Bob Edwards Quotes (49 Quotes)

I can do whatever I want to. I'm completely independent. NPR over the years began taking itself enormously seriously -- as it should. In the end I was so micromanaged that they were telling me how to pronounce syllables of words.

With consolidation you have fewer and fewer voices, ... I always thought that the strength of radio was its diversity. It has always had so many voices. When I was a kid, the maximum amount of radio stations that you were allowed to have in your ownership group was five. Now you have one company that owns 1,250 stations. That's just wrong.

At a tiny station in New Albany, Indiana, which is right across from the river from Louisville, Kentucky, where I grew up. The Louisville stations were loath to hire beginners, so I had to go across the river.

We all know what to expect before the season starts. As parents, we make a commitment also. The family gets involved.

I used to listen to the soap operas with my grandmother.

In college, I got interested in news because the world was coming apart. The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's right movement. That focused my radio ambitions toward news.

For one thing, you can get old, fat, bald and nobody knows and nobody cares. So there's great longevity in radio, more security there.

Red brought out more of my personality.

I was 3 in 1950. And I loved the radio.

Never exaggerate your faults, your friends will attend to that.

It's also a more personal medium. It seems to go directly to one's brain. There are no pictures to distract.

In my case, the listener is often in an automobile driving to work. You can concentrate on the road while still getting an audio message that can be riveting.

Between 2 and 5 I'm reading in to find out what's been going on while I've been asleep.

The pictures are created by the listener, with a little help from the broadcaster. The pictures are perfect. If you're showing pictures, different things in that picture can distract from the spoken word.

If you want anything done well, do it yourself. This is why most people laugh at their own jokes.

They want to give me a program, so I can continue to host and be heard every day instead of occasionally, as I would have been at NPR.

I was talking to a Jesuit priest named Father Greg Boyle the other day, ... He works with Latino gangs in Los Angeles. He gets them jobs and counseling and gets doctors to do tattoo removal for free. This is a wonderful man doing fabulous work. It was the best interview that I have ever done, and was the best program that I have ever done, and it was just last week.

Public radio has always been so powerless.

Nobody cares about your wardrobe, what your tie looks like, or even if you're wearing one, and I don't.

Where do you think I am going to get my morning news Good Morning, America

The guy in charge is overtly political, ... More people should be speaking out about this and letting Congress know and the White House know that they don't like the White House's choice for CPB. We should keep public radio public and not partisan.

That's the problem with news interviews, you work your tail off to get prominent figures in the news on the radio, but once they've been on, the event passes, the urgency, the issues you talked about evaporate.

Edwards was set to interview Simon on April 25 when NPR execs abruptly informed Simon that he had to cancel. Mine is the only program that Scott is banned from being on, ... He can do all other media outlets.

Any outfit that has to beg its listeners for money is an organization that has to constantly please its listeners or it will dry up and go away. It shouldn't work when you think about it.

These voices came out of the box, as well as music and news and drama. You still had the soap operas on the radio in those days.

I go home by noon, and I'm in bed by 6 p.m. I get up at 1 and do it again.

Murrow would be delighted that there are 24-hour news channels, but disappointed that during prime time all that they would be doing are these shout shows and Larry King instead of doing the news,

I wanted to be one of the voices in the box.

You can't find a decent place to live around here, and finding work isn't easy either.

Some are pre-taped interviews because maybe we can't get that person live or maybe we're not sure it's going to work out right so we tape it an hour in advance.

He was our founder, our leader, in radio at the outbreak of the war and again on television. He demonstrated how powerful the broadcast media could be.

I'm a very straight-laced, conservative news kind of guy.

I got to know every format of every station and who was on and what time.

Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen.

With radio, the listener absorbs everything.

We've been getting questions about them, mostly from people who worry we're wasting money. But in the long run, I think the new signs will be cheaper.

I wake about 1 a.m. I'm in the office by 2 a.m. We're on the air at 5.

People are always ready to admit a man's ability after he gets there.

But when you see personal artifacts relating to - by genealogy at least - a living human being, it was just more impressive to me than just about anything I've ever read about slavery before.

Good things just keep happening.

The radio was my pal. I was just crazy about it.

I don't know that anybody really knows what our water situation is here, and I think that's really frightening.

I'm still excited at being at a microphone and talking to listeners. I love that. It's the most basic element of what I do and I still enjoy it very much.

I bet it has been 15 years. Those times are gone.

I think we're doing the right things for the right reasons. We're not doing it to sell products. We're not doing it to be popular. We're doing it because in our judgment these stories are important to do, and at this length and this much depth.

When Solomon said there was a time and a place for everything he had not encountered the problem of parking his automobile.

I was encouraged to read aloud in class and vocalize.

I've never been able to predict the future of anything.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.