SHOW NOTES AND LINKS FOR ”PRESENTING THE PAST” EP. 6:
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO WITH BILL SIEMERING

LINK TO MAIN PAGE WITH AUDIO

Episode Description:

The sixth episode of “Presenting the Past” features Bill Siemering, a radio innovator and advocate, who was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in October 2021. As a founding member of the NPR Board of Directors, Siemering wrote NPR's original mission and goals, and as NPR’s first director of programming, led the development of All Things Considered. Siemering developed Fresh Air with Terry Gross at WHYY in Philadelphia, managed WBFO in Buffalo, NY, and KCCM in Moorhead, MN, was the executive producer of the documentary series Sound Print, worked with the Open Society Foundation, focusing on Eastern Europe, Africa and Mongolia, and founded Developing Radio Partners to enrich the programming of local stations in Africa. In this discussion, he reflects on the influences that helped shape his ideas and approaches to public radio programming throughout his career.

Highlighted in this program are clips from Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), including the inaugural FM broadcast in 1947, the Peabody Award winning series Afield with Ranger Mac, and the write-in radio program Dear Sirs. Be sure to also listen to “Strasburg, North Dakota” (1977) from Minnesota Public Radio. Co-produced by Siemering, it highlights his interest in incorporating soundscapes and compelling storytelling into radio programming.

This discussion is led by Neil Verma, assistant professor of sound studies in Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, and a member of the AAPB Scholar Advisory Committee.

Credits:
Hosted by Neil Verma
Recorded and edited by Christine Becker
Produced by Ryn Marchese
Post-production and theme music by Todd Thompson

Content mentioned in this episode:

-        Aca-Media, a podcast offering an academic perspective on media, from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies
-        National Public Radio Purposes (1970)
-        Wisconsin Public Radio Collection
-        Inaugural FM Program (WHA, 1947)
-        Wisconsin School of the Air; Afield with Ranger Mac (WHA, ca. 1942)
-        Dear Sirs (WHA, 1961)
-        Minnesota Public Radio Collection
-        “Strasburg, North Dakota” (MPR, 1977)

transcript: download or read below

Presenting the Past Episode 6:
National Public Radio with Bill Siemering
Fri, Feb 14, 2025

SPEAKERS
Neil Verma, Bill Siemering, Christine Becker

[Theme Music]

Christine Becker  00:16
Welcome back to Presenting the Past, a podcast series exploring the digitized collections of public radio and television in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, otherwise known as the AAPB. I'm Christine Becker, Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame, and co-host of the Aca-Media podcast from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. The AAPB website features over 66,000 public radio and television items streaming online, and this podcast brings you conversations with the researchers, scholars, educators, and media producers who have used that archival material, and they share their insights about what they have found. So today we have another incredible guest for you, and to help ensure that we're fully able to mine the depths of his knowledge, we brought an expert on board to guest host. And so that expert is Neil Verma. Let me introduce Neil, and then Neil will introduce our special guest. Neil is an assistant professor of Sound Studies at Northwestern University. He's written and edited a number of books on radio history and sound history, including Theater of the Mind, about the history of radio drama and Anatomy of Sound, about radio writer Norman Corwin. He's currently the editor of the Radio Doc Review and serves on the scholarly advisory committee of the AAPB, as well as on the board of SCMS. Thanks for joining me and helping out, Neil.

Neil Verma  01:31
Oh, I'm delighted to be here. Thanks so much, Chris.

Christine Becker  01:33
So why don't you then introduce our special guest?

Neil Verma  01:35
Sure. Yeah, happy to. So it gives me enormous pleasure to welcome Bill Siemering. Bill Siemering began his career in radio, working his way through the University of Wisconsin at the university station and their statewide FM network, many decades ago. As a member of the founding board of directors of National Public Radio, he was asked to write the original statement of purpose for NPR, and he also was in charge of implementing that statement as the first Director of Programming of that institution and with the staff developed All Things Considered. While he was the manager of WHYY in Philadelphia, with his staff, he developed a show many of you will know, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and it went from a local to a national program, where it is today. And he was also manager of public radio stations, WBFO, SUNY-Buffalo and KCCM in Morehead, Minnesota, and was the executive producer of the documentary series Sound Print. He began working overseas in 1993 as a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and since then, he's worked for the Open Society Foundation for about 10 years, and that took him to Eastern Europe, Southern Africa, and Mongolia. In 2004, he started developing radio partners to enrich the programming of community radio stations in Africa. Bill Siemering is presently a senior fellow at the Wyncote Foundation in Philadelphia. Please join me in welcoming Bill Siemering.

Bill Siemering  02:55
Nice to be here with you, Neil.

Neil Verma  02:57
Thanks so much for being with us. So a lot of different topics I want to get to, but I think, you know, to start out, I think the way many of our listeners will know of your work, will really focus on your work drafting the first mission statement for National Public Radio, which was established in 1967 by the Public Broadcasting Act, as many of our listeners will know, and began in 1971, so this year we're celebrating the first half-century of programming at NPR. Quite a landmark. So I thought it would be interesting to start with kind of the context of that statement. I mean, I think a lot of people listening right now have lived their whole lives with NPR always in the background, and so it's hard to think of a time before that was the case. So I thought maybe you could start, and you could tell us a little bit about what the statement and what NPR was responding to in the late '60s. If you could give us some context about what radio sounded like at that time and its place in the politics of the moment.

