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Saturday, July 19, 2008
7/20: XM and former NPR man Bob Edwards visits Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ABOVE: Bob Edwards at the Latitudes Lounge & Bistro in the Omni Hotel downtown Saturday with producer Andy Danyo before his Atlanta Press Club appearance. CREDIT: Rodney Ho/Staff
I had the honor Saturday to speak briefly to the man with the most mellifluous voice in radio, Bob Edwards, in town as keynote speaker for the Atlanta Press Club.
We met at the Omni Hotel before the event, where he drained two Jim Beams, looking blissful and relaxed.
From 1979 until 2004, Edwards was the morning host of National Public Radio’s signature show “Morning Edition,” which is heard by 13 million-plus listeners a week. He was shoved aside amidst much controversy - and he sounds quite happy today that his two NPR “nemesis” Kenneth Stern and Jay Kernis were eventually ousted.
He quickly got a gig at XM Satellite Radio with his own daily show, heard at 8 a.m. live daily out of XM’s Washington D.C. studios. While he is only heard by a small fraction of listeners there, he gets to do what he wants and he has gotten a raft of awards on top of what he already collected at NPR. Most recently, he received an Edward R. Murrow Award for a piece about homeless children. He also recently visited Kentucky for a week to do a piece about coal mining by stripping mountain tops.
And he’s back on public radio now thanks to NPR rival Public Radio International, which distributes a weekend “best of “show now to 105 radio stations, including WABE-FM at noon Sundays.
“Yes, I’m happy,” he said. “It turned out to be a very good thing. We’re doing our best work now.”
He thought NPR had calcified: “It’s very micromanaged. It got very big and deadly serious.” Nonetheless, he thinks public radio in general is in good shape. “They’ve never sounded better to me,” he said, noting he is a contributor to the local NPR-affiliated station in Washington D.C. “There’s no alternative to it.”
Given that he’s back on WABE-FM and other stations, the average listener thinks he’s back with NPR per se, which amuses him. He is on stations that take NPR programming such as WABE but is distributed by PRI.
But he is understandably worried about the future of XM, which was hot for awhile but its appeal has cooled as people realized satellite radio was a niche product that would never quite draw huge audiences the way, say, DVDs or basic cable or even iPods are.
“I’m concerned,” he said, about the XM/Sirius merger and what that may mean for him down the road. “If we need to merge to survive, I’m all for it.” If it fails, “I’ll be as bummed as anybody.” His contract is up in 2010.
He feels he’s valuable to XM because the show is in-house produced and earns money for the operation through its syndicated show. “We also earn awards in areas XM normally doesn’t get attention,” he said.
Ironically, Edwards actually catches “Morning Edition” on his way to work each morning and enjoys it. On the way home, he listens to music. He especially likes XM’s “alt country” station, which features “naughty people” such as Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle. He’s also a big Allman Brothers fan.
While it’s unlikely you’ll hear him chasing Brad Pitt or Miley Cyrus, he has no problem chasing down authors such as Gore Vidal and Philip Roth (though he never nabbed Kurt Vonnegut before he passed.). And he gets to interview folks for far longer than he did when he was at NPR.
He also is working on a story about an Atlanta company while in town called Homestar Runner, which is a popular animated online site. And he’s also working on a piece on the 100th anniversary of the death of Joel Chandler Harris, the creator of the Uncle Remus tales.
I recall him smoking a few years back after a book signing. Does he still smoke? Is he worried that would change the smokiness of his voice? “I’m afraid to stop to find out!” he said.
I did a quick followup call to him Sunday afternoon and he said he enjoyed the Atlanta Press Club Eyeshade Awards Saturday night at the Commerce Club, where he noted some good investigative work (including work done by this publication) was awarded. His topic included how blogging (ahem) does not replace investigative reporting.
And Rolling Stones keyboardist and local resident Chuck Leavell stopped by to say hey. Edwards said he and Leavell have gotten to know each other over the years. He asked Chuck about his trees, rather than Mick and Keith. “Everyone else probably does,” he said. Here’s an interview he did with Chuck back in 2002.
I’m listening to Edwards’ show on WABE-FM right now and funny —- he’s interviewing our local boy Ben Jones, formerly Cooter on “Dukes of Hazzard.”
