Public Radio's Regional Organizations
California Public Radio●Eastern Region Public Media●Public Radio in Mid-America●Western States Public Radio
Presentation of 2009 PRRO Award
by Cleve Callison, President of PRIMA, on Behalf of PRRO
presented during public comments to the NPR Board
May 7, 2009
Ellen McDonnell
Executive Director, NPR NewsEach year Public Radio's Regional Organizations present the PRRO Award to an individual whose work has significantly contributed to the health and growth of public radio. I'm Cleve Callison, President of PRIMA/Public Radio in Mid-America. My fellow regional representatives (Frank Lanzone, President of California Public Radio; Georgette Bronfman, Executive Director of Eastern Region Public Media; and Paul Stankavich, President of Western States Public Radio) have asked me to speak for all of us in presenting the 2009 PRRO Award.
This year, the Award is a 1948 Stromberg-Carlson radio – a working radio (though perhaps unlikely to work here inside the NPR world headquarters building). It features a machine-age design and a built-in antenna.
The guidelines for the PRRO award stipulate that we want to honor the “unrecognized and unsung heroes” of public radio – the ones who are mostly off the air, and can sometimes seem to be off the radar – but who have toiled ceaselessly to make our industry better, and who deserve recognition from the system. One of our nominators said of today’s honoree, “it would be hard to find anyone whose contributions have done more to grow public radio” and added “to my knowledge this award would be the first system-wide recognition” for a long and successful career.
Our honoree was an original member of the NPR staff that signed Morning Edition on the air in 1979. Of that initial crew, only Carl Kassell continues to work on Morning Edition. Since the beginning our honoree has been the guiding force behind the show, public radio’s most successful program, with an audience 60 percent larger than ABC’s "Good Morning America" and about one-third larger than the audience for the NBC’s "Today" show.
Even more impressive is that during all that time, our honoree has never stopped pushing the show to deeper levels of listener service. When that effort involved significant and sometimes controversial change, hers was the steady hand keeping her Morning Edition staff focused throughout the transition.
Day in and day out through long, long hours she delivered Morning Edition to stations even as the staff faced unnerving deadlines, news broke, pieces fell out, reporters filed unsatisfactory material, audio connections failed – and still everything had to fit into the Morning Edition format. She made it happen.
From 1998-2007, our honoree served as the Executive Producer of Morning Edition. In that time she oversaw a major transformation and expansion of the 24-hour staff. It was she who courageously designed and implemented Morning Edition’s current two host/two coast format. She had the vision to transform Morning Edition into a continually updated program.
Stations are especially grateful that she has been an unflagging advocate for the Morning Edition Grad School project, seeing it as an opportunity for both stations and for her own staff to make the program better. She has also vigorously supported the Local News Initiative’s Producer/Editor Residency Pilot Project, allowing members of her staff the time to work directly with KNAU to produce Poverty with a View. Listeners nationwide heard significant portions of this award-winning local series on Morning Edition.
While building our largest audience in history, and raising a family, our honoree has worked the most ungodly hours in public radio. For that alone she deserves our thanks and recognition. She has most recently been NPR’s Executive Director of Morning Programming, and is now assuming new duties with NPR news.
In nominating this year’s recipient, one of our correspondents wrote, “I can’t think of anyone who meets the stated criteria for this award better.” Another wrote, “No one in public radio is more deserving of recognition.”
The PRRO Presidents agree. I’m therefore very pleased today to acknowledge that work and to offer our collective thanks and praise to NPR’s Ellen McDonnell.
To quote the award plaque, “The Public Radio Regional Organizations hereby present the PRRO Award to Ellen McDonnell in appreciation of contributions made on behalf of public radio stations nationwide.” Ellen could not be here today because, true to form, she is attending a live broadcast of Tell Me More in St. Louis. Accepting the award on her behalf is NPR’s Ellen Weiss. On behalf of the regional organizations making up the PRRO group, we are honored to present the 2009 PRRO award to our colleague Ellen McDonnell.
California Public Radio, Frank Lanzone, President
Eastern Region Public Media, Lee Ferraro and Davie Spizale, Co-Chairmen; Georgette Bronfman, Executive Director
Public Radio in Mid-America, Cleve Callison, President
Western States Public Radio, Paul Stankavich, President