Requiem for the Bryant Park Project

Being on the radio was fun, and I’ve decided to set my sights on a repeat performance. Along with my lifetime goal of having my name cursed on the air by Rush Limbaugh and/or Michael Savage, I had, until recently, declared a new lifetime goal: being on NPR’s Bryant Park Project, the respected radio network’s well-loved attempt to capture the twenty-to-whatever professional demographic.

But, in what must come as a disappointment to me and any fan of good radio, the BPP is to be no more.

If you’ve ever thought that NPR is just too stuffy, for one, you’ve obviously never listened to “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”, but for another, the BPP was proof of the contrary. Although over the past few months it’s clearly missed Alison Stewart’s influence, the show was a jaunty and intelligent morning program, pulling together information from the big-name blogs and the mainstream media in a fun, conversational manner. And, for the network, it was a stellar “gateway drug,” sucking a new audience into the rest of NPR’s programming (“Fresh Air,” “Science Friday”…). I hope NPR manages to fill the void left by the BPP; I for one will have to find a way to fill the void on my iProducts’ flash chips.