The seminal program of National Public Radio (NPR) first aired from an improvised studio in a run-down Washington, D.C., office building at 5:00 P.M. EDT on Monday, 3 May 1971. All Things Considered (ATC) marked the beginning of public radio as we know it. It also marked the culmination of more than a year of soul-searching about the purposes of this new enterprise. The task of defining public radio fell to the initial board of directors of NPR-a collection of managers from the largely moribund world of educational radio-and in particular to board member William Siemering, who declared NPR's first priority to be the creation of "an identifiable daily product which is consistent and reflects the highest standards of broadcast journalism." His report continued:

This may contain some hard news, but the primary emphasis  would  be  on  interpretation,  investigative reporting on public affairs, the world of ideas and the arts. The program would be well paced, flexible, and a service primarily for a general audience. It would not, however, substitute superficial blandness for genuine diversity of regions, values, and cultural and ethnic minorities which comprise American society; it would speak with many voices and many dialects.

     The editorial attitude would be that of inquiry, curiosity, concern for the quality of life, critical, problem­ solving, and life loving. The listener should come to rely upon it as a source of information of consequence; that having listened has made a difference in his attitude toward his environment and himself.

     There may be regular features on consumer information, views of the world from poets, men and women of ideas and interpretive comments from scholars. Using inputs from affiliate stations, for the first time the intellectual resources of colleges and universities will be applied to daily affairs on a national scale.

     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.

      In the early 1970s, radio news remained a serious enterprise at commercial radio networks. The aura of Edward R. Murrow still surrounded Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) News. CBS provided ten-minute newscasts on the top of the hour around the clock. The commercial networks maintained extensive staff of correspondents around the world. It was against that staid but responsible:: incarnation of commercial radio news that NPR sought to define an "alternative." It needed to separate itself as well from the equally staid and responsible style of traditional educational radio. Although it was located in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House, NPR saw itself in an outsider role and took pride in not attending the news conferences to which members of the mainstream media flocked. Siemering asked, "Why do we always think that what the President did today is so important? Maybe it is more important that some unemployed person found a job today? Maybe that should lead our program?" Siemering urged NPR to distinguish itself from commercial radio and its own past by "advancing the art of the audio medium." That mandate ultimately translated into a distinctive production style that took listeners to the scene of an event or into the lives of ordinary people instead of just talking about them. Producers would use microphones the way television reporters and documentarians used cameras. This was a new approach to radio journalism, because although listeners might recall the sounds of Murrow on the streets of London in World War II or the burning of the dirigible Hindenburg, these were the exceptions in radio news reporting before NPR. For the most part, radio news had meant reporters reading scripts. NPR sought to pioneer the regular use of sound in its reporting, drawing mental images more vivid than the pictures seen on television.

     Even the titles of its programs suggested open-ended possibilities rather than a well-defined concept. Public radio's initial news program would be called not The NPR Nightly News but All Things Considered, suggesting both the unlimited range of its interests and the careful consideration it would give to all issues it tackled.

     Siemering drafted the program's purposes as a member of the initial board. He then took on the task of implementing them as NPR's first director of programming. In the six months between his arrival at NPR's temporary facilities in Washington in November of 1970 and the program's debut the following May, Siemering took great care in hiring individuals who resonated with his vision statement. Concern with shared vision and personal compatibility outweighed more traditional standards, such as experience. In a sense, anyone with deep experience in traditional broadcasting and journalism had the wrong experience for what was to be a totally new departure. Symbolizing the priority of innovation over traditional broadcast standards, Siemering turned down an offer from the Ford Foundation to fund the salary of veteran news analyst Edward P. Morgan to anchor the new program. Siemering did not ques­tion Morgan's competence. He simply wanted something fresh. All Things Considered's first anchor and "managing editor," then, was not Edward P. Morgan but a relatively obscure former reporter for The New York Times and National Broadcasting Company (NBC) Television named Robert Conley. Conley brought with him one of his former editors at The Times, Cleve Matthews, who would direct the news operations. Josh Darsa, formerly of CBS Television, gave NPR another experienced hand and another staff member over the age of 30. In contrast to Conley, Matthews, and Darsa, however, a motley group of young, idealistic, creative, energetic men and women more comfortable with the counterculture than conventional journalism dominated the initial staff of ATC and formed its distinctive personality. Men still dominated broadcasting and journalism in 1971, and affirmative action was not yet the law of the land, but Siemering hired as many women as men for the initial staff and insisted on minority representation. Only a staff representative of the whole population, he felt, could produce a program that really served the needs and interests of the whole population.

     True to the spirit of the times, the character of the staff, and Siemering's own instincts, the program operated as something of a commune during its first nine months. No one was in charge. Three different individuals hosted the program during that time. The program's vision was open ended, its implementation unreliable, and the working conditions chaotic. NPR management told Siemering he would lose his job if he did not give someone operating authority over the staff and program. After consulting members of "the commune," Siemering gave the task to one of the "senior" members of the staff, 30-year-old Jack Mitchell, who imposed a structure on the previously free format and sought to develop a more consistent personality for the show. He changed the theme music from a playful little tune composed by Don Voegeli (a veteran musician at WHA in Madison, Wisconsin) to a more forceful "news" version of Voegeli's basic melody. He broke the program into three half-hour segments, fixed newscasts at the top of each hour, and organized each half hour to move from "hard news" to softer features. Commentaries by "real people" from across the country were an attempt to realize Siemering's democratic vision of radio. Commentaries by immortal broadcasters such as Goodman Ace, John Henry Faulk, and Henry Morgan provided a link to radio's golden age. Key to the program's evoking personality, however, would be two program hosts, a man and a woman, who would conduct their own interviews in addition to introducing produced reports. Siemering had described the hosting role as a neutral, unobtrusive "picture frame" that never called attention to itself; Mitchell moved the hosts into the picture.

