The Children's hour...
Sep. 26th, 2023 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_sn0wygooseEach morning during my 30 minute commute, I listen to both the local NPR and Fox News affiliates alternating between stations equally. After 20 years of listen to both broadcasts, I've notice something disturbing: The NPR news is dumbing down.
I first started listening, the level of perceived education for Fox was AP High School level communications; while the NPR communicated required Bachelor degree and 20 years in the workforce. One was comfortable if you took advanced AP or graduated with a Bachelor's. If not, you were forced to improve your comprehension to digest their stories. And I enjoyed being challenged as this made me a better consumer of news.
Now when I listen, it hurts my head after 10 minutes.
It appears Fox stepped down to High School Senior communication. That does not surprise me. The shift was was not radically or sudden, it was gradual without losing the message. Credit to their management, now they have both young and mature listeners.
What does surprise me is appeared dumbing of NPR, turning the morning news and analysis into the Children's hour. For the past 2 years, the presenters have been 21-fresh-faced, vocal-fry, communicating at an Undergrad Junior-year casual level. It's as if the management turned to a Harvard MBA research project and SAG-AFTRA to find a new audience (NOTE, NPR presenters are members of SAG-AFTRA).
This may encourage new progressive listeners, but to me, it appears to alienate mature, educated and seasoned listeners. In the end, as the old adage states, "gray in the hair, green in the bank"; something a MBA project cannot predict accurately. (NOTE, I hold an MBA; marketing is a combination of squishy math and quasi-psychology).
This year to NPR's credit, the adults in the room have taken back the microphone. But in doing so, have compromised with the children. Gone are the lucid and educated stories replaced by soft-ball styled emotional vignettes to tug at newly-minted-Bachelors-with-zero-experience heart strings.
Now my listening habits in the morning tend to linger on Fox longer for news, then later disseminate.
I first started listening, the level of perceived education for Fox was AP High School level communications; while the NPR communicated required Bachelor degree and 20 years in the workforce. One was comfortable if you took advanced AP or graduated with a Bachelor's. If not, you were forced to improve your comprehension to digest their stories. And I enjoyed being challenged as this made me a better consumer of news.
Now when I listen, it hurts my head after 10 minutes.
It appears Fox stepped down to High School Senior communication. That does not surprise me. The shift was was not radically or sudden, it was gradual without losing the message. Credit to their management, now they have both young and mature listeners.
What does surprise me is appeared dumbing of NPR, turning the morning news and analysis into the Children's hour. For the past 2 years, the presenters have been 21-fresh-faced, vocal-fry, communicating at an Undergrad Junior-year casual level. It's as if the management turned to a Harvard MBA research project and SAG-AFTRA to find a new audience (NOTE, NPR presenters are members of SAG-AFTRA).
This may encourage new progressive listeners, but to me, it appears to alienate mature, educated and seasoned listeners. In the end, as the old adage states, "gray in the hair, green in the bank"; something a MBA project cannot predict accurately. (NOTE, I hold an MBA; marketing is a combination of squishy math and quasi-psychology).
This year to NPR's credit, the adults in the room have taken back the microphone. But in doing so, have compromised with the children. Gone are the lucid and educated stories replaced by soft-ball styled emotional vignettes to tug at newly-minted-Bachelors-with-zero-experience heart strings.
Now my listening habits in the morning tend to linger on Fox longer for news, then later disseminate.
