Pine no more, Braude and Eagan fans

The Boston Herald's website has already posted the story, and as usual, the comments from the readers are largely devoid of facts. Over and over, they say "WGBH, no advertisers, no listeners" or the "listenership will go from 11 to 7" etc. I have a password to All Access Media's website that displays Arbitron ratings including the cumulative audience number. For Boston, the station draws about 300,00 listeners, plus a sizable listenership in Providence. All Access doesn't dispay cumes for Manchester/Nashua/ Concord, NH or Worcester, but WGBH-FM has listeners there too. It has a "grandfathered" 98,000-watt transmitting facility on Great Blue Hill (hence the call-letters) which is four-times the power that a full-power commercial station could be authorized at that height (650 feet above-average-terrain; a commercial outlet would be limited to 25,000 watts)and using the inverse-square rule of FM propagation, that amounts to twice the signal strength if it weren't "grandfathered". And several low-information Herald readers sometimes call broadcast public radio stations NPR, but NPR is a network and DOESN'T OWN ANY STATIONS. In addition, NPR isn't the ONLY public radio network; there's American Public Radio", which distributes "Marketplace" and "Prairie Home Companion", among others. The derogatory appellation "government radio" is a tricky proposition. Federal and State funding of public broadcasting is a bit difficult to pin down, but is the source of far less than half of such funding for radio and TV, with the possible exception of facilities in rural areas.

Audiences deserve more perspectives, not repeats of the same ones already out there. And public radio should be the ones to bring us those voices.

In other words, you want public radio to support your particular prejudices. For public radio in Boston, Braude and Eagan are 'more perspectives,' which is the last thing you really want.