     ATC's first hosting team paired Mike Waters, a man with a warm voice and a natural ability to tell engaging stories, with Susan Stambcrg, an enthusiastic interviewer willing to laugh out loud and reveal the emotions of a real human being. Sum­ berg was the first female co-anchor of major national nightly news program, as NPR pointed out in newspaper ads when AmericanBroadcasting Company (ABC) Television touted its appointment of Barbara Walters to co-anchor its evening network newscast as a "first." As much as her gender, Stamberg's New York accent and brash personality polarized listeners, stations, and the NPR management. When she talked on the air about her son Josh or gave her famous recipe for cranberry rel­ish each Thanksgiving, Stamberg provided a human identity that told the world that this program was different from anything else on the air. Susan Stamberg came to personify All Things Considered, NPR, and public radio as a whole. Neither Waters nor Stamherg considered themselves journalists. Neither  was especially interested in "news." Indeed, their ability to identify with the lay listener, posing "uninformed" questions that any reasonably intelligent non-expert might ask about complex issues, may have been part of their appeal.

     In 1974 ATC expanded into the weekend. Waters took over the weekend assignment and was replaced on weekdays by Bob Edwards, another fine voice and excellent reader who, like Waters, provided a calming counterpoint to Stamberg's exuberance and who, unlike Warns, cued deeply about news. Many believe that Sramberg and Edwards set the standard for NPR hosting during their five years together, a period in which listeners in large numbers discovered the program and bonded with the cohosts and the institution they represented. This "perfect" combination split in 1979, when Edwards moved to host NPR's second major news effort, Morning Edition.

     Morning Edition grew out of the example of All Things Considered, drawing its values, approach, and even its host from the older program. At the same time, however, Morning Edition changed All Things Considered. It broke up the team of Stamberg and Edwards, of course, but more important, Morning Edition turned NPR into a 24-hour-a-day news operation and forced the network to drastically increase its news-gathering capacity. Future ABC News star Cokie Rob­erts began her broadcasting career at NPR at about that time, joining the indomitable Nina Torenberg, who had come to NPR four years earlier, to become two of Washington's most prominent and respected news reporters. Although Siemering had written that NPR's daily magazine would include "some hard news," the program instead evolved into a primary vehicle for breaking news coverage. NPR transformed itself into a competitive news organization, eventually filling the void for quality journalism created by the decline of serious news reporting and analysis on commercial radio and the simultaneous reduction of foreign news-gathering capacity by those networks. All Things Considered became more serious in its approach to news, constantly raising its journalistic standards and focusing increasingly on international news as commercial radio abandoned these interests. The "alternative" to traditional broadcast journalism became the bastion of journalistic standards. The hard news squeezed, but never eliminated, the softer elements of the program that had distinguished ATC in its early years.

     Sanford Unger, a print reporter with a journalistic resume far stronger than that of any previous NPR host, symbolized ATC's evolving role as a serious player in the world of Washington journalism when he took over Edward's seat next to Sramberg. Unfortunately, Unger's on-air persona did nor match his journalistic prowess. He moved on, to be replaced in 1983 by Noah Adams, who, like Mike Waters, was an "unknown" from within the NPR staff who had a soothing voice, a near-magical sense of radio, and only a marginal interest in hard news.

Tiring of the daily grind and not quite comfortable with the hardening of ATC's news values, both Stamberg and Adams left the program four years later in 1987-Samberg to host the new Weekend Edition Sunday, a feature-oriented program that would better suit her interests, and Adams to Minnesota to take over the Saturday night slot vacated by Garrison Keillor when Keillor moved to Denmark to live with his new wife.

Thus, in a sense, All Things Considered starred over in 1987 with a harder journalistic edge. News Vice President Robert Siegel decided to give up his big office for the chance to anchor All Things Considered. Reporter Rene Montaigne joined him as co-host for one year. At the end of that year, Garrison Keillor was back on Saturday night, and Noah Adams was back at NPR. The news-oriented Siegel and the feature-oriented Adams might have made an outstanding complemen­tary team had they not both been men. NPR solved the dilemma by adding political and congressional correspondent Linda Werrheimer to the mix as a third host. Siegel, Adams, and Werrheimer would share the hosting duties, and each would have time to do some reporting as well. The arrange­ment served the interests of the three hosts and the philosophy of NPR's president, Doug Benner, who chose to downplay individual personalities in favor of NPR's institutional identity as a news organization. Three interchangeable hosts on All Things Considered symbolized the interchangeability of reporters and other staff in an organization whose success and credibility should transcend that of any individual.

     NPR's next president, Delano Lewis, expanded All Things Considered from 90 minutes to two hours in 1995 and moved the program forward by one hour to 4:00 P.M. EDT, to better fit peak afternoon drive-time listening. At the same time, breaks were added within each half hour, dividing the program into shorter segments similar to its companion program, Morning Edition. The extra time allowed All Things Considered to do more "soft" material among the "hard news."

     Beginning with its first Peabody Award in 1973 for its "distinctive approach to broadcast journalism," All Things Considered has won virtually every award for broadcast journalism excellence.