
Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio - pesenti
https://current.org/2017/08/love-it-or-hate-it-truckers-say-they-cant-stop-listening-to-public-radio/
======
ourmandave
_“And I said, ‘Well, so why don’t you stop listening?’” Murphy continued. “And
he says, ‘I can’t, because it’s the only station that will go on mile after
mile and I can pick it up again.’”_

Just drove from IA to MI and it's true. Between 90.3 and 92.7 FM there's
always an NPR station waiting.

Or I could just download their app and listen anywhere / anytime.

[http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-
one/](http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/)

~~~
kazinator
It occurs to me that a FM radio should be capable of automatically doing this
hand-off, thanks to this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Data_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Data_System)

If a station signal goes weak, the radio could scan the FM stations for
another station which is known to broadcast the same signal (according to,
say, an internal cross-matching database, or some other means).

~~~
AndrewKemendo
It certainly can, however OTA radio is very localized - to the city usually,
by tradition - so it wouldn't make much sense to build such a network.

NPR is probably the only radio network that could do a common band cross
country, but even then, NPR just syndicates itself to other stations so it's
not really in their interest to do so.

~~~
freehunter
This is quickly changing. The Brew is the same everywhere, Nash FM is the same
everywhere, and I'm pretty sure you can get Sixx Sense or Free Beer and Hot
Wings in basically every market. Clear Channel/I Heart Radio is pushing hard
to make every radio station the same across the country.

~~~
kbenson
> I'm pretty sure you can get Sixx Sense or Free Beer and Hot Wings in
> basically every market

I had never heard of any of those, so I decided to look them up.

Sixx Sense, nearest station is in Sacramento. about 70 miles as the crow
flies, and over some small mountains (large hills, really). Next closest
station is ~110 miles in Modesto. They look to actually hit the central
corridor fairly well, just not the coast.

Free Beer and Hot Wings (ha, I first through this was two different stations),
doesn't even have a station carrying them in CA.

------
lsdafjklsd
my dad is a fox news republican, a few years back we were driving for 5 hours
and were listening to npr. he was basically waiting for the overt liberal
bias, but instead we listened to a bunch of fascinating stories and
interesting shows about a variety of topics. I read somewhere that npr isn't
liberally biased, but their fan base is mostly liberal, because liberals tend
to prefer news that has no bias. It's also not loud and obnoxious, which they
like.

~~~
colordrops
> I read somewhere that npr isn't liberally biased, but their fan base is
> mostly liberal, because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias.

You don't need to "read somewhere" about whether a news source is biased. You
just need to read news across a spectrum of sources. And you will realize that
NPR definitely has a liberal bias if you have enough breadth in your sources.
I'm a far-left liberal but I'm not afraid to admit when a liberal news source
is biased. Everyone loves to point out the obvious bias at Fox News and
Breitbart and Drudge but then delude themselves that there are no liberally
biased news sources.

~~~
kristopolous
If liberal is defined as "not alt-right" then sure.

But if you expect to find prominent socialists or leftist political activists
or their ideas on NPR, you'll be waiting a long time. Chomsky, nader, said,
hedges, parenti ... none of them get mentioned or make an appearance. Who
teamed up with Richard Wolff's radio show? NPR? Nope, it was iHeartMedia. You
can find these people on Al Jazeera, the CBC, RussiaToday, the BBC...
Essentially the public media of every country BUT the USA.

On NPR, you'll get Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, the Heritage foundation, the
Hoover institute, and other prominent vested interests and orthodox free
market fundamentalism thinktanks.

The reality is the Alex Jones ilk are so out there that if you want to call
anything that's not like that as liberal, you have a giant space to work with.
That pejorative label corrals and prods everyone else closer to the Hannity
and Michael Savages and what we get is a dedicated right and a not-so-
committed, more gentle right.

When actual "not on the right" politicians rise, they get ignored, dismissed,
or ridiculed by all the mainstream media. Whether it's Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie
Sanders or Mélenchon. NPR was dismissive of Corbyn, who picked up the largest
legislative gain in over 70 years, even on election day as trouble for Labor
and mismanaging a failing divided party with old broken ideas...

It's important to remember what a non-skewed left would actually look like
since it effectively doesn't exist in the mainstream us media.

~~~
Moru
As a swede I have a hard time understanding what liberal and conservative is.
Here we talk about Left and Right politics. I get the impression USA only has
Right and Right+ in swedish terms.

Left would be social security, right would be free market / privatise
everything.

I have to admit that I wasn't paying much attention to politics in my
schoolyears but I did try to read some political comic book (comedy central?)
from USA...

