Maggie says:
As an admitted news junkie (and one who's struggling lately without cable news or the internet at home), a fixture of my mornings for ten years now has involved two things: listening to the NPR morning news and reading the newspaper. Since moving to Albuquerque three years ago, both of these have presented problems for me, since getting morning headlines from KUNM is often a dubious prospect and the Journal leaves me... wanting.
But the KUNM thing really bugs me. It's probably a lot harder to change an entire newspaper's philosophical stance and upgrade their writing quality than it is for a public radio station to tweak their programming schedule a little. So in the vein of WBUR and WUNC, great public radio stations that served my last two addresses, I offer the following simple suggestions:
- Respect my need for morning news! This is big, because being disappointed with KUNM in the mornings SUCKS, since I'm usually really wanting to hear headlines and almost always haven't had coffee yet. And sure, the call-in shows that seem to be on every other morning are sometimes interesting (like when callers bitch out Marty or Richardson), but the fact is they are not news, and I need news first thing in the morning!
- If not all news, at least five minutes of headlines. If KUNM insists on keeping programming like the morning call-in shows instead of broadcasting Morning Edition, then why can't they do what other public stations do when programming is coming on: start it five minutes after the hour and fill those first five minutes with NPR feeds of the day's top headlines? It just makes sense. It would appease me a little to at least hear something in the way of news before long-winded discussions like this morning's on youth involvement or the really long-winded broadcasts of speeches from random conferences that really piss me off when I'm hoping to get some news.
- Why not an all-news format? I know a lot of people love KUNM's music programming, and sure, why not keep some of it, but I think of news when I think of public radio, so that's what I expect. WUNC went to an all-news format a couple of years ago and it's been a huge success - there are so many good shows to syndicate (like Fresh Air and The Connection) and doing this would give KUNM time to adjust their programming schedule so that things like the speech broadcasts and the call-in shows could happen in mid-morning, or mid-afternoon, or the evening: just not when all I need are some headlines before my coffee.
- Something positive: Democracy Now! is awesome. The fact that KUNM broadcasts Amy Goodman's brilliance is great. And vital. And just great. So there, I said something positive.
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