Why do you hate Bach, Mozart and Rachmaninoff?
The cool kids are listening to Liszt and Debussy these days. Bach is so 18th century. Mozart is always in style. Rachmaninoff? Pfft. But I do really like Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
Uh, what?
Our local NPR station dropped classical music about the same time I became a member.
Man, I was going to jump in on your side but with you dissing classical music like that, I dunno.
But on the topic, I used to listen to public radio a lot, though not much anymore since deciding my drive time sanity is worth the price for XM Radio. NPR's value depends on your taste I guess. From what I've read, it is mostly sort of listener supported, though about 1/6th of their operating revenue is tax payer funded. That to me is a misuse of government so I'd like to see that ended. If they lost 1/6 of their revenue they'd still exist, and it would be truly listener supported then.
If you listen to the political opinion shows, yes, they are generally from a left of center to far left point of view. I think I can support the statement that NPR stands for National Propaganda Radio, HOWEVER, that is what just about all media has become across the spectrum. Fox News is every bit as propaganda for the right as NPR is for the left. But in our need for confirmation bias we can't bear hearing things that don't confirm our belief. So we perpetuate propaganda by supporting our biased sources. I have liberal family-in-law who can't stand listening to Fox News. Won't believe anything if the source is Breitbart. But they think NPR/PBS/MSNBC/ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/Daily-Koz/WAPO,HuffPo are middle of the road and trustworthy.
I think instead of allowing our attraction to confirmation bias dictate from where we get information, it's better to listen to many sources and use reason to parse reality from the diverse sources. If we were as fearful and distrusting of confirmation bias as we are opposing opinions I think we'd have a much better informed public than we have. On both sides. And then the media could not dupe us like they do.
That's about all I have to say on NPR.