~~~
kristopolous
in practice, liberal is the city-life and conservative is the country-life.

This really helps in gerrymandering districts and subdividing the population
into two easily manageable groups since they don't talk with one another a
lot.

I think the definitions are intentionally designed to keep the public fighting
itself with one group always trying to take away the rights of the other so in
practice it's slow impoverishment of the commons and a forfeiture of political
capital.

Essentially it's a huge scam (or a "scheme" if you think that sounds too
conspiratorial). It's not a new scam, and not the first time it's been done -
not even the first time in this country. The history of and tactics of union
busting in the 1800s and 1900s essentially worked on the same divide-and-
conquer techniques of pitting groups of workers against each other.

Going back further, the Indian wars worked in a similar manner ... feigning
favoritism or some entitlement to one tribe to create a tribal conflict and
prevent the indigenous from being a unified front.

This is the same game ... we call it "democrats" and "republicans" in this
version.

~~~
pault
The most effective Roman emperors were very good at playing frontier tribes
against each other, and the plebeian, equestrian, and senatorial classes
against each other. This is not a new tactic. :)

------
patrickg_zill
This is a PR piece. It has no correlative relationship to reality.

Source: knowing truckers, having them in my family, extended family, friends
of family etc. for 40 years. They all have XM/Sirius at this point. None
listen to NPR.

Why were no statistics about truckers and NPR quoted? Because they wouldn't
have supported the thrust of the article.

~~~
eighthnate
Not only that. The publication was founded by the same people who founded PBS
and NPR.

"whose members were leaders in founding the PBS and National Public Radio."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_(newspaper)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_\(newspaper\))

This article is like an "article" by foxnews saying everyone is listening to
foxnews talk radio.

It's pretty much advertisement.

And all the comments here is rather praising NPR is rather suspicious as well.

~~~
koheripbal
PBS (and thus NPR) federal funding might be on the chopping block with the
next federal budget, so it's not surprising to see pieces trying to get out
ahead of that.

I grew up on NRP, and I LOVE This American Life, Garrison Keillor, and the
reruns of Click and Clack, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that they have a
pretty left leaning agenda.

The Brian Lehrer show used the anniversary of Pearl Harbor to discuss how
Trump might create Muslim concentration camps in America.

------
codingdave
> it’s the only station that will go on mile after mile and I can pick it up
> again.

I can vouch for that -- I just went on a road trip to visit all the state
parks in Utah, and believe me, once you get out of Salt Lake, your choices are
NPR, country music, or static. I listened to a lot of NPR.

~~~
MBCook
I distinctly remember being on the long drive leaving my grandparents in Texas
to go back north when Bob Hope died.

For very large chunks of that drive there was nothing we could pick up at all
except for NPR.

And because it had just happened at the top and bottom and half of every hour
they were talking about it and playing a little clips and the shows that were
on may have been about him.

Nothing but hearing the same small amount of programming about his death for
hours and hours and hours.

I normally love NPR but obviously it became too much. However I do get why
truckers like satellite radio. To be able to listen to a station without it
fading out, or to be able to CHOOSE another station no matter where you are…

~~~
iaabtpbtpnn
Regarding satellite radio, it's not quite "no matter where". My car has Sirius
XM and I like it, but when I'm driving through the forests of the Santa Cruz
mountains, it cuts out so frequently that I just turn it off. But as long as
the view to the sky is clear, it works great.

------
sparcpile
Both XM and Sirius before they merged had a big following among truckers. Even
after the merger, they still have shows and channels tailored to them. The big
reason was that could listen to the same channels across the country.

------
ilamont
Surprised that more truckers haven't discovered podcasts.

~~~
Finnucane
I recall that when audiobooks started to become a big thing, truckers, for
kinda obvious reasons, were a good chunk of the audience for them.

~~~
randycupertino
I'm a Bay Area car commuter who is ADDICTED to audiobooks. I also started
listening to them when doing chores and walking the dog!

------
fourmii
A couple of years ago, I took my family on a road trip starting from Phoenix
and ended up in SF. We drove north from Phoenix and hit a few of the amazing
parks including Yellowstone and then west to Portland and then south to SF.
And public radio was part of the fun for us. Aside from our beloved NPR, I
loved how the only stations we could get gave us an insight on who probably
lived in the areas we were driving through. I never really liked country
music, but on that trip, I grew to actually appreciate it. Not to mention the
number of new songs and artists we were able to discover. Some of those songs
we now associate with the various places along the way.

------
0xbear
Used to listen to NPR all the time, but now they just shit on Trump 24x7. It
was fun in the beginning, but got old after a few weeks. I switched to
audible, where I remain to this day, and will remain for the foreseeable
future.

