[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and now we're remote learning 10:00 AM to noon history lesson. 50 years ago this month, May 1971, was the first ever broadcast of All Things Considered. Did you know that? 50 years ago last month, was when NPR became a thing on the radio for the first time. We haven't mentioned those anniversaries yet on this show, I know some other shows on the station have, so let's do a little NPR history for the fun of it. In fact, let's begin with a little pre-history.

It was 60 years ago this month, May of 1961, that the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at the time Newton Minow gave a widely publicized speech to a group of radio and television station owners that came to be known as the Vast Wasteland Speech. Have you ever heard of this? Here's the one-minute heart of it. Remember, he's talking to station owners themselves.

Newton Minow: I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on air, and stay there for a day without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a writing book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

Brian Lehrer: A vast wasteland. That from May 1961, 60 years ago, FCC Chairman Newton Minow. As a backlash to that, here's a little TV trivia, when the sitcom Gilligan's Island was created, they named the boat that they were shipwrecked in the SS Minow. That was to poke fun at Newton Minow calling TV sitcoms of a vast wasteland. Of course, one of the reasons for the vast wasteland was that owners of radio and TV stations were not mostly trying to broadcast in the public interest, they were just trying to make a buck. A few years later, Congress paved the way for the non-commercial networks, NPR and PBS, bypassing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, and President Lyndon Johnson signed it. Here's a few seconds of that. The version we could find has music behind it.

President Lyndon Johnson: Today, we rededicate the part of the airwaves which belong to all the people, and we dedicate them for the enlightenment of all the people.

Brian Lehrer: I don't think that orchestra was actually playing in the background as he signed the bill, but that's what we've got. President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. NPR, as we know it, signed on four years later. Joining me now is Lisa Napoli, author of a new book called Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR. Hi Lisa, great to have you for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Lisa Napoli: Thank you so much for having me. That's a great setup. I love it.

Brian Lehrer: I was looking at the text of Minow's Vast Wasteland Speech yesterday to see if he mentioned radio, and he made one reference to radio, and it was only to say he was sorry to ignore it in the speech, but most of the controversies at the time were about television, so he was focusing on that. How did Congress come to create public radio along with public television?

Lisa Napoli: In a word, accidentally. Basically, radio would not have made its way into what became the Public Broadcasting Act if a bunch of people who worked at little educational stations around the country, non-commercial stations were called that then, hadn't rallied and said, "Hey, you got to include radio." Radio had been eclipsed by television's gigantic force, and the nation of couch potatoes that we'd become. Thankfully, these advocates said, "You've got to include radio." Literally, radio was scotch taped into the Public Broadcasting Act.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a little bit of the very first All Things Considered broadcast, May 3rd, 1971. This is just 30 seconds from a spot called Decline in Business Finds Barbers Shaving Women's Legs by Wayne Olsen.

Wayne Olsen: In this age of unshorn locks with shagginess transformed into a lifestyle of demonstrators and demonstrations, we've been looking into the plight of barbers around the country. They have the waiting shears and at the different methods they've found of coping but not necessarily clipping with the decline in business with today's popularity of long hairstyles in men.

Brian Lehrer: Hard-hitting Lisa.

Lisa Napoli: [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Hard-hitting.

Lisa Napoli: I'm glad you played that clip, because basically what they were trying to do out of the gate, even though they really didn't know exactly what they were going to do with All Things Considered at that point, was include voices from around the country. Barbers are people too, and in the middle of the country, that was a place that the media didn't typically cover. That was groundbreaking, as was his tone. He wasn't doing that announcer voice that most people were used to with broadcasting at that point, that voice of the mountaintop kind of thing.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and that brings us to the founding mothers whose stories you tell in your book. They are Susan Stamberg and Linda Wertheimer, who eventually became anchors of All Things Considered. Linda was also reporter, and Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts, who became reporters. Cokie, a high-profile political reporter and analyst, and Nina to this day at the Supreme Court. A big part of your story is how they had to break all kinds of glass ceilings, even to get a shot. Is there a unifying reason why the door was more open to women journalists at NPR at the time than in most other places?

Lisa Napoli: They all say that it was money. They were willing to work for less, for nothing, next to nothing, but I think it was also just alchemy, Brian. It was just a startup moment in time, nobody really knew what NPR was supposed to be or what it would become, and these women just had the good fortune and they also had the talent ultimately, to back it up, to walk in the door and run with the fact that the place really was a mess, and that it wasn't clear what it should look or sound like. The fact that they'd all had doors shut for them because they were women before. NPR, it didn't have the chance to discriminate. They needed everybody who would walk in and work as hard as they possibly could, and be willing to play around with the format.