Bill Siemering  03:47
Well, with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with it becoming not just educational radio, but public radio, to me, that meant inclusion. It meant everybody. And so when I was thinking about writing this statement, I thought a lot about how to begin. (chuckles) It's not serving commercial interest, it's not serving institutional interest. So I really came up to the conclusion that it was serving the individual, and because it was in the '60s, I felt a lot of emphasis on diversity and the importance of celebrating diversity. So some have said that they feel this is even more relevant now than what I wrote it 52 years ago. So anyway, I'll read this, and then we could talk some more about it.

Neil Verma  04:33
Okay, sounds great.

Bill Siemering  04:34
So I said, (reading) “National Public Radio will serve the individual. It will promote personal growth. It will regard individual differences with respect and joy rather than derision and hate. It will celebrate the human experience as infinitely varied, rather than vacuous and banal. It will encourage a sense of active, constructive participation rather than apathetic helplessness. National Public Radio through live interconnection and other distribution systems will be the primary national non-commercial program service. Public radio stations will be a source for programming input as well as program dissemination. The potentials of live interconnection will be exploited, the art and enjoyment of the sound medium will be advanced in its cultural mode. National Public Radio will preserve and transmit the cultural past, will encourage the broadcast of the work of contemporary artists and provide listeners with an oral esthetic experience which enriches and gives meaning to the human experience in its journalistic mode. National Public Radio will actively explore, investigate and interpret issues of national and international import. The programs will enable the individual to better understand himself, his government, his institutions and natural and social environment so he can intelligently participate in affecting the process of change. The total service should be trustworthy, enhance intellectual development, expand knowledge, deepen oral esthetic enjoyment, increase the pleasure of living in a pluralistic society, and result in a service to listeners which makes them more responsive, informed human beings and intelligent, responsible citizens of their communities and the world.” So this was aspirational as well as practical, I thought. And the idea that people need to be informed is fundamental for us to survive as a democracy. We have to have intelligent citizens. I might say that now, one of the dangers of our country's democracy is so much public ignorance in our society. Now some people might argue that, well, a journalistic enterprise shouldn't be that kind of thing, but I was believing that this is more than just a passive transmitter of the news of the day, that it has a larger mission than that.

Neil Verma  07:06
You know, the kind of individual you describe is someone who's very much participating, understanding, responding, constructing, like it's a much more active idea of a listener than maybe many people at the time would have thought of when it comes to like the audience out there for large national programming. So I think it's kind of striking that it's not just the individual that you're trying to reach, but the certain kind of individual, to encourage one that might be more beneficial for representative democracy.

Bill Siemering  07:36
Yes, right.

Neil Verma  07:38
I think another thing that when I read this to students, one of the things they find surprising, or maybe they wouldn't have expected, is the premium you place on feeling and the language of affect that you can see throughout this document: joy, esthetics, enrichment, spirit. It leads me to want to ask you, what did you want NPR to feel like?

Bill Siemering  07:59
I wanted it to feel alive. Radio is a very intimate medium, so I wanted the listeners to feel they had a friend, an advocate for them, someone that was helping them participate in democracy. I know that sounds kind of lofty, but going back to the importance of accurate information for democracy, that was really important, because the actions of the individual is the only way that things happen.

Neil Verma  08:26
Maybe we can step a little bit backwards from this moment in the late '60s, early '70s -- we'll come back to it a bit later -- and talk a little bit more about your own personal history and growing up in Wisconsin, a state with deep history in educational broadcasting. Some of the first regular broadcasts in terms of point-to-mass distribution, as many of our listeners will know, came from the University of Wisconsin, and I read that you literally grew up in the shadow of it, of a transmitted tower in Lake Forest, Wisconsin, and you listened to ... (brief crosstalk)  Yeah, and you've written that you listened to WHA during lunch breaks as a teenager working baling hay in the fields, which is quite an image. We're going to hear what some of this sounded like. So I think maybe it's a good time to play a little bit of tape of what early wha sounded like, and those kinds of programs you might have heard back in those early days.

Christine Becker  09:17
Yeah, and this is specifically WHA-FM. So the forerunner of WHA-AM started in 1915, but we're going to hear an excerpt from the first day of WHA-FM. This is March 30, 1947.

