Ok, I know, I go on about this a lot. And maybe I shouldn’t. But the whole thing is d*mned annoying, and I’m still fired up about it.

Last Monday, carefully timed to the middle of the day to avoid having to spend any more time at the office and dealing with no more of the unwashed masses than absolutely necessary, NPR’s senior vice president for programming Jay Kernis “explained” during a live webchat why he decided to can Bob Edwards. I have to tell you, there’s nothing whatsoever new in there…it was the same old, “hey, I know what’s good for you, so quit whining already” claptrap we’ve been hearing from him, albeit a tad cleaned up by the PR lackies at NPR, but if you really want to see for yourself, there’s a transcript available. (Watch it, though…NPR has also redesigned their website, forcing the visitor to turn on javascript unnecessarily to get much of anywhere. I won’t even go into their heavy use of CSS, which makes browser settings like font size and style useless…but lord, that’s a rant for another day.)

I only want to touch on a few of his comments, prefering not to get into a point-by-point rebuttal. When asked why the chat was held at all if there was no hope of changing the outcome, Mr. Kernis said, “Because we want to explain the process…and because it’s important to hear from you.” I wish he had been honest here, and simply said, “because this was the only way we could think of to try to spin it and get you all to shut up already.”

He said, “the news demands of the broadcast require more than one host to keep the program timely every morning.” Really? I dunno…see, I live on the east coast, but listen to Morning Edition on various west-coast stations; this allows me to actually hear the stories I want, while getting my five-year-old ready for school, dealing with the morning email, checking the server, dealing with business items, etc. (Nine o’clock is way too early for the show to switch to classical music, which is why I haven’t bothered listening to my local NPR affiliate in years.) Last August, when the show premiered the “Barbie and Ken” local-station happy-talk routine, there wasn’t any change between the three runs (I come in around 6:00am) of Morning Edition that I could hear, even through my daily cries of, “please, Bob, come back early to save me from this crap!” I wish I had recorded a broadcast or two to validate that “Barbie and Ken” were still doing the show live once, then re-running the tape the rest of the runs only fixing bloops. I do know that many times I was looking forward to a story re-run while Bob is hosting, only to have him do some reporter-interview on a breaking story…isn’t that kinda what you’re talking about?

He said, “it means getting more reporters and hosts into the field.” You know, I don’t get this at all. Frankly, I don’t want my host in the field. I want my host to…well…host. I think it’s stupid when Dan Rather goes to Iraq, too - the anchor is to be the…everyone, say it with me…ANCHOR of the show. Let the reporters who know the story tell the story, while the anchor holds everything together. I know, I know, that’s naieve; I mean, I’m not a highly-paid executive so what do I know about what I want or expect?

He said, “I do know that when Susan Stamberg or Steve or Renee or Alex Chadwick have filled in for Bob over the years, listeners have responded very favorably.” I can’t quite understand how a couple of letters of gratitude for Morning Edition sounding like a local television nightly news broadcast can compare with the 27,000 letters complaining about this wrong-headed decision, other than they agree with Mr. Kernis and so must be of higher quality. (I have never written in, but I cannot stand Ms. Stamberg; her voice is to me like fingernails on a chalkboard, and I have refered to her elsewhere as the “Rhea Feikin” of NPR. That joke will fall flat on anyone outside of the Washington D.C. area, so the NPR execs are clearly flummoxed. It means someone who has stayed on far too long, outwearing one’s welcome - contrast and compare to Bob Edwards, who clearly has not, at least not to the listeners of Morning Edition.)

Finally (yeah, I’m quitting now), Mr. Kernis said, “We never race to be first, we race to be right.” “Right” is subjective…27,000 people think you’re dead wrong. Consider the hubris it takes to face that and say, “I’m right, no question, because I’m smarter than you, and know more about what you want than you do, you pitiful listeners.”

I started searching the Net, trying to find a place of nexis where like-minded people could form a plan of action and impliment it. Unfortunately, the closest I could come was www.savebobedwards.com - I say, “unfortunately,” because even here there seems to be confusion; a suggestion that the decision can be un-made, and that Bob will return to the anchor chair. Otherwise, it isn’t much different than this blog; a place for disgruntled listeners to rail against the witless decision, while not forming any plan to deal with the situation. There is an on-line “petition,” but I always get a laugh out of these things. Does anyone really believe anyone takes these things seriously? I mean, is that really the best we can do?

Here’s the way it is, kids. Bob is toast. No really; there’s going to be no change in this decision, no matter how many letters/emails/petitions NPR gets. Indeed, the more mail NPR has to deal with, the more dug-in the position of these executives will get. I can’t be the only one who knows enough about “corporate america” (we have to quit thinking about NPR as our “friend,” and accept that it’s just like any other corporation, with a “CYA” attitude prevailing) to know this, but I do seem to be the only one who is willling to say it.

