Despite NPR budget cuts, KCUR’s OK for now

With word earlier this week that National Public Radio, in budget trouble like everyone else in this country, would lay off 7 percent of its work force and cancel a couple of programs, we wondered what might be ahead for Kansas City’s KCUR 89.3.

Patrica Cahill, the station’s general manager, tells me things aren’t as grim as people might conclude from this week’s news.

“I was on the board of NPR in 1983 when they almost went bankrupt, and this is so much better,” Cahill says. That’s because the network is “making corrections” at the beginning of its fiscal year — FY 2009 started for NPR in October — instead of waiting until later. “I think they’ve got a handle on the money, which didn’t happen in ’83.”