Objectively speaking of course, NPR* has been trending downwards on almost every metric since 2019-2020, funnily enough except the income metric.[1] Also the objective data from statista[2] shows the same thing, but from an earlier date: 2017. I'll list the yearly data points(y - weekly listenership in millions; x - year): 2015-26; 2016-29.7; 2017-30.1; 2018-28.5; 2019-28; 2020-26.1;

Anyways, this sounds too obsessive, I actually still somewhat like NPR and they're still one of the more sensible sources out of the "legacy media" outlets. My points still stands though: MSM has been trending downwards for a while now; And even though data might not fully reflect the overall sentiment, you also have to take into account that: population grows, median of age usually rises, etc. (*) It also needs to be said: it's not only about NPR and podcasts filled this void, which is very understandable since it's the same medium(audio) but more targeted, personal.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/public-bro...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/614143/npr-weekly-audien...