Educating the Public: US Public Radio’s Roots in Education and Research

This chapter analyzes the unique origins and structure of American public radio as neither a national broadcaster along European lines nor a commercial enterprise, but a highly localized system originally based on educational goals defined by the needs of public educators and carried out initially by state universities and educational institutions. It examines the limits and pressures that were exerted over educational radio as advocates and practitioners struggled to define a vision alternative to commercial broadcasting. Through an idiosyncratic combination of the efforts of government agencies, grass-roots activism, classroom educators, universities, philanthropic organizations, and private industry, US public radio emerged in the 1960s as a nonprofit industry that sought to downplay its overtly educational function to produce informative and socially conscious programming outside the pressures of the commercial marketplace.