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Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), is a public radio network for the state of Minnesota. With its three services, News & Information, Classical Music and The Current, MPR operates a 44-station regional radio network in the upper Midwest serving over 9 million people. MPR has 127,150 members and more than one million listeners each week, the largest audience of any regional public radio network.〔(Minnesota Public Radio.org ) About Us〕 Minnesota Public Radio has won more than 875 journalism awards, including the Peabody Award,〔(Peabody Awards for MPR ), accessed September 2014.〕〔http://dbs.galib.uga.edu/cgi-bin/parc.cgi?userid=galileo&query=id%3A1977_77004_edr_1-2&_cc=1〕both the RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting award of the same name, and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Gold Baton Award. Minnesota Public Radio, operating as American Public Media, is the nation's second-largest producer and distributor of national public radio programs, reaching 18 million listeners nationwide each week. It is the largest producer and distributor of classical music programming in the country. Minnesota Public Radio's 1,058-seat Fitzgerald Theater and 100-seat UBS Forum provide a venue for live remote broadcasts, discussion forums, political debates, cultural programming and more. As of 1999 the company operates on $32 million a year with 30 stations in 6 states, and it has a $110 million endowment.〔 As of September 2011, MPR was equal with WNYC for most listener support for a public radio network, and had the highest level of recurring monthly donors of any public radio network in the United States. == History == Minnesota Public Radio began on January 22, 1967, when KSJR signed on from the campus of Saint John's University in Collegeville, just outside St. Cloud. The Director of Broadcasting for the station was William H. Kling, a graduate of Saint John's. It soon became apparent that St. Cloud and surrounding Stearns County didn't have enough listeners for the station to be viable, so Kling more than tripled KSJR's power in hopes of reaching the Twin Cities. However, it only provided grade B coverage to Minneapolis and the western portion of the metro, and completely missed St. Paul and the east. Realizing that the station needed to cover the Twin Cities to have a realistic chance of survival, St. John's signed on KSJN, a low-powered repeater station for the Twin Cities, in 1968. However, the operation was still awash in debt. By 1969, St. John's realized it was in over its head operating a full-fledged noncommercial radio station, so it transferred KSJR/KSJN's assets to a community corporation, St. John's University Broadcasting. This corporation later changed its name to Minnesota Educational Radio, and finally Minnesota Public Radio.〔(Founding Minnesota Public Radio — Saint John's of Collegeville )〕 Kling led MPR as president and CEO for 44 years, before retiring in 2011.〔 MPR was a charter member of National Public Radio in 1971, and had helped lay the groundwork for forming that organization during 1969 and 1970. In 1971, the network moved its operations from Collegeville to St. Paul, funded in part with a news programming "demonstration" grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. New studios were built and KSJN became the flagship station. During the 1970s, additional stations were added and the network expanded across Minnesota. It was during this period KSJN's news department won numerous regional and national awards and became one of the region's most highly regarded news Operations. In 1974, MPR began live broadcasting of Garrison Keillor's ''A Prairie Home Companion'', one of the best-known programs on public radio, from the Park Square Theatre in Saint Paul. In the early days of the program, production staff were said to have to work hard to fill the theatre seats, sometimes bringing in radio station staff and urging people to come into the theatre from the street outside. In 1980, MPR originated the Peabody Award-winning show, ''Saint Paul Sunday'', which went national via syndication in 1981. MPR assisted in the formation of American Public Radio (now known as Public Radio International) in 1983. Originally, MPR played a mix of classical music and NPR news/talk programming. However, as NPR expanded its offerings, Kling made plans to split MPR into separate classical and news/talk networks. MPR sought to buy a second FM frequency in the Twin Cities from the late 1970s onward. As a fallback, in 1980 it bought WLOL (AM 1330), one of the oldest stations in Minnesota, and changed its calls to KSJN (AM), a simulcast of KSJN-FM. In 1989, AM 1330 changed its calls to KNOW and began airing an expanded lineup of NPR programming. In 1991, MPR bought WLOL-FM, AM 1330's former FM sister, allowing it to finally split its services into two networks. The KSJN calls moved to WLOL-FM's former frequency of 99.5, which began playing classical music full-time. The KNOW call letters and intellectual unit, including the NPR news and talk format, moved to KSJN's old frequency of 91.1. MPR acquired Marketplace Productions, which produces ''Marketplace'', "Marketplace Morning Report" and "Marketplace Money" from studios in Los Angeles, in association with the University of Southern California, in 2000. That same year, MPR founded Southern California Public Radio, which entered into a public service operating agreement with Pasadena City College for the operation of KPCC in Pasadena, California. In 2004, MPR announced it would buy WCAL (89.3 FM), the classical music station operated by St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. WCAL (and a repeater station, KMSE in Rochester), were sold in a deal valued at $10.5 million, which was approved by the Federal Communications Commission in 2004. The next year, following the acquisition by MPR, WCAL changed its call letters to KCMP and was transformed into MPR's third service, "The Current". In 2008, a WCAL advocate group took St. Olaf College to court for breach of trust for selling the radio station. (A June 2008 judge's opinion described the station as a charitable trust and not the college's property to freely dispose with. ())) MPR's General Counsel and three attorneys took part in the proceedings.()) Today, MPR serves a regional audience of one million listeners through 43 stations presenting three broadcast network services. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Minnesota Public Radio」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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