Radio Clip  09:29
[Male Radio Announcer]: Look at the label carefully and greet the name: FM radio, something new under the sun and stars. FM radio, clear as a bell, faithful tone, free from static. FM! The radio, the future, here, now, today! 
[Woman's voice]: I still don't understand.
[Male Radio Announcer]: FM is a new method of radio wave propagation. The letters FM stand for frequency modulation. And in this type of broadcasting, the power of the transmitter remains constant, whereas in conventional broadcasting, the power of the transmitter varies (voice fades)...
[Woman talks over him]: What's he saying, I don't understand.
[Male Radio Announcer]: That is amplitude modulation.
[Boy]: What the guy means is they got radio fixed so you can hear it better.
[Music]
[Male Radio Announcer]: You're right, my boy, they got it fixed, and the professor can tell how they did the fixing. But for you and me, ma'am...
[Woman]: yes. What about me? What's all this to me? 
[Male Radio Announcer]: To you and to all of us, FM means a new kind of radio. Means you can sit down and tune the program in. Come sweet and true, the music comes clear. You'd think the violin were there playing in your room. It's easy on the ears. Fresh and clean, the words get through, no static cuts in to interrupt the speaker. FM radio means you're going to listen comfortably. That's good.
[Woman]: Oh, mighty good. But tell me, do I have to get a new radio set?
[Boy]: Oh, sure, lady who wants to be old-fashioned. Did you keep burning gas lights after Thomas Edison invented the electric one?
[Music]

Neil Verma  11:28
The style of this program seems a little over the top to us now, maybe, but it was also quite common in the '40s, and I'm curious about how it sounds to you now.

Bill Siemering  11:36
Okay, you know a minute or two in it, it really sounds like they were modeling it after Our Town. I don't know why they made it so hokey, in a way, but it is kind of fun. So too, in a way, kids around, you know, 11 minutes in or so, there's this wonderful interplay with HP McCarty and William Leighty.

Neil Verma  11:58
Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Bill Siemering  12:01
Yes. In Radio Hall, there's a huge mirror of the beginning of radio. And one of the characters in there is William Leighty, and he was the first program director for what became WHA, and so he really set the tone and the values for this. It's very significant. And he quotes University President Van Hise who had said, "I want the magnificent influence of the university to be felt in every home in the state." Now, that single sentence is so important because it establishes the idea of the extension service. As a land grant university, they had a commitment to extension, to reaching all the farmers.

Christine Becker  12:46
And we can actually listen to this. So here is Professor William Leighty quoting from University of Wisconsin President Charles Van Hise, followed by program director Harold McCarty.

Radio Clip  12:54
[William Leighty]: On this campus, a like sentiment was expressed by President Charles R. Van Hise, when he declared, "I shall never rest content until the beneficent influences of the University of Wisconsin is made available in every home in the state. That spirit gave inspiration and purpose to radio broadcasting from this campus and supported our efforts through the years. The event we celebrate today brings us closer to a realization of the Van Hise ideal, life-long learning and the promotion of universal enlightenment and understanding. This is indeed an important event in the happenings of our new world frontier.
[Harold McCarty]: Yes, and we're mighty glad you're here to celebrate with us today, Professor Leighty. You remember back in 1929 when I first saw you, the station was on the air only an hour and a half a day then, but it gave service to the farmers and to homemakers, and it was good service. They'd come to count on it. Moreover, there was a university radio committee devoted to the Van Hise ideal and eager to work at it.

Bill Siemering  14:11
So Leighty had been a social worker St. Louis, and he's brought up to the university to run the extension service. One day, he and his teenage sons were walking along the campus, and he saw this light, and they heard a snow noise coming from Sterling Hall, where the experimental station 9XM was located. So he went down there, and he saw what they were doing immediately. He thought, this is great for adult education. He saw the potential of that right away. And so that's how this built up. And so from the very beginning of radio, it was thought of as an educational, not a commercial enterprise, and that the government had a need or an obligation to inform its citizens. It's that simple. And so 1921, they even had, I think there were five live concerts, and one was including Pablo Casals, which is very impressive. So he wanted the professors to give lectures. And some of them were a little reluctant. They didn't know about this thing radio, so he would read their script anyway. I just find him a very interesting character in all this. And in fact that, you know, whenever the beginning of anything is, whether it was this or NPR, as I said, when we started NPR, I said, this is a blank canvas, and there will be lot of strokes of paint on this, but the very first ones are very important to set the tone and style. And so that's what I think William Leighty did for radio there

Neil Verma  15:43
Yeah, so I just can ask you, I think maybe you should talk a little bit about your own entry into radio, the first brush strokes that that you had into it, and how you came to work at WHA.

Bill Siemering  15:55
Well, growing up in Madison or outside of Madison meaning, I did go to a two-room country school, and we listened to the Wisconsin School of the Air. So from first grade on, I regarded radio as a source of information and imagination, because I learned art, music, social studies, nature studies, all from radio. So I thought, gee, every time the radio turned on, I learned something, and it's true today, and I listen to public radio every time I turn on the radio, I learn something new. So then I was active in speech and theater in high school. My speech teacher was Ruth McCarty, and I didn't know quite what I was going to do in the summer after I graduated, so she says, why don't we go down to the radio station see if they have something for you? So I did, and that's how I first started working in radio as an engineer, board operator, stuff like that. And then I was on air reading news, and then I was an actor for their dramas and stuff. So that's my beginning.

Neil Verma  17:03
We're going to hear a couple of excerpts now, a couple of different shows. One from 1942 called Ranger Mac, which was a children's educational show from the archive. I think this was a Peabody Winner, as well. So this would kind of be around the time of your youth bill. And then we're going to hear another short excerpt from Dear Sirs from the early 60s. So let's play a couple clips from that, and we can talk on the other side.

