Do we really need two public radio stations in Boston?
Trying to get in tune with the political times, GBH, Boston's other National Public Radio-affiliated station, launched a
'
in 2023
.
The news show was intended to help combat polarization and give voice to listeners in red America. On a recent Thursday night, I drove home listening to an episode, broadcast from Birmingham, Ala., about the Christian right. It lived up to its name and featured a perfectly civil conversation between an author and a minister.
With advertising revenue dropping at WBUR and expenses taking a toll at GBH,
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Boston is one of only four cities that has the luxury of two NPR stations; the others are Atlanta, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. So the Boston public stations will suffer twice the pain if government backing is lost, even though only a
of their funding comes from taxpayers.
The city does lean liberal, and WBUR and GBH have cultivated their own loyal audiences over the years. Lunch time wouldn't be the same without 'Jim and Margery,' Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, who cohost and quibble during their daily call-in 'Boston Public Radio' show on GBH, which often gives airtime to the state's top political figures. The live news production 'Here and Now' is consistently WBUR's top-rated show and can be heard in 90 percent of the country. WBUR reaches approximately 387,000 listeners each week, and GBH has a weekly audience of 299,000, according to
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Still, a hard question lingers in the Boston air: Do we really need two NPR affiliates in Boston? Rather than cutting both operations to the bone and seeing a decline in the quality of their programs, might it be wiser to merge the two stations? I can already hear the howls of rage across the city coming from our highly educated, affluent population — NPR's target audience.
The question has been asked previously and rejected. GBH's Goldberg, who moved to Boston after a successful run at National Geographic,
said last week that speculation about a merger was premature.
NPR
And given the loss of so many newspapers over the past decade and so much of
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Trump would consider seeing an NPR station disappear as a victory. That's one big reason not to merge GBH and WBUR.
In February 2019 I gave one of the first public talks in CitySpace, to promote my latest book, 'Merchants of Truth.' As senior WBUR executives proudly showed me around, I did wonder whether a public radio station could afford this crystal palace. Maybe we will soon know the answer.
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