Background
ATC programming combines news, analysis, commentary, interviews, and special features broadcast live daily from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time (20:00 to 22:00 UTC), and is re-fed with updates until 10 p.m. ET (02:00 UTC). Broadcasts run about 105 minutes with local content interspersed in between to complete two hours. In 2005, ATC aired on over 560 radio stations and reached an audience of approximately 12 million listeners each weekday, making it the third most listened to radio program in the United States after The Rush Limbaugh Show and Morning Edition. In September 2010, All Things Considered had an average quarter-hour audience of 1.8 million. ATC is co-hosted by Robert Siegel, Michele Norris and Melissa Block.
The first broadcast of ATC was fed to about 90 radio stations on May 3, 1971, with host Robert Conley. The first story was about Washington, D.C. and the growing anti-Vietnam War protests taking place there. NPR chose to place its inaugural daily newscast at the afternoon commute timeslot instead of the morning, because many of its affiliates at that time did not sign on for the day until mid-morning or afterward. It was not until 1979, by which time most affiliates had expanded their broadcast days to begin at 6 a.m. or earlier, that NPR premiered Morning Edition.
Weekend All Things Considered (WATC) is a one-hour version of the show that premiered in 1977, with host and NPR Founder Robert Conley, and is broadcast on Saturdays and Sundays. Guy Raz is the current host.
ATC was excluded from the NPR deal with Sirius Satellite Radio so as not to compete with local stations airing the show.
To coordinate the choice of interview partners in cultural coverage between ATC and other NPR shows (as of 2010: Morning Edition, the weekend editions, Talk of the Nation, and Tell Me More), NPR set up a "dibs list" system around 2005, whereby the first show to declare interest in a particular guest can "reserve" that person.
Read more about this topic: All Things Considered
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