Radio Clip  17:25
[Male radio announcer]: The Wisconsin School of the Air invites you to go afield with Ranger Mac. Today, boys and girls, Ranger Mac is going to tell you what happens in the woods as spring returns. Now, here he is to guide you on another radio hike down the nature trail.
[Ranger Mac]: Hello, girls and boys, this is your day. So up and away. The winter has seemed long, and in our eagerness for spring, we look for every sign of its return. The dogwood is getting red in the marshes, the willow twigs are getting golden, and on the blackboards of our schools, we note the names of pupils who have seen robins in the warm lands to the south of us. The birds are feeling the urge within their bodies to return to the land of their birth. This is a glorious faith-inspiring time of the year when the warm kiss of the sun awakens life for another growing season. Before we have another trip afield, the sun will have crossed the equator. On March 20 at 10:14 in the morning, the sun's rays will be shining directly on the equator. That's the time of the spring equinox.

[Male radio host] We've skipped one question here in this letter from Two Rivers. Are we broadcasting Professor Petrovic? I promise we will rebroadcast these lectures by Professor Petrovic. I think it will have to be this summer, however. Because our schedule for the second semester, I'm afraid, is going to be too full to permit to permit a rebroadcast of this many lectures, but they will be rebroadcast. We won't throw them away. And let's answer this other question also about whether copies are available. We have to say, sorry. Professor Petrovic speaks extemporaneously with only notes, not a manuscript, and the cost of transcribing the taped lectures into typed form for duplication is simply beyond our broadcast budget. So we have to say, listen carefully and be alert for the repetition of the series.

Neil Verma  19:39
So one of the things that is interesting about Dear Sirs is that it's a way of relating to the audience of a program. And I know that transparency with the audience is a really important thing for you, and I wonder if you could speak a little bit about that.

Bill Siemering  19:53
HP McCarty, the director, was a husband of my speech teacher, and he and the program director, Bill Harley, would answer questions from listeners. And it was a nice way to interact with the audience that way, and I kept that in mind when I came here to Philadelphia, 43 years ago, I knew I was going to make a lot of changes to the station, and so I did, because the radio is really very simple to understand. You know, I really believed in transparency, so they didn't think I was just being arbitrary and capricious. They would know why we're doing this. So I had, I called it dialog with listeners, and for the most part, there were positive things. I mean, I would say we're taking this program off, this feminist program, because Terry Gross really covers these things we don't need. We don't need two of these, that kind of thing, and we're trying to smooth out the schedule more and things like that. It's kind of a patchwork. And I would, I would learn a lot from the people that had a question or negative thing about the station, too. And one time we had a program with a kind of a holistic doctor talking and answering questions and so on. And one of the listeners says, you know, his father is sitting outside selling supplements. (laughs) Hmm, okay, well, he wasn't on the air after that, but I wouldn't have known about that unless the listeners called in about it. But I really believe, as I say in the beginning, we like to think of our listeners as friends, and so the transparency is part of that. We're accountable to the listeners.

Neil Verma 21:31
Tell us a little bit about this show Ranger Mac.

Bill Siemering  21:35
Well, he sounds a bit, say, pompous, but he sounds a bit affected, you know, but that was just his way. And we all liked the program because he was dealing with nature, and he was really very well informed, and he would ask good questions. And as I say, the teachers in a two-room country school, they've got three grades each to teach simultaneously, so that's quite a heavy load. And therefore, the School of the Air really helped them. It was two 20-minute programs, one in the morning, one the afternoon, and they had a teacher's manual. So for art, for example, they know what materials to have out for the kids and things like that. So I'm sure it was a great relief for the teachers to have something like this coming into the classroom.

Neil Verma  22:21
Let's move on ahead in time to your time at WBFO in Buffalo. So one of the major themes of this period in your career was bringing indigenous and Black voices to radio. Can you tell us a little bit about the challenges with that, the opportunities that you felt were there? What were some broadcasts you were particularly proud of?

Bill Siemering  22:40
So I went to Buffalo from Madison, where I grew up, and, of course, went to school. So anyway, Buffalo is an eastern city. It's very diverse. So I, I was exploring it. I was interested in it all. And so there was Native Americans at Tuscarora is part of the Iroquois Confederacy near Niagara Falls. So I did a series of programs with them, and they called it Nation Within a Nation, and they were telling their story, their history and so on. Then in Buffalo itself, I was very much aware of the Black community, so I did kind of a porch-to-porch survey, walking through and talking to folks and finding how they were doing with media. And there were no people of color really on the radio, except in commercial music programs, and there were no people of color in the news or television or even newspapers. So I realized that Caucasians didn't really understand what life was like for Black people. So I did a series called To Be Negro, which is, now in the 60s, that's what you termed Black people. And they said what living in America or Buffalo was like for a Black person. Now, in just the last couple years, we're having a lot of that for people, because they realize that they didn't know much about it. So in a way, I felt this was kind of ahead of our time to be doing that. So I realized that out of that, that they needed to amplify their voices further. So I got money from CPB to have a studio in the heart of the Black community, and 27 hours a week originated from there. The importance of that was  several things: one, it did show the variety and programming that they produced. There was a jazz festival. We had a live arts festival with live jazz, and we had people bring in their art and photography into the studio poetry, and that was in our program guide that we distributed. So this is a wonderful celebration of Black culture. And I also learned, as I really was aware in working with students that you don't need a lot of experience to be on the radio. You have something to say. You can learn how to use a microphone and a tape recorder and half a day, you know. Interviewing takes a lot longer and some of those things, but basically, it's so accessible, and that's one of the beauties of the medium. So I've always realized that curiosity and passion and something to say is more important than how to do a radio program and hiring. You can learn those other skills, but you can't learn compassion and curiosity, so you have to come in with that.

