Loan Saves NPR From Bankruptcy

National Public Radio (NPR) will broadcast its normally scheduled programs today after receiving an $8.5 million loan allowing the network to replay debts which threatened to halt its programming.

The loan from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) will avert a short-term financial collapse of the 281-station, federally funded non-commercial radio network NPR's recent economics woes including a $9.1 million deficit, has forced it to cut back on many of its programs and to fire several of its top executives and staff Jan Hanreth, an NPR spokesman said yesterday.

NPR including local affiliate WBUR, will begin a centralized fundraising drive on Monday for the first time in its 14 year history. Hanreth said, adding that the money a would be used to pay back the local stations which have recently donated part of their own federal funding to help salvage the financially troubled network.

"NPR is in big money trouble." Susan Stanberg, host of "All Things Considered," a popular network news program, said yesterday during a preview for the fundraiser, adding, "We can't sell deodorant or soap "NPR "needs a different kind of support for its different kinds of broadcasting." She added.

Top officials from NPR and the CPB, the agency which disburses federal funds to public television and radio stations, reached a compromise settlement late Wednesday night calling for CPB to advance the network the $500,000 it needed to meet today's payroll.

In turn, NPR agreed to place its independently owned satellites into a special trust as collateral, Hanreth said. CPB wanted the network to give over control of the satellites until they began to pay off the debt, but NPR refused, finally agreeing to place the satellites into a trust run by three people of the network's own choice, he added.

WBUR, affiliated with Boston University, will air specially prepared requests for money in between its musical programs and the nationally syndicated programs "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" will for the first time interrupt their news programs to ask for contributions. Jane Christa, a WBUR spokesman, said.

Usually, member stations stage their own fund drives, preventing NPR from asking any listeners for money. Christa said, adding that even during this emergency some local stations are not willing to interrupt their programs with place for money.

However, some broadcasters said that this short-term respite will not enable NPR to overcome its long-term financial problems which could eventually force the network to discontinue all its programming.

NPR news correspondent William Drummond said it was "not bloody likely" that the CPB loan means the network can service its financial problems.

"You cannot go into an organization, five one-third of the work force, drive up to the guardrail of bankruptcy, and pretend that nothing has happened," Drummond explained, adding that he worries that NPR's shows will he affected by "the primal scare that has been dealt the stall in the past two weeks."

Drummond recommended that people should leave while they can. He himself is departing NPR today to teach radio journalism at the University of California