Entertainment

NPR Chief Says Network Positioned for Growth After Struggles

Published

11 years ago

June 11, 2015

Jarl Mohn, president of National Public Radio, speaks during a interview with The Associated Press, Tuesday, June 9, 2015 in Washington. After years of leadership changes and funding deficits, NPR’s new president and CEO says the public radio network has turned a corner and is positioning itself to grow its already sizable audience and funding. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — After years of leadership changes and funding deficits, NPR’s new president and CEO says the public radio network has turned a corner and is positioning itself to grow its already sizable audience, along with its journalistic content and funding from donors.

Jarl Mohn, a longtime radio and television executive who created E! Entertainment Television, helped launch MTV and VH1 and formed his own venture capital firm, has led NPR for nearly a year. While Mohn may seem like an outside choice for public radio, his commercial media roots, investments in new media and his 12 years on the board of Southern California Public Radio may prove critical in charting NPR’s future.

For the first time in six years, NPR is set to break even financially in 2015 with its $190 million budget, Mohn told a group of Associated Press journalists this week. Its audience of 28 million to 30 million listeners remains strong but mostly flat, though the amount of time spent listening has declined. That’s something he wants to fix.

Behind the scenes, the Washington-based network has struggled with annual deficits of $4 million to $6 million, leading to cuts in staffing and other costs. The network also drew on reserve funds to cover shortfalls. Mohn is NPR’s fifth acting or permanent CEO in six years. He has signed on for five years.

With the nonprofit network on firmer financial footing, Mohn said NPR is looking to grow its audience and raise its ambitions in fundraising to draw larger donations from foundations and wealthy individuals and more corporate sponsorships.

“We’ve got the organization on great financial footing now,” Mohn said. “It gives us flexibility to kind of spread our wings a little bit and try some innovative and creative ideas.”

The network also has taken steps to create new potential businesses to engage audiences with live events — including ticketed shows produced with local stations to showcase popular NPR personalities. And NPR held its first “up front” event with advertising agencies to capitalize on the resurgence of podcasting, which now generates 65 million to 80 million downloads monthly.

To Mohn, the popularity of podcasts in recent years — from the breakout “Serial” series produced by Chicago’s WBEZ to NPR’s “Invisibilia” series — proves there’s fresh interest in public radio content. Advertisers have noticed as well. Revenue from podcast sponsorships is up 200 percent since 2013.

For decades, media companies thought the key to reaching younger audiences was shorter, faster, flashy stories — but podcasts have proven the opposite can work, Mohn said. The average podcast listener is 37, while the average radio listener is 54.

“We don’t have to change the essence of who we are to get a younger audience. We just need to tell great stories,” Mohn said. “You can do really thoughtful, long, slow, not-glitzy stories and keep the young audience riveted with great storytelling.”

While it’s helpful to have a “new shiny toy” with podcasts building excitement, Mohn said NPR is primarily focusing on its two flagship newsmagazines, “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” Each draws about 12 million listeners a week, and they air much of NPR’s content. Still, he sees potential for growth.

As a radio DJ early in his career, Mohn created a contest this year among local stations to increase their promotions for “Morning Edition” to 100 announcements a week. About 9 out of 10 stations ended up joining the competition to create the most creative promotions.

Mohn said public radio can learn a thing or two from the personality and buzz that commercial stations generated in the past. He said he’s reminding radio producers of the importance of connecting with their audiences.

“It’s basics,” he said. “It’s blocking and tackling that a lot of people may have forgotten just because year after year after year, things have drifted.”

Even more important, he said, is ensuring that NPR is producing the most compelling stories possible. The network is looking to build on its strengths in international reporting, science news and other areas to differentiate NPR from other media choices, he said.

In the years ahead, some shows such as reruns of “Car Talk” will likely end, and NPR may develop new shows to offer stations.

On the business side, Mohn said many public media fundraisers “aren’t as bold as they can be.” Many wealthy individuals and institutions simply have not been asked for significant gifts to support NPR’s public-service mission.

“We want to change that,” he said. “So I’m wildly optimistic that we can do that.”

____

Follow Brett Zongker at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat.

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Arts and Culture

IN MEMORIAM: Oakland Dance Legend Reginald Ray-Savage, 67

Savage lived his life as tribute to the teachers who had shared their wisdom on art and life with him. With a palpably genuine enthusiasm and desire to bring out the best in people, and pass the torch to the next generation, he poured into his students, as his teachers and mentors had into him. His infectious energy, love of life, and generosity of spirit inspired countless souls, both inside and outside the dance studio.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Reginald Ray-Savage brought the old-school teaching techniques he learned in the Katherine Dunham Dance Company to the youth at the Oakland School for the Arts in 2003. Courtesy photo.

Special to The Post

Reginald Ray-Savage – dancer, choreographer, and beloved teacher, mentor, and inspiration to many – passed away on May 17. The Oakland School for the Arts dance instructor was 67.

Born Reginald Ray, Jr. in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sept. 5, 1958, he formally adopted the name ‘Savage,’ to honor the great Archie Savage, his mentor at Katherine Dunham’s Performing Arts Training Center where his dance training journey began in East St. Louis, Illinois.