Neil Verma  25:35
Do you think part of your role was finding people who had that kind of compassion and curiosity? Was that something that was a priority for you?

Bill Siemering  25:42
Yes, I think one of my gifts has been to hire good people and then to manage as I would like to be managed. Yeah, I when I was at NPR, I got criticized for for my hiring. So my colleagues, as directors, according to history, said that they had disdain for me, when they saw who I was hiring, because they didn't have radio some of them didn't have radio experience.

Neil Verma  26:05
Oh, really? Can you say more about that?

Bill Siemering  26:08
Yeah, it goes back one step further, I think so. When the network was created, I think a lot of station managers believed that we would sound like the big guys. Now we had our own network, a live network for the first time. The programs had been distributed by tape before then, so they thought, now we'll be just like them. And what they heard was not like that, because there already was that network. That's why I hired people that had curiosity and were sharp or smart.

Neil Verma  26:39
Can we just maybe back up just a step, and just say, you know, tell us a little bit about how you became involved with the founding of NPR, and it also fell to you to write their statement of purpose.

Bill Siemering  26:52
So when CPB set about to create NPR, as they were mandated to do, they had an election for the board members based upon geography. So I was in the Northeast, and so I was elected to be on the board. And I had been writing about, what we've been talking about, really, is, what is this going to be like? It was an article called "Public Radio's Essential Ingredients. "And so actually some of that is turned up into the purposes statement, because everybody thought that through quite a lot. And I think partly because I had written that. And then when we were interviewing candidates for president, Carl Schmitt from Wisconsin, read part of the purposes statement, and he asked Don Quayle, who we were interviewing for president. He said, “Well, do you think you can make this real?” And he said, “I will, if I can hire the man who wrote it.” So that's how I that's how I became the director of programming.

Neil Verma  27:58
So some of the first days of NPR were sort of famously chaotic or exciting, I should say. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Bill Siemering  28:05
Well, we were starting something new, and there wasn't an NPR sound, and as I wrote in the purposes statement, we thought, you know, a lot of stations could contribute to it. And so it was really in beta form for a while. You know, we'd have a brilliant piece one day, and in the same program, there'd be something that we were kind of ashamed to put on the air, but the shelf was empty, so we'd have to pull that on.

Neil Verma  28:34
Now, I really want to know what you were ashamed to put on the air.

Bill Siemering  28:39
Well, they were things from the station that just were poorly produced.  thought. It was very painful for me, or the most painful two years I've had in my professional life, I would say, because it made me very uncomfortable to hear stuff. And we were, as I say, trying to find our way and develop a sound. And people came from very diverse backgrounds. The news director came from the New York Times Washington bureau, Cleve Matthews, because we didn't have the journalistic heft to hire, you know, for the journalistic part of it very well. And one came from the American Red Cross, and some came from stations and various different places. So it was a matter of all working together, and you only get that by working together. So that's why it was sometimes rough. In September, the manager of WBTA in Washington came and said, you know, if this isn't better, soon, we're going to take it off the air.

Neil Verma  29:35
So this, this was September of the of the first year of, right after...

Bill Siemering  29:39
Yeah, right. I mean, we did get better, and we used reporters in the Christian Science Monitor to help fill out the reporting staff. And the program that was broadcast in October of 1972 was the first Peabody we got for it. So we did turn it around.

Christine Becker  29:58
And what does that take? Does it just take experience and people learning from the mistakes?

Bill Siemering  30:02
Exactly. And we were, we believed in what we were doing, and it was exciting to be doing something new like that. And everyone was really working hard to do their very best. I give the staff, of course, all the credit. I mean, as I say, I think I hired good people, but they're the ones that made the music. I was kind of recruited for an orchestra, and I think maybe the purposes was like playing middle C or something to tune the answer with. I'm given too much credit, I think, for that, because they really did it.

Neil Verma  30:35
So one of the things that is also true of this period of your career, both at NPR and WHYY, is that you've had a hand in fostering the careers of a number of women, some folks that people know, like Susan Stamberg, Terry Gross. And what a lot of our listeners might not know is that you know, at this time, there was a whole sort of pseudo-scientific discourse about how women's voices wouldn't be as authoritative or as important on air, and it seems like you're one of the people who helped change people's minds about that. So could you tell a little bit about that, about some of the ways in which you've helped kind of promote women's voices, literally and figuratively?

