NPR Voice Has Taken Over the Airwaves

Sunday, November 1st, 2015

The New York Times calmly and gently not-quite-mocks the NPR voice that has taken over the airwaves:

That is, in addition to looser language, the speaker generously employs pauses and, particularly at the end of sentences, emphatic inflection. (This is a separate issue from upspeak, the tendency to conclude statements with question marks?) A result is the suggestion of spontaneous speech and unadulterated emotion. The irony is that such presentations are highly rehearsed, with each caesura calculated and every syllable stressed in advance.

In literary circles, the practice of poets reciting verse in singsong registers and unnatural cadences is known, derogatorily, as “poet voice.” I propose calling this phenomenon “NPR voice” (which is distinct from the supple baritones we normally associate with radio voices).

This plague of pregnant pauses and off-kilter pronunciations must have come from someplace. But … where?

A primary cause of NPR voice is the sheer expansion of people broadcasting today. Whereas once only trained professionals were given a television or radio platform, amateurs have now taken over the airwaves and Internet. They may not have the thespian skills necessary to restrain the staginess of their elocution, leading to “indicating,” or overacting to express emotion.

[...]

Speaking on (the more traditionally velvet-voiced) Alec Baldwin’s WNYC radio program “Here’s the Thing,” the most influential contemporary speaker of NPR voice, Ira Glass, the host of “This American Life,” said his own colloquial broadcasting style had anti-authoritarian roots.

“Back when we were kids, authority came from enunciation, precision,” Mr. Glass said. “But a whole generation of people feel like that character is obviously a phony — like the newscaster on ‘The Simpsons’ — with a deep voice and gravitas.”

For his more intimate storytelling, Mr. Glass “went in the other direction,” he said. “Any story hits you harder if the person delivering it doesn’t sound like a news robot but, in fact, sounds like a real person having the reactions a real person would.”

I’ve been joking about the highly affected, neutered NPR voice for years, with its illusion that we’re the thoughtful ones.

You don’t have to hear even a full sentence to know, with complete certainty, whether you’re listening to NPR or conservative talk radio — where the voice is brash, masculine, and assertive. We don’t have our heads in the clouds!

Comments

  1. Faze says:

    The success of sports radio and a lot of conservative talk radio is in part due to the energy, assertiveness, and intelligibility of the voices. Plus, they’re miked or augmented in such a way as to plaster the voice across the whole speaker, boosting the immediacy and intimacy. In the old days, radio voices had a special, mellow buzz, lent by a lifetime of smoking. But they were also full of joy and power and thrill at the privilege of speaking on the radio. They sounded proud and happy to be on the radio, even if all they were doing was giving away a refrigerator, or selling Swan soap.

  2. Ross says:

    “… with its illusion that ‘we’re the thoughtful ones’….”

    [like Socrates' student gasping for air] Eureka! Finally, I am hearing someone else saying this. Man, that tone is tiring. And it’s so patently baked into the culture — they probably have in-house trainings on faux-authenticity.

    I so wish Bill Hicks were still around to give NPR a proper comedic reaming. No modern bard is anywhere near up to the task.

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