From: Tavis SmileySent: Monday, November 29, 2004 1:30 PMTo: [Multiple recipients at public radio stations]Subject: The Tavis Smiley Show29 November 2004Hello Friend!I trust that this letter finds you well and enjoying the spirit and splendor of the holiday season.Let me apologize for the somewhat impersonal nature of this letter, but the sheer volume of addressees makes it a bit impossible to send each of you a personal greeting that would arrive in a timely manner. It is with deep regret that I write to inform you of my decision to not renew my contract with NPR, which expires shortly. My last scheduled day on air is anticipated to be Thursday, December 16, 2004, when my previously scheduled holiday hiatus is set to commence.I wanted to contact you personally and immediately to express my gratitude to you and your staff for giving me the chance to be heard by your listeners. I know the ridicule many of you had to endure when you decided to take this journey with me by adding my program to your line-up. I will always be appreciative of your confidence and trust.With your support, I have come to care even more for public radio and its social, cultural and intellectual potential. Yet, after all that we've accomplished towards our goal of seeking a broader, more diverse and younger audience for public radio, NPR's own research has confirmed that NPR has simply failed to meaningfully reach out to a broad spectrum of Americans who would benefit from public radio, but simply don't know it exists or what it offers. In the most multicultural, multiethnic and multiracial America ever --- I believe that NPR can and must do better in the future. I sincerely hope you understand my position. I thank you, again, for all of your support.With your help, this has been a remarkable journey, and I hope that in some small way I did my part to help make America better by the simple act of introducing Americans to each other. Keep the faith,Tavis Smiley
For a better perspective, check this NPR post dated 5 months ago...
Media MattersJune 18, 2003
Tavis Smiley: New Voices and New Approaches Outside - and Inside - NPR By Jeffrey A. Dvorkin Ombudsman National Public Radio What is it about Tavis Smiley? He's the new guy on the NPR block and his show is attracting both the fastest growing audiences in public radio... and some of the most intense and visceral reactions -- both pro and con. NPR listeners are intensely loyal. They have established habits about what works and doesn't work for them. That's because radio listening is intensely personal. A voice becomes part of one's interior aural landscape. It takes repeated exposure to a new voice in order for that person to be accepted by a listener... often requiring months for a new voice and a new program to be an accepted companion. Tavis Smiley on NPR?That's why The Tavis Smiley Show has become an extraordinary exception to that radio rule. While many new programs on NPR can take years to find acceptance and build an audience, The Tavis Smiley Show has attracted a large audience on 60 public radio stations around the country. Many of these stations are in large urban areas. For those who haven't heard the program, it is designed to appeal to an African-American audience. It calls itself a "program of news and opinion" and is heard five days a week at various times of day, depending on the station. The program is a newsmagazine in the public radio format -- features, discussions, commentaries, etc. But the resemblance to other public radio programs ends there. It is news but with a fair bit of Tavis Smiley's opinion and personality added in. It is not what some might consider the usual public radio fare. A recent program had this range of stories: a discussion about race and jury selection; a motivational speaker who also works for CNBC; how the Latino community is responding to the attempts to recall California Gov. Gray Davis; the lack of cosmetics and skin products for non-whites; an interview with one of the lawyers of the Tulia 12 in Texas and an interview with jazz singer Lizz Wright. I thought it was an impressive lineup for a show on an ordinary news day. The tone of the program is both serious and lively. The pace is quick and provocative. The content is substantive and relevant. The perspective is overwhelmingly African American. And it is precisely that perspective that has some listeners expressing their astonishment that this would be a program on NPR. 'Am I Included?'From A. Scherf in Huntington Beach, Calif.: It is wrong to accentuate racial differences with shows like TS. We need media to accentuate what we have in common, not the differences in our physical characteristics. TS presents no useful discussion of anything productive for society as a whole; only for his own preferred race. After a recent interview with an expert on the sexual fantasies of black women, Natalie Douglas from Indianapolis wrote: But NPR has no business broadcasting sex author interviews such as the Thursday "author interview" by Tavis. This was really, really bad judgment on the part of the show staff not to mention really, really bad judgment on the part of Tavis. This is the kind of programming that gives the conservatives powerful ammunition when it comes to canceling or reducing federal funding.Not all the e-mails are negative. Keronce Sims writes: I listen to WDET in Detroit, and I give you guys props on adding Tavis Smiley's show in your programming. I like it and it adds something to the mix... Congrats! You guys made a good choice with Tavis. Recently a listener in South Carolina called me to complain about the program. He asked that I not use his name. We spoke openly of the feelings some people have who are not African American -- when they hear a public radio program that they think is designed to exclude them. At the end of the conversation, my caller agreed to keep listening and to let me know if he still felt excluded after listening for a few more weeks. The program is something new -- even radically new -- for many public radio listeners. The program's producers shouldn't underestimate that there is a "squirm factor" for many listeners. The Tavis Smiley Show may be targeted to African Americans, but it doesn't exclude anyone who is interested in the lives and the perceptions of black people. For me, it's an opportunity to listen in to a conversation I might not have in the normal course of my daily life. As Tavis Smiley says, "you can get hip, just by listening." And for me, that's what NPR and public radio should do all the time. The Fastest Growing Show on NPRThe success of the program tends to confirm that: It began on 16 stations in Jan. of 2002, with fewer than 300,000 listeners per week. Most of those stations are in the South, licensed to historically black colleges. At that time, the audiences (according to Arbitron) were predominantly black -- about 85 percent. Tavis Smiley is now heard on 60 stations in nine of the top 10 markets in the country with an estimated audience (to be confirmed by Arbitron soon) of around 1 million listeners per week. In that larger audience, 30 percent of listeners are African American. That's a larger percentage of African Americans than listen to other NPR programs. And of course it means that 70 percent of the audience is some combination of white and Hispanic. The program is attracting a lot of listeners... many of them new to public radio. The Tavis Smiley Show does something else not often done by other NPR programs -- it regularly goes after -- and gets -- newsmakers on the program. On June 13th, Tavis Smiley interviewed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. He asked her some pointed questions about weapons of mass destruction and the political motivations for the war in Iraq. Although Dr. Rice stayed "on message" and did not reveal anything startling, it was important to hear her defense of the administration. In my opinion, NPR News needs to find ways in which those interviews done by Tavis Smiley can be part of NPR newscasts, or excerpted on the main newsmagazines, such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered. NPR News does this on a regular basis every Sunday when clips from the Sunday television talk shows are aired on NPR News. If NPR can run excerpts from Face The Nation and Meet The Press, it can also serve the NPR listeners and toot its own horn when Tavis Smiley talks with similarly newsworthy figures. The Tavis Smiley Show originates from NPR's new West Coast production center in Los Angeles. Is Tavis Smiley's lack of proximity to NPR in Washington, D.C., a factor? Surely a "Tavis" producer in L.A. could call NPR in Washington to let the news department know that they have something newsworthy. Two solitudes, indeed. Listeners may contact me at 202-513-3246 or at ombudsman@npr.org. Jeffrey Dvorkin NPR Ombudsman
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