~~~
mavhc
To be fair, Trump does do stupid things 24x7

~~~
mahyarm
Doesn't mean you want to talk about him or listen about him 24x7, there are
better things to do.

------
cool-RR
Today I learned: If you start a sentence with "Love it or hate it," it
instills a temporary feeling in the reader that he cares about the thing you
were saying.

------
ComodoHacker
Compare that to State radio and television in late USSR. It wasn't strictly
obligatory. But there wasn't anything else, so you end up watching and
listening to it anyway.

Imagine NPR as a giant propaganda machine, powerful and tuned up, but
currently working in idle mode (or not?)

------
mrmondo
Not strictly related to public radio specifically but still interesting on the
topic of broadcast radio (and rather disappointing to say the least) - here in
Australia we have a big problem with the (lack of) advancement of broadcast
quality, while we have DAB+ broadcasts - the stream audio quality is so bad
due to the low bit rate - you’re actually better off switching back to FM.

The average Australian DAB+ radio stream is... 24-48Kbps! Yes it’s generally
AAC+ which is about 30% more efficient than MP3 but it’s not even close to FM
sound quality.

~~~
kerbalspacepro
When I looked at moving to Australia, the one consistent thread among the "how
to move" media was "Australia's homegrown media sucks and everything else is
expensive".

------
nwatson
I listen to a number of NPR podcasts and perhaps I'm misremembering but it
seems there's an uptick in the past few years of interviewing and discussing
the lives of just "regular folks", people who work blue-collar jobs, people
with conservative religious backgrounds, etc., ... and not in a disparaging
way.

But ... Fresh Air with Terry Gross still largely wanders the fields of the
cultural left with nary a nod to alternative viewpoints.

~~~
gozur88
Ugh. I can't stand Terry Gross. They should call it "Terry Gross Talks About
Her Feelings While Interesting Guests Listen And Wonder What They're Doing
There."

~~~
jacobolus
Terry Gross is the best interviewer in English with a regular show in any
medium, and has been for decades. I’d even even be willing to proclaim her
best of all time, if you only count people with long-running interview shows.
(There are some documentary filmmakers who are great interviewers, etc., but
only publish occasional niche work.)

She is invariably respectful, even of complete asshats. She prepares well for
every interview, listens to her guests, asks good starting questions and
insightful follow-up questions, and gets people to open up about topics they
don’t usually discuss. She knows she has a wide audience and makes sure guests
explain things in an accessible way. She doesn’t throw softballs at people,
but she also isn’t aggressively confrontational. It’s clear that her goal is
always to understand where someone is coming from give them space to explain
their point of view in their own words, rather than trying to win an argument,
score cheap points, or kiss ass.

As a result, she usually has very good guests, from a wide variety of
backgrounds, talking about a wide variety of topics.

Pick anyone going on a book (or whatever) interview circuit and listen to /
watch 4 or 5 of their interviews back to back. The Fresh Air interview turns
out best almost every time. Usually it’s not even close. Other interviewers
try to tell the guest’s story for them, or are trying to push the guest into
one identity bucket or another, or have a point they want to make and won’t
listen, or haven’t prepared and have no idea about the guest’s field or
background.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'd put Bob Edwards (former Morning Edition anchor, now on SirriusXM) in there
as well.

Paul Kennedy, CBC, _Ideas_ isn't strictly an interview programme, but it's
exceedingly good long-form, and intelligent.

I'm surprised I'm not coming up with any British / BBC interviewers, though
there can be good programming there as well, at times.

Brooke Gladstone and Bob Edwards of _On the Media_ also make my list. Their
subject range from friendly to collegial (other people in the media industry),
to hostile. It's possible to tell the dynamic, but the demeanor is _always_
professional.

I am quite the fan of Gross, and she's grown on me over the years.

------
crispyambulance
Not surprising.

I suspect the reason is that there is a lack of appealing alternatives to NPR
on the "conservative" side.