Bill Siemering  31:12
Well, going back to my work at WHA, the most popular program was Aline Hazard's homemakers' program. And she was a very strong woman. She had taught in China for several years. She lived there. She was she was very bright, and she was good on the air. I mean, so I had a model there. I never thought twice about a woman being on the air. So I wasn't thinking about gender when I was hiring people. They just happened to be the brightest and most capable that I hired. And I think Susan Sandberg was, was a good example of this. I didn't need to look at her resume to know I wanted to hire her. I mean, she just exudes curiosity, and she has a very strong air presence. Not every reporter is good as a host, but I could hear her as a host, and she has this wonderful, rich voice that shows tone color. She can go from a serious piece to a light piece and, wonderful laugh. So she wanted to just work part-time because she had a young son at the time. So she became the host in March 1, 1972, and that was the first woman to host a national news program. So that was groundbreaking.

Neil Verma  32:28
Was there a public response that you can remember from that time?

Bill Siemering  32:31
There was a station response. I mean, some of the station managers said, you know, Bill, [unclear] women's voices, you know, you should look at the meter, those higher frequencies.

Neil Verma  32:43
No. Did they really say that?

Bill Siemering  32:45
Yeah, they said the higher frequencies. And the other kind of thought was, well, the women can do the soft features, but they lack the authority to do the hard news. Of course, it's a very sexist thing to say, but I ignored all that, of course.

Neil Verma  33:02
Can you tell us a little bit about Fresh Air?

Bill Siemering  33:04
If you want the long story, the genesis of Fresh Air was in Buffalo. I started a program called This is Radio, and I meant it as "This is radio, damn it." I was so damn tired of having people belittle radio. One time, somebody asked what I did, and told him. He said, Oh, just radio. (laughs) Yeah, dammit, it's just radio. What do you mean, just radio? (laughs)

Neil Verma  33:28
That reminds me a little bit of the, you know, the famous story about the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act, that, you know, radio was kind of tacked on at the end, right?

Bill Siemering  33:38
Yeah.

Neil Verma  33:38
That, you know, it was a bill about television. And then late at night, they had to kind of paste in, oh, and radio, and radio too.

Bill Siemering  33:43
Right. And that radio, I mean, the TV people were kicking sand in our face, you know? I mean, I still fed up with that. Once there was some radio, TV meeting or something, before we got going with NPR, there were some TV guys saying, reporting their nice reviews in the New York Times. And one said, "So Siemering, what do you think New York Times go to say about NPR?" I said, "We're not programming for the New York Times." Being a smart ass. You know? It was that, because they thought we were an embarrassment, it would take money away from them. What's really important, you know? So that's why it's a long story to say, this interview program, and then because it was in the afternoon, and we had interviews, and we had a lot of writers in Buffalo, then: John Barth, Robert Creeley, Leslie Fiedler, and so on. So we would deliver them and others that would be coming through had music. So I left for NPR, and when the producers of that and Terry Gross moved to Philadelphia, they renamed it Fresh Air, and Terry was a host. So when I came to Philadelphia, i it was a three-hour live program, and she was really hustling to get the interviews and so on. So I got money for Fresh Air, to get more staff, like Danny Miller, he became the executive producer and so on, so they could do a good job. And then frequently, as a guest was going out, I'd thank them for coming, and they'd say, "Well, that's the best interview I ever had." Yeah, so that's why we evolved to getting it on national program, and this may be too much detail or inside radio stuff.

Neil Verma  35:35
Ah no, that's what we want. That's what we want.

Bill Siemering  35:37
All right, I was on the NPR board at the time, and there were a lot of stations that were getting restless about wanting ATC to start at four, All Things Considered, which we abbreviate as ATC. And the staff were saying it's hard enough to meet a five o'clock deadline. And in the first place, I wanted it to start at5 because I wanted to be the very first broadcast record of the day's news, because TV came out at 6:30, then PBS at 7 was kind of the background. I didn't want to cede anything to it.

Neil Verma  36:10
You wanted to scoop them.

Bill Siemering  36:11
(chuckles) That's right. I wanted the radio to be that important, to be during the drive time home. And I respected how hard it was for the reporters to file earlier. So I thought, why don't we run Fresh Air in there? There's a lead-in, it'd be like the Arts or the Style section of Washington Post or something like that. It would be arts and music, and so on. So Robert Siegel thought that would work. So that's why we designed Fresh Air with longer interviews at first, this is when we started it. So it had the same pace as ATC as it went on. And we had, in the beginning, we had live two-way with Robert and Terry. And so she'd say, about 50 minutes in, she'd say, "So Robert, what do you have on ATC tonight?" And he'd give the rundown. So it seemed like seamless, it was a seamless program that way.

Neil Verma  37:07
So the idea was to kind of have a twin for All Things Considered.

Bill Siemering  37:10
Yes, it's a strong lead in, and it worked that way.

Neil Verma  37:13
It's interesting that, like the interview format would be the way of creating a certain kind of receptivity in the listener, and then that prepares them to sort of hear the news, you know what I mean?

