I will offer some advice to NPR...which they might want to consider. If congress comes to your door and says defunding is to occur, and that measly three percent that you really bragged about the magic amount is wrong...then you’ve got major issues in a sluggish economy. My perception is that your budget guys hid a fair amount of money which funneled its way from other government resources, and twenty percent of your budget is from the government.
Here is my advice. If you packed up the NPR base of operations in Washington DC, and moved everything to Nashville....you’d cut your cost by half. You wouldn’t have to pay your employees the DC rate for salary. You could cut down the rental cost and operating cost by a significant amount. You could get down to a base of operations that wouldn’t require government funding.
Course, there is a negative to this. Nashville would be in the heartland. You’d have to start grasping at how real people think and operate. You’d have to cut back on political news and get back to regular news. You might even have to get back to old fashioned reporting like folks did in 1966.
Only a suggestion.
Nashville is too cosmopolitan for them.
I like Nebraska. Buy them an old farm. Have the talent from “All Things Considered” Milk the cows and sell it. Nina Totenberg can get the corn harvest in. Zero overhead for NPR because the farm offsets any expenditures in the broadcast. Be the most honest work those Commie Pinkos have ever done.
Here is my advice. If you packed up the NPR base of operations in Washington DC, and moved everything to Nashville....youd cut your cost by half.