If anyone has ever listened to conservative radio like Rush Limbaugh, you'll
know that his slow-wit attempts at humor/satire are cringe-worthy failures
unless the listener happens to be a septuagenarian with dementia. The other
conservative options are preachers and conspiracy wack-jobs... is there
anything else?

~~~
throw158965
There are sophisticated conservatives, but you definitely need to go to a
different medium than radio.

Why do so many liberals listen to public radio?

------
Dowwie
My family has listened to NPR and WNYC for years. I don't recommend anyone
rely on it as an exclusive source for information as it _does_ serve special
political interests. Two examples that come to mind are the presidential
primaries coverage (it was pro-HRC) and more recently coverage on the Saudi
Arabia vs Qatar debacle (conveniently omitting Saudi involvement in global
terrorism).

------
rdl
I think truckers are one of the groups of people that really love Sirius/XM
satellite radio, too -- uniform programming and coverage across the US, and if
you are in your truck all the time, the monthly cost is trivial. Sirius even
has special stations dedicated to truckers, as well as most of the ads added
by the network being trucker-focused.

(If it were me, I'd go for audiobooks, though.)

------
perpetualcrayon

      "it’s the only station that will go on mile after mile and I can pick it up again"
    

Captive audience. In my experience, when I've lived in very rural areas (and a
lot of large metro areas), the only TV stations I could ever get over antenna
were PBS, but more often than that I could only get FOX.

------
prevailrob
Being from the UK, I take it NPR is the equivalent of Radio 4? (Albeit on a
bigger scale, naturally)

~~~
chrisan
You might have to define what Radio 4 is for us in the US.

Here's a blurb about what NPR is: [http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178640915/npr-
stations-and-publ...](http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178640915/npr-stations-and-
public-media)

It's basically hundreds of local radio stations that mix local news/flavor
with partner stations that have very popular programs

~~~
UncleSlacky
"BBC Radio 4 is a radio station owned and operated by the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes
including news, drama, comedy, science and history."

More here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_4)

------
forapurpose
> Aside from the content, according to Murphy, drivers like NPR for the
> continuity. They can keep listening to the same programs from state to
> state.

Why don't truckers use satellite radio? They could listen to the same programs
anywhere in the (U.S.? World?).

~~~
techsupporter
I have several truckers in my family. A couple of them do subscribe to
SiriusXM but the rest don't because it's expensive relative to what they get
out of it.

One cousin bought a lifetime XM subscription back in...2009? I think...and
paid the $99 to upgrade it to "Lifetime Premium" or some such. He's had the
same radio, a SiriusXM Edge, for the past 7 years and, according to him, "it's
the best payback I've gotten except for that divorce lawyer." (He had a messy
divorce...)

------
SoulMan
Wonder if AM is covered everywhere throughout the country . Here in India
radio in trucks was there for a very short period of time till side loaded
cassettes I, CDnd side loaded MP3 took over. I think we never had great "talk"
content.Even in 2017 I tune to BBC1 , world service and VOA in my car via
internet but I get mocked a lot. Guess no one else does it. People here are
used to side loaded MP3 music and not so intellectual Bollywood FM radio.

~~~
fencepost
There are some "clear channel" (now "Class A") AM stations that have huge
listening areas particularly at night. These are distinct from Clear Channel
the company. These stations mostly broadcast at 50kw in the USA and have a
bunch of added protections such as distant AM stations on the same frequency
having to reduce their broadcast power at night.

More info: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear-
channel_station](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear-channel_station)

There's really not much about it in the article, but my impression growing up
in Chicago (which has at least 5, currently 2 sports, 2 talk and 1 news) was
that part of their role was also to be emergency information destinations.

------
baursak
As much as I like NPR, my politics have slowly drifted left over the years,
and it's amazing how differently the same shows and hosts now sound to me
through a more critical filter. To see what I mean, I recommend browsing
through [https://twitter.com/npr_watch](https://twitter.com/npr_watch) (not my
account, and I'm not affiliated in any way).

~~~
colordrops
I would consider myself a progressive, and yet I find NPR to be a propaganda
mouthpiece for the left. It seems that every other story is pushing some
identity politics agenda with a puff piece for some liberal politician or a
slam against some conservative politician, or a heart to heart interview with
a transgender immigrant homeless playwright. I agree with the sentiment and
the politics, but I disagree with the method, claiming lack of bias while
clearly not being neutral. In fact during the last presidential campaign they
went so far as to take up a Fox News style slogan, "No Slant, No Rant". They
also decided to remove the comments section permanently when even the majority
of liberal commenters were slamming Hillary, NPR's darling candidate.

~~~
r00fus
Sounds like NPR is corporatist and part of the military industrial complex.
They were pushing war in the lead up to Iraq War 2.

Note: Hillary was for the war, too. She's as hawkish as McCain.

~~~
colordrops
Whenever there's a big event that requires public support, they definitely do
their part to push a particular choice. I also remember clearly NPR beating
the war drum for war with Iraq. BBC too.

~~~
r00fus
This is why I support stations like KPFA [1], even though I don't support all
their viewpoints. Helps me keep my corporatist-bias radar in check.

[1] [https://kpfa.org](https://kpfa.org)

~~~
colordrops
Yeah, KPFK is my go to in L.A.

