Fascinating article in the Washington Post on Tavis Smiley & public radio.
Tavis, of course, hosted an NPR talk show, designed to attract African-American listeners, for a few years. Then he left, because he felt unsupported at NPR. These days, he has a new, weekly show on Public Radio International. That’s the folks who distribute This American Life, among other programs.
Tavis puts the conflict this way:
Smiley says race, however, was at the core of the breakup. “I’m loud, I laugh loud, I was younger than what they’re used to, and certainly blacker,” he says. “Everything about my personal aesthetic was antithetical to public radio.”
An NPR rep says:
“Mr. Smiley is a smart man,” NPR spokesman Andi Sporkin says, “so one would assume that he’d done his homework before joining NPR and understood that . . . NPR and public radio overall do speak to a very diverse audience and don’t have TV-level budgets for marketing or advertising of any individual show. Given his concerns, we’re frankly surprised he’s remained in public broadcasting.”
A bigwig at DC’s WAMU (who air Tavis’ NPR replacement, “News & Notes” at 2AM):
Mathes, who was not at WAMU when Smiley’s old show was around, says Smiley has misread public radio’s motivations. “If I could talk to Tavis one on one, I’d tell him: ‘Don’t feel dissed. It’s not a sign of lack of respect for your show. It’s a lack of marketing resources and a basic reluctance to add new programming. We are so listener gift-dependent that you just don’t want to tamper with the apple cart.’ “
Frankly, I didn’t like Smiley’s show that much, and I’m not sure if I like News & Notes, either. This from a guy who was basically an African-American Studies major in college (American Studies, really, but there’s no ethnic studies departments at UCSC). News & Notes is kind of dull (although they do get points for having TSOYA pal Nick Adams on), and I felt that while Tavis’ interviews were sometimes laudably lively, they too often felt kind of superficial — going for liveliness over depth. They felt like TV interviews.
And I’m similarly ambivalent about the ghetto-ization of NPR News. I’m fine with an African-American issues show, just like I’m fine with, say, Justice Talking, which is about the law. Both are issues that appeal strongly to a smaller audience, and affect a very broad audience.
African-Americans are not a huge percentage of the US population, and highly educated African-Americans are a smaller group still, one that’s tough to serve through commercial broadcasting (see: BET, where, needless to say, they are NOT well served). Having a show for specifically African-American issues, with an intelligent, educated perspective is great.
But I worry that NPR is creating a show like that to skirt the real question: where are these voices on All Things Considered? On Morning Edition? Why is it that Tavis can quite legitimately claim to be the only national voice of color on public radio?
This is a function of the cultural (and to some extent ethnic) homogoneity of public radio. Which is what the guy from WAMU should really be copping to. And when Tavis calls WAMU “elitist,” I can see where he’s coming from, and when I listened to that (excellent, btw) station, I felt a bit of that, too.
A great example of real diversity in public radio is Ray Suarez — when he hosted Talk of the Nation, he wasn’t doing it as an extension of “Latino USA,” but his expertise in urban and immigration issues added to his qualifications. Now, almost everyone on NPR does a fantastic job (the current TOTN host Neil Conan included), but where’s that kind of diversity? I, personally, don’t always hear it.