Bill Siemering  37:23
Right.

Neil Verma  37:24
Yeah, because doing it the other way would kind of be, it would have a different rhythm to it, right?

Bill Siemering  37:29
Right.

Neil Verma  37:30
Why don't we move on to the next phase of your career? I think when, after your time back east, you would eventually come back to the Midwest to work in Minnesota.

Bill Siemering  37:38
So I was forced out of NPR and still wanted to stay in radio, and Bill Kling said, you can come out here and get it, this station up in Moorhead, Fargo-Moorhead, CPB qualified, and then you can put your feet up and think, ha. It was very tempting, so I did. I mean, I needed a job. I was hunting around in DC for one, and I couldn't find one. Then because, you know, I had said the stations should contribute to NPR, I set a goal for us at the station to contribute 52 pieces a year to NPR. Now that included not news features so much as art features and things like that. And we made it. So I thought, if you can do it for Moorhead, you can do it anywhere. No excuses.

Neil Verma  38:32
Do you want to talk a little bit about the way you left NPR?

Bill Siemering  38:36
I've never talked about this on the record before. Well, Jack Mitchell wrote a history of it, and he pointed out that the other directors, as I said, had disdain for me, so they were not helpful to me, if you will. I thought they kind of undermined more than anything. They were all also from television, I might add. And I have this thing about... (laughs) Anyway, so I wasn't doing so well, I guess. And so Don Quayle took me aside and said, you know, "These are some of the concerns I have for your work." And I said, Okay. I said, "Jst let me know as I go along, if, you know, there's any problem." He said OK. But then on December 10th, a Sunday, he called me into the office, said, "It's time for you to leave." And I said, "Well, I thought I met all your needs. I corrected all the things." And he said, "Yeah, you did, but it's too late." So I was a little baffled by that and quite devastated, you know, I felt like...

Neil Verma  39:38
I can imagine.

Bill Siemering  39:40
Well, it was really bad.

Neil Verma  39:43
Did you get more of an explanation, or was that, um...?

Bill Siemering  39:46
No, that was about it. So that's why, you know, I wanted to stay. You see, I went to a landscape outfit to try to work there, but you needed a truck driver's license, and I didn't have a truck to get a license. (chuckles) Yeah, so I welcomed Bill Kling's offer. And it was a very happy time out there, because we had a lot of creativity. I mean, 140 miles from the home office, so no one was paying that much attention. I like it that way.

Neil Verma  40:20
So it's not just, not just if you can do it from Moorhead, you can do it from anywhere, but maybe Morehead is better, right?

Bill Siemering  40:28
Yeah.

Neil Verma  40:30
I wanted to take some time to talk a little bit about your overseas career, which has been so extensive and over such a long period. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you started doing programming work overseas, and some of your proudest achievements from that.

Bill Siemering  40:46
So I was executive producer of Sound Print in Baltimore, and commuting because my daughter was living here in Philadelphia, and I didn't want to not see her. So after about five years, I thought it was too much, and quit. And was on unemployment for a while, and that was going to run out. So I went out to the airport to see if I could work as a driver for a car service. And they trained me for this, and I was... -- not much training but -- so I was ready to get my assignment. And then somebody called from MacArthur Foundation said I had a fellowship, so I didn't need to do car service. And there was an opportunity to go over to South Africa, this is '93, to meet with folks interested in reforming the SABC, the state broadcasting, and interested in community radio because they thought that would best serve democracy. And that was very interesting. And I came back and wished I could do that, so that with the fellowship, the next year in 1994 after the elections, the Open Society Foundation opened an office there. And I said, if community radio is one of your priorities, let me know, and they said, "Yeah, it is actually." So I said, okay, and I set up guidelines for supporting the community radio stations and equipment grants and things like that. So that was very satisfying. I organized training programs for them and this and that. So I think overall, the foundation was the leading developer of community radio there in South Africa. So I would say that that was kind of the highlight of my work overseas, was to see that and work with them. And the government in South Africa only awarded licenses to community stations the first year because they thought again it would serve the best interests of democracy. So I was working with the Open Society Foundation in South Africa, and then in some of the other southern Africa countries and working as a consultant with them. And then when my fellowship ended, they hired me full time, and that's how I got into that further. And then that position ended, I don't think I was pushed out. The position was going away. So that's when I started developing radio partners to help enrich the programming in southern Africa.

Neil Verma  43:17
And what are some of the programming, like parts the programming that you remember from that period, you know ...  what did you learn?

Bill Siemering  43:24
So a couple of things. What we would do is have a workshop and have a specialist in the field. It might have been climate or environment or health, and we gave them the digital recorder and microphone, and they would go out and do some pieces and come back and critique and things like that. So then we would send them a bulletin that had a statement of a problem on one side and solutions and production tips on the other side. And these came from the field itself. And so this is the way that they would produce programs, improve their production. And then we had a woman, Martha [unclear], who was a good trainer, and she would go and mentor at the stations to improve their skills that way. So that's the way that whole thing worked.

