I’ve been noticing KQED’s pledge drive breaks and the corporate ads they occasionally run between programs, including one for, get this - WALMART.

I remember that I started listening to NPR when I got my first car, in 2002. It was a 1988 Chevy Cavalier, that had belonged to my friend Denise, and before her my friend Adam, and before him his dad. I paid Denise $300 for it and drove that beat up off-white beautifully rubber-bumpered car into the warm June night, with my friend John riding shotgun. I had only gotten my license a few weeks prior. Almost immediately I discovered NPR. Those voices (all of whom sounded about 40) comforted me, made me feel that there were adults in the car, when I was constantly terrified of doing something incredibly stupid. It was also the first time I really started paying attention to the "mainstream" news (if NPR is mainstream).

The first thing I did when I got my second car (a purple Ford Taurus ten times as expensive as my first car) was to learn to work the radio and then program in KQED (and then KALW, which I had learned about by that time. Pacifica, with its all-too-frequent "world music" programs, got assigned to number 3). My friend Rich (statistically that would most likely be you, dear reader), laughed when he heard the NPR coming out of the car radio. I didn’t have any music stations programmed, nor did I have music tapes in the car.

In those early days, the sponsor spots were read by an NPR announcer, in an unenthusiastic deadpan. From that flat, despondent "let’s get this over with" tone, we learned that Megacorp was probably NOT giving us "revolutionary ideas for a better world" or "solving hunger one family farm at a time." Now they play pre-recorded spots by earnest, intelligent-sounding women or reassuringly gravelly gentle-voiced men. 

I no longer drive a car, and I listen to NPR through podcasts, which occasionally have sponsor spots, but not as many. I do still listen to the over-the-air programs while I cook and clean, but I no longer have periods of thirty minutes to an hour of uninterrupted sitting-with-my-radio time. I don’t miss my commute, but I do miss NPR.