He soon started dancing professionally with Katherine Dunham Dance Company, making dance a way of life. His grit, tenacity, and notorious work ethic brought him scholarships to train at multiple prestigious dance institutions, including The Ailey School (NYC) and Ruth Page School of Dance (Chicago), under the direction of acclaimed ballet instructor Larry Long and Dolores Lipinski-Long.

He danced with several companies including Joel Hall Dance Company, Ruth Page Ballet Chicago, Lyric Opera, Chicago City Ballet, American Festival Ballet, and touring productions of “Music Man” and “A Chorus Line”.

In 1989, Savage moved to Oakland where he started teaching seven days a week, amassing a devoted following that was attracted to his no-nonsense, impassioned, and effective old-school teaching style.

In 1992, at the insistence of his committed core of students, he founded Savage Jazz Dance Company (SJDC). Over a span of 30 years, Savage produced more than 100 original works, and tour SJDC nationally and internationally, performing at Casa del Jazz in Rome to a packed house and rave reviews—the first dance company to receive such an invitation.

Savage built SJDC into one of the Bay Area’s most respected dance companies, creating a signature style known for its combination of disciplined training, blended with rich artistic musical expression, and raw energy.

In 2003, Savage joined the Oakland School for the Arts as chair of the School of Dance. Over the next two decades, he created, built, and maintained a strong dance program, recognized, and respected by other dance institutions for forging well-trained and resilient dancers and human beings.

The depth of Savage’s tough love and care, and the skill of his teaching and mentoring are reflected in the careers of his students who have gone on to dance with the San Francisco Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Group, Janet Jackson, Ariana Grande, and companies across the globe.

Mark Kitaoka, a photographer hired by Savage in 2016, posted a living eulogy on the dance instructor.

“When I see the self-pride he builds in his students I am constantly impressed that people like Savage still exist in our ‘meme’ society,” Kitaoka wrote. “The kids he mentors are fiercely loyal to one another and I’m certain his methods teach each of those kids to put aside social status, race and gender and is replaced by solid loyalty for other souls.

“What Savage contributes to our world cannot be completely summed up in a few meager paragraphs but can be seen in the countless lives of those he has touched. Because of him, our world, and the world of the future is both a richer and better place.

Reginald Ray-Savage will forever be missed, remembered, and lovingly quoted. He is survived by his beloved wife, Alison Hurley, his sister, Sonia, and his brothers, Pierre, and Andre. May his inextinguishable spirit and impact live on in all the lives he touched.

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Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

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2 weeks ago

June 20, 2026

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Books

Book Review: Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, and Me

Though sticks and stones and words are weapons, as in the new memoir, “Something We Said” by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, they can also hold people together.

Published

2 weeks ago

June 17, 2026

bpusa-syndication

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, Copyright: c.2026, Publisher: Simon & Schuster, SRP: $29.00, Page Count: 304 pages

Sticks and stones may break my bones.

You know the rest of that childhood rhyme, and you know it’s not true: words have meaning, and they can cut like a knife. And yet, though sticks and stones and words are weapons, as in the new memoir, “Something We Said” by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, they can also hold people together.

The college lecture was supposed to have been about the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.

It was supposed to be a lively discussion, but unintentionally it quickly veered off course. When a White student quoted a movie line featuring the “n-word,” the room went quiet, and Professor Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor panicked.

She’d grown up hearing that word, and seeing it, and she’d experienced the painful feelings attached to it. She knew who wrote that movie line. It was her father, Richard Pryor.

In her first few years, Pryor spent most of her time in a White world, hearing her mother’s tales of her larger-than-life father, and trying to grasp meaning in her father’s albums, peppered as they were with a word that was off-limits to her.

When she was six, she met her father for the first time. She began to visit him regularly.

It was fun at her Dad’s house; though he was sometimes moody, he taught her to fish and play dominoes. She became close with her siblings, fearful of her great-grandmother, and confused about a word that her father’s uncles threw around like a beach ball. It was a forbidden word at her mother’s house, but her father used it. Differently. Often.

The word hurt. She knew first-hand that it did.

“The word became a degrading slur that shackled all Black people together into a single, inescapable tribe,” she says.

So why was it okay for certain people to say it?

Knowing that, in the years since Richard Pryor’s accident and his death from multiple sclerosis, he’s become somewhat of a legend. It is a very satisfying thing, isn’t it? So is reading about him, especially from the viewpoint of one of his seven children. But his is not the only story you get inside “Something We Said.”

Wrapped around the life of Richard Pryor is the life of a word that straddles a line between danger and provocation, a word that author Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor refuses to say or even print. As she tells readers about her father and her loving-but-difficult relationship with him, she warily circles that word, as if it might bite. You may cringe, but she weighs it carefully, helping readers see it as a chameleon before always bringing us back to her father, his work, and his life before and after her and that word.

It’s a push-pull balance that holds readers fast, and keeps them there. It’s perfect for fans of this genre, or Richard Pryor, or of language – and it’s going to make you think. If you want a good memoir this week, one that may send you to your old album collection, “Something We Said” is rock-solid.