Neil Verma  44:21
It sounds like it's a kind of an echo of the Wisconsin Idea, right, just in a different context at a different time.

Bill Siemering  44:26
Yeah, and we, you know, increased the number of youth-friendly Health Services program, that would go to the clinic to get reproductive health information or get tested, and the parents were freer to talk about this, as well as the clergyman. They, for the first time, they could talk openly, seemingly, about reproductive health. So that was good with the environment. We would give the money for community activities, and some stations would use that money to have tree planting, and then they will get money from a local agency and do more tree planting. So there's a lot of good stuff that came out that came out of that, and it's continuing.

Neil Verma  45:12
I wanted to return just in our last part here to something that you wrote about at the very kind of tail end of the Statement of Purpose for NPR, and I wonder if you could just read for us the last paragraph where you speak a little bit about the intensity of experience.

Bill Siemering  45:29
This is the first section of the Purposes. I said, (reading) "Philosophically, time is measured by the intensity of experience. Waiting for a bus and walking through an art gallery may occupy the same time duration, but not the same time experience. Listeners should feel that the time spent with NPR was among their most rewarding, immediate contact. National Public Radio will not regard its audience as a market or in terms of its disposable income, but as curious, complex individuals who are looking for some understanding, meaning and joy in the human experience."

Neil Verma  46:09
So I think a lot of people will know just what you're talking about here: the desire not to be seen just as a kind of target market, especially the search for intense experiences through sound. And I'm curious to know how you feel we are faring in this search and what we should be doing to keep pursuing it.

Bill Siemering  46:28
Well, I think NPR does do this. I think they sometimes have gotten too heavy with the news in the last four years. They had to do a lot of that, and now there is space for hearing poets on ATC and more getting out of the studio to produce pieces. But of course, there's much more to NPR or to public radio than NPR's flagship program. So I realized that I was probably writing about myself, (chuckles) that is, I was looking for some understanding, meaning and joy in the human experience. But, I mean, that's really, that's really what it's about. I thought. It was, you know, having informed citizens to have democracy survive and thrive. I just think that's... You have to... I really believe in the importance of curiosity. Obviously, I've mentioned that several times. And that differentiates this also from the commercial media. talking about the disposal income and market, which is really the way they look at it.

Neil Verma  47:31
And nobody really wants to -- even if they're involved in that field, nobody really wants to feel that way, right? No one wants to feel as if that they're reduced. You know, they want to feel as if they have... as if their complexity is a part of their media experience, rather than something they have to get rid of in order to have it

Bill Siemering  47:50
Exactly. Right. And to celebrate that, you know.

Neil Verma  47:53
Yeah. And, you know, I really think this image of waiting... the intensity of walking through an art gallery and the intensity of standing at a bus stop, it had a particular resonance for me, I think, especially during this pandemic time. I think a lot of us have become much more attuned to what the intensities of experience can be like and ought to be like, and maybe to expect it a bit more from their media.

Bill Siemering  48:17
Yes, and just to circle back a little way on in terms of radio as a medium, people identify with the radio hosts a lot. You know, I know with Susan, they would write letters to her. And now Lulu Garcia-Navarro is leaving Weekend Edition Sunday, and people have just streamed or praised for her. They'll miss her. She was so important to them in their lives. She was a friend. Remember I started off saying I want NPR to be... it's a friend. And they have a friend that way that I don't think necessarily you identify with television. And many, many of the radio listeners will say, "I just love radio." I mean, I certainly (laughs) I don't mean to say that television doesn't have intimacy and wonderful things too. Of course it does. But I think I'm just standing up for the unique qualities of radio as a conversational, interesting place for curious people to enjoy and learn and grow.

Neil Verma  49:27
Well, thank you so much, Bill, this has been a really great conversation, and I think that's a wonderful place to end to talk a little bit about, you know, to kind of get back to the affect that radio can have, not just in conveying information but also in kind of creating a mood and atmosphere, a kind of affectionate relationship with its audience.

Bill Siemering  49:46
Right. Thank you very much. It's been wonderful talking to you, Neil.

Christine Becker  49:49
Yeah, as a podcast host, I have to say this has been extremely inspiring to listen to this conversation and podcast as an outgrowth of radio. I think this is a really wonderful conversation to have heard and to reflect on what we're all doing here. And I so appreciate Neil, you bringing your expertise to the table. Thank you so much.

Neil Verma  50:07
My pleasure.

Christine Becker  50:07
And Bill, thank you for your thoughts and memories, and this is just a really enlightening conversation.

Bill Siemering  50:12
Thank you. It's been my pleasure.

Christine Becker  50:14
And thank you to you curious listeners out there for being a part of this episode of Presenting the Past. I'd also like to thank sound engineer Todd Thompson at the University of Texas at Austin for his post-production work on this podcast and for composing our theme music. Thank you to Bill Kirkpatrick at the University of Winnipeg for his assistance with distributing the podcast. And thank you to Ren Marchese at the AAPB for her help with planning and organizing these podcasts. Please join us next month for another deep dive into the digital resources of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. [Theme music]

Media Clip  51:02

[Host voice]: GBH [sound effect]