Bob Edwards is a well-known and well-loved name to many longtime listeners of National Public Radio and its shows "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition." Currently heard on "The Bob Edwards Show" on Sirius XM Radio, his journey to the seat behind this latest microphone was not a smooth one. In his new book, "A Voice in the Box," Edwards recounts his broadcasting career, with a significant focus on his abrupt firing from NPR in 2004.
Early in 2004, the year before Edwards was to celebrate 30 years of service at NPR, he was replaced by current "Morning Edition" hosts Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep. NPR cited reasons that varied depending on the occasion, and the public response to his termination was swift and overwhelming. "The press hammered NPR. It was front-page news in the Washington Post, which carried an editorial, as did the Chicago Tribune," he writes.
NPR had to hire extra staff to handle the bulk of of e-mails and letters.
Writes Edwards of his last broadcast at NPR: "I made a little speech at the end of the show, thanking listeners, member stations, and their staffs, my family, and the hundreds of 'Morning Edition' staff members over those many years. Then I said goodbye. Apparently this was not the speech management was expecting because two of my supervisors were in the control room ... Since they had never attended my broadcasts before, I'm sure they were there to silence my microphone if I went into some rant ... They had no clue about my character and professionalism. That they would think I'd trash all those years of on-air goodwill is testimony to how little they knew about their anchor." And their anchor was a decidedly dedicated man to his field.
A Louisville native, he attended St. Xavier High School and later paid for part of his tuition to the University of Louisville working on the radio. It wasn't just a job to him. He recalls his early fascination with his family's mahogany Zenith radio --
a massive cabinet radio box that broadcast everything from soap operas to Truman's speeches to daily prayers. "So many voices coming out of that box fascinated me. It didn't matter what the voices were saying; I longed for mine to join them," he writes.
A small station in New Albany, Ind., offered him that opportunity. "Spinning records was fun," he remembers, "but broadcasting news to a national audience would be my way of being part of all the important developments taking part in the world."
It was one of those developments, the Vietnam War, that ended his initial foray into broadcasting. Unlike many other draftees, he was sent to Korea where he found himself back behind a microphone doing much more serious radio work --
informing and entertaining the troops.
After his service ended, he found himself in Washington in the offices of NPR, a broadcast group in only its third year of existence. It had barely a million listeners at that point; when he left, almost 30 years later, it had well over 20 million listeners. His dedication, originality and inspiration undoubtedly contributed to that growth. Now at XM he finds his dream the same, to "expose what's wrong but also to celebrate what's wonderful and inspiring and beautiful."
In "A Voice in the Box," Edwards offers an overview of an industry, and of a national corporate disregard for loyalty and honesty toward employees --
and of his own life that is both enlightening and encouraging. Best of all, we still hear his voice entertaining and informing as it drifts from the box.