For 30 Years, 'All Things Considered' has savored the news, walking listeners around the world.
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| All Things Consered hosts Robert Siegel, Noah Adams and Linda Wertheimer. (source: NPR) |
By Steve Carney, Special to the Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — A radio show that broadcasts silence from an Alaskan glacier and has a host watching sparks in a darkened closet might not be expected to hold listeners 30 seconds, much less 30 years. But this month, "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio enters its fourth decade with the same recipe of news and novelty.
The show debuted May 3, 1971, with a report from a student war protest here as police teargassed the group. Since then, "All Things Considered" has dispatched correspondents from the peak of Mt. Everest to the killing fields of Rwanda to a yoga class for preschoolers in Massachusetts, along the way building a passionate audience now numbering nearly 10 million listeners a week.
"They expect the news, but they expect more than that," executive producer Ellen Weiss said of the fans. "They expect somehow to connect on a very personal basis with what they're hearing."