One more time: There is nothing anyone can do about the imbecilic decision to remove Bob Edwards as anchor of Morning Edition.

And before you go on, please read that last paragraph again…I don’t want to take the chance that you haven’t grasped the realities.

Ok, now that we’re all on the same page, that doesn’t mean that we can’t do something to prevent future nonsensical decisions within the organization. And this is, I believe, where our focus needs to be. But first, a brief side-trip.

In both comments of his own, and PR-lacky-written nonsense attributed to him, Bob Edwards does not consider the withholding of support to be a viable response to this. I truly understand his position, but I disagree with the basis of this position. According to one local station’s comments during their fundraiser, the NPR member station fees will be increasing over $150,000 for the next fiscal year. That is, the fee the stations pay to NPR will be increasing another $150k. So even Jay Kernis’ comments that withholding support will, “only penalize your local station for a decision made by NPR management,” is completely wrong, since it is our contributions to the local stations which pay Mr. Kernis’ salary through those member fees. This is a point he seems to completely avoid, or at least ignore.

And it’s also a point we are ignoring, and we need to stop it immediately. The only power the listeners have with NPR management, and more importantly the NPR board, is our money…the money we give to NPR through our local stations, since no one other than Joan Kroc (and other dead people’s organizations) gives to NPR directly. And it is that power we must wield.

My position on this hasn’t changed; on the 25th of March, I said in this space:

…Ticked enough that I am contacting the two local NPR stations I support (neither of which, BTW, are my geographically-local station, since we disagree on programming decisions) and telling them that this year, they wonÕt be receiving my annual support. And telling them exactly why.

I urge you to do the same. Certainly this decision has been made and will not be resinded, but we can let them know that we actually pay attention to bone-headed decisions made by Wile-E-Coyoteesque executives like Ken Stern, and can react unplesently when they do something this moronically stupid.

…and on 27 March I repeated the sentiment, as I did again on 29 March, and on the first of April in about as far from an April Fools joke as I can get, I said:

This is no longer just about Bob Edwards. This is about NPR senior management being so out-of-touch with the very people who make their positions possible that theyÕd do something this bone-headed now.

If you havenÕt already, contact your local station, tell them you are withholding your support for them this year, and donÕt forget to tell them why. Go so far as to suggest you will cheerfully raise your donation next year so long as the NPR Board unceremoniously fires Executive Vice President Ken Stern and Senior Vice President for Programming Jay Kernis to make certain future decisions will be taken not for personal reasons but to support the listeners who make NPR possible. Maybe this way the next people in these positions will remember whom they serve, instead of acting on their own personal likes and dislikes.

I see no reason to change that now, even if it is a surprisingly consistant position for someone who routinely changes his mind six times before lunch. Until and unless the local stations actually feel a pinch, they’ll continue to support these continued changes which are eroding the trust and faith of the only people who should matter…the listeners. Us.

So I once again urge you to contact your local station (heck, contact as many stations as possible, for all that), copying NPR senior management and the NPR ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, and tell them unless they want to continue suffering a downward sprial of trust, they need to replace the people responsible for this senseless decision and the huge PR nightmare which followed.

If they don’t believe these executives are a considerable liability, they need to think about this; they (Stern and Kernis) were so out-of-touch with the listeners they allege to serve, that they pulled this simple-minded stunt days before the national spring pledge-drive, only because it was a convenient time because Bob was starting a book tour/member station fundraiser activities! They were then shocked at the reaction they got…but if they had even a tiny clue about what the listeners they pretend to serve really need, they wouldn’t have been surprised at all, they would have expected it! Now they run around desperately looking for some way to quiet us down, while only annoying us with their (or more accurately, Mr. Kernis’) single-minded elitism. Messrs. Stern and Kernis are single-handedly responsible for the largest black-eye public radio has ever suffered, yet Kernis, at least, is not only unapologetic but narcissistically superior while telling us all how stupid and incapable of knowing our own minds we all are.

Anyone that far out-of-touch with the expectations of those who pay the bills really needs to find a new line of work (preferably something dealing with asking people if they want to super-size), and so we need to call upon the board to remove these people from their responsibilities immediately - and the only power in our hands is our contributions to NPR, through our local stations.

Absolutely, we need to complain, and work through our personal feelings; we are mourning the loss of a family member, after all. But we also need to act - otherwise, Mr. Kernis is correct in his assesment that we are all sheep who need to be shepherded by him. If we don’t change things now, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves when the hilarious precognition on Plastic.com written by Hound comes true:

“This is Morning Edition and I’m, like, Britney!…Today’s top stories: Ohmygawd, like, Israel totally assassinated the head of Hezbollah! They, like, used an attack helicopter and, like five missiles!”