3, so we’re marking the 54th anniversary of the very first National Public Radio (NPR) news broadcast. To save you the trouble of calculating, that was way back in 1971, when the Vietnam War was raging, Richard Nixon was in the White House, and the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18.
It was a turbulent time, enough so that the debut of public radio newscasts went unmarked by many. But the reason we’re taking note today isn’t because that first news program was so momentous, or because recent threats to NPR’s funding have put it in the news. Rather, it’s because of what NPR has accomplished and what it has meant through the decades.
Keeping it concise, NPR has offered and continues to offer:
- A diversity of programming, providing several generations of Americans with access to content they might not otherwise have been able to hear.
- In-depth, detailed, fact-based coverage of news and trends that media outlets are often less inclined to cover.
- Constantly evolving ways of sharing information and telling stories, as both a stylistic and technological innovator.
- Select content and an infrastructure for local stations nationwide, which themselves are valuable because they provide listeners with specific regional perspectives.
This is significant stuff, and it resonates for all of us at SCG Advertising + Public Relations because, as professional communicators, we benefit from the media environment NPR has played such a major role both in creating and maintaining. The information we share on behalf of our broad range of clients typically travels via channels NPR helped develop and often assumes forms NPR refined or even created.
For all of this we’re grateful, and we look forward to enjoying many more years of National Public Radio (NPR).
