Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Unique Morning Show on NPR Thrives as Others Slip



J.EmilionFlores photo for NYTimes
NPR’s “Morning Edition” has one of the most peculiar formats of any morning show on radio or television: it’s split between the East Coast, with the co-host Steve Inskeep in Washington, and the West, with Ms. Montagne. The director cues Ms. Montagne through a videoconferencing system, and the co-hosts routinely add what they call “splits” to their scripts, so that they share the responsibility for introductions and interviews. “We are functionally sitting next to one another,” Ms. Montagne said, yet by staying on separate coasts, they are reflecting the audience’s geographic diversity.

The format is working for “Morning Edition,” the highest-rated news program on radio, which is holding onto its audience at a time when declines are the norm across the fractionalized media landscape. The program is adapting to the Web by letting listeners download episodes to music players and by taking photographers and videographers along on reporting trips.

“We want to replicate ‘Morning Edition’ in all the other spheres that our audience is likely to reach us,” said Madhulika Sikka, the program’s executive producer, who was promoted last week to oversee all of the NPR news division’s reporters and editors and help set its news agenda. The public radio organization will start a search for a replacement producer soon.

All this might surprise people who still associate “Morning Edition” with Bob Edwards, who hosted the program since its inception in 1979 and was pushed out by NPR in 2004, months shy of his 25th anniversary. The decision was widely criticized, and some claimed that the program would fail without him. But it has actually thrived, thanks in part to the co-host arrangement, which split up some of the work and freed Ms. Montagne and Mr. Inskeep to occasionally take the show on the road.

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