Brian Lehrer: Not that there isn't sexism today in the workplace, there's plenty, but you tell a story in the book of Nina Totenberg in the 1960's pre-NPR trying to do a story about college women using birth control, and her male editor's response which today would probably get him fired. Would you tell a little bit of that to our listeners?

Lisa Napoli: [laughs] "Nina, are you a virgin? Have you ever had an internal examination?" Nina said, "I am a virgin, and no, I haven't." The editor said, "Well, I can't let you do this story." It's just so hard to imagine that women, particularly a woman like Nina Totenberg, even if she was very young at the time, would be met with that kind of response by an editor, but that's how it was back then.

Brian Lehrer: There are many moments like that, that you describe that all four women had to face. Another one is Senator James Allen of Alabama calling Linda Wertheimer as a congressional correspondent, little lady.

Lisa Napoli: Little lady. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: And how did she reply?

Lisa Napoli: She responded, "Well, big senator." [laughs] They could dish it out, but that was the moray of the time sadly, not to apologize or explain it, but those were benign examples of what women went through. Of course, there was all sorts of even more untoward physical behavior that went on in every profession. The idea that women were banned from being on the air because they weren't authoritative enough, and marginalized in the way that these four women were, is pretty remarkable, especially given where they wound up.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to play listeners 50 seconds of Susan Stamberg's first broadcast hosting All Things Considered. This is March 1st, 1972, and this is what we call in radio the billboard. You hear this at the beginning of the hour on All Things Considered, a morning edition or some other shows, where the host tells you for about a minute what's going to come up on the program that hour. This is Susan Stamberg and co-host, Art Cohen. Susan is substituting for host Mike Waters who was on his way to cover a primary. It was primary election season in 1972. He was going to Florida, so this is the opening billboard of the first show that Susan Stamberg hosted as a substitute host on All Things Considered, March 1st, 1972. For those of you who know today's All Things Considered theme music, it wasn't always this.

[music]

Susan Stamberg: From National Public Radio in Washington, I'm Susan Stamberg with All Things Considered.

[music]

Art Cohen: This is Art Cohen in Manchester, New Hampshire. On tonight's All Things Considered, I'll be reporting on the significance of next Tuesday's primary.

Susan Stamberg: Primaries in New Hampshire will be followed by primaries in Florida, where one of the Democratic candidates has been winning much popular support.

Speaker 5: He speaks for the little people. He speaks for us. He always has. He always will. Wallace is the only one who speaks the truth as far as I'm concerned.

Susan Stamberg: Tonight on All Things Considered, supporters of George Wallace discuss the reasons for their support.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: That was bracing that they were going to be talking seriously to supporters of George Wallace running as a segregationist. Also, that music, it was 1972 but it sounds like video game music from today.

Lisa Napoli: [laughs] Well, but really the most shocking thing of all was that a woman was hosting a nightly national news program. The pushback that she got. Susan Stamberg is a New York City girl, grew up on 96th Street, went to music and arts, got a scholarship after going to Queens College for a while, went to Barnard on scholarship. The fact that a woman was hosting a newscast was so remarkable that educational stations turned public stations around the country. The few that were part of the network at that time, there were under 100 I think it was, pushed back, "Who is this woman with a New York accent speaking about the news? That's radical. That's crazy."

That really of all those things was the most remarkable. Of course, she was so good at it that the producer of the show basically said, "She's the voice we were looking for. She's the sound we want I've been looking for the show." Of course, she stuck around and still works at NPR as the founding mother of the founding mothers.

Brian Lehrer: We're almost out of time. Lisa, did you in the book compare early NPR to an unlicensed Montessori school?

Lisa Napoli: No, I didn't. It was a management consultant who came in at the near-collapse of NPR in the early 80s under the hands of Frank Mankiewicz, who was its third president and had these grandiose ideas that nearly bankrupted the place. That's the crux of this book. It's not just a celebration of these four women in a look at their histories, but it's also about this very precarious moment in time which is why it's great that we're talking about this during pledge week. Because it was a precarious moment in time in that very beginning of NPR and the management consultants couldn't believe what they found when they were sifting through the books of the network.

Brian Lehrer: Lisa Napoli, who by the way folks also wrote a really good book about the launch of CNN, so different. What a different story than the launch of NPR. Now she's the author of the book, Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR. Lisa, great to talk to you.

Lisa Napoli: Thank you so much for having me. Good luck.

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.