------
eighthnate
It's always entertaining when stories of NPR or Foxnews or anything political
comes up.

You always see comments like "my conservative father/mother/brother/friend/etc
listened to NPR to find liberal bias and found none".

Or "my liberal father/mother/brother/friend/etc listened to foxnews and
couldn't find conservative bias".

If your conservative family member or friend couldn't find anything liberal on
NPR or your liberal friend couldn't find anything conservative on foxnews,
then they must be hard of hearing and they should have their ears check by a
doctor.

People are overcompensating too much or they are embarrassed by what they
listen to. It's okay to admit that NPR is liberal. It's okay to admit that
foxnews is conservative. It's why they exist. If NPR isn't liberal then it
isn't doing its job and not serving their fanbase. If foxnews isn't
conservative, then it isn't doing its job and not serving their fanbase.

It is just so obvious what people are trying to do and it is annoying.

Edit: Just a PSA... current was founded by the people who founded NPR or PBS.
So I'd take what they have to say, especially about NPR or PBS, with a grain
of salt.

"whose members were leaders in founding the PBS and National Public Radio."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_(newspaper)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_\(newspaper\))

------
bluetwo
Wife used to make fun of me. Now she is adicted.

------
hprotagonist
Looking for a "bubble-free" media venue? Not a bad place to start.

~~~
tomcam
Your politics clearly lean left. I emphatically disagree with your assessment.
Not surprisingly, I am center right/libertarian.

~~~
freehunter
Is NPR really liberal, or do conservatives just say that because it doesn't
have an explicitly conservative spin? It seems like whenever I hear people
talking about "the liberal media", the list of names seems to cover basically
any journalism outfit that isn't explicitly and overtly conservative. It feels
like anything left of Fox News is commonly labeled as liberal media which
seems a little off to me.

~~~
colordrops
I'm a Bernie supporting far left liberal, and NPR has a clear neo-liberal
(i.e. central-conservative globalist) agenda.

~~~
leadingthenet
> Bernie supporting far left liberal

Those words don't mean what you think they do.

~~~
colordrops
What do they mean, enlighten me

------
throwaway2016a
I love NPR. My wife makes fun of me because sometimes I sit in the car with
the battery / radio on after I park just to hear a story finish.

New Hampshire Public radio has a lot of local news and features too, which I
can't hear anywhere else. I'm sure other markets are the same.

You can get it on Alexa too because most of the shows are also podcasts which
is also great.

I've also heard a lot from my conservative friends that NPR is too liberal but
to be honest, I haven't seen that at all. The more entertainment like programs
like "Wait Wait" do sometimes have liberal jokes but I think anyone who can
take a joke would laugh at them even if they are conservative.[1]

[1] I'm a Libertarian and thus social liberal and economically conservative
which puts me in the great position of being able to laugh at jokes at the
expense of either of the two major parties.

~~~
taurath
In general it's about story selection. 80% of the "stories of the day" are
related to minority rights, empathy stories and a bunch of others. Rural white
people are rarely mentioned except in the context of an environmental
disaster. I like the stories myself but I definitely feel like the average
conservative doesn't feel like they're included in any of the coverage.

~~~
matt4077
Is it possible that you would consider any story that isn't about a white
heterosexual man one of those? I'm really wondering, because I could see
myself keeping a running tally like this once I thought I noticed a
trend–kinda like noticing how they put pumpkin into everything in the fall.

But of course, 80% is actually pretty close to the number of Americans that
are not white heterosexual men. We may just have gotten used to an
overrepresentation in movies, politics, and our social life.

~~~
taurath
I don't think there's much of an overrepresentation - I haven't heard a human
interest piece on a rural/conservative person on there that didn't deal with
the opioid crisis in the last 6 months - and I listen every day. I look back
to where I grew up which was a much more conservative rural area and
frequently think about how I'd never feel like any of the stories on NPR would
apply to me.

------
KKKKkkkk1
Yeah, NPR is great. I'm a daily listener. But you have to wonder. What if
there were no NPR, might it be that we'd have high quality commercial talk
radio instead? And would it cost as much to produce as NPR does?

~~~
irishasaurus
Switch to AM radio and you'll have your answer.

------
lhuser123
There are many areas where instead, you only find stations of the conservative
media. IMO the article doesn't tell the whole story.

~~~
cabaalis
Are these two groups above all reproach?

~~~
lhuser123
I apologize. Just so happens that while reading the article, it reminded so
many times I experienced the opposite, and had to listen to some, not very
friendly radio hosts.

------
chiefalchemist
Sure. But truckers are gonna be the first to go once autonomous vehicles are
mainstream.

