Bob Edwards, the host of NPR’s “Morning Version” for almost a quarter-century, whose wealthy baritone and funky demeanor imbued his radio broadcasts with authority in reaching hundreds of thousands of listeners, died on Saturday. He was 76.
NPR, which introduced his demise on Monday, didn’t cite a trigger or say the place he died.
Mr. Edwards, a local of Louisville, Ky., who knew from an early age that he wished to be in radio, joined NPR in 1974, through the Watergate hearings. That 12 months, he grew to become a co-host of “All Issues Thought-about,’’ the general public broadcaster’s signature night newsmagazine of interviews, evaluation and options. Its success led to the spinoff “Morning Version” in 1979.
Mr. Edwards started as a 30-day short-term host of that program earlier than occurring to function its anchor for twenty-four and a half years.
“Bob Edwards understood the intimate and distinctly private reference to audiences that distinguishes audio journalism from different mediums,” John Lansing, chief govt of NPR, mentioned in a press release, “and for many years he was a trusted voice within the each day lives of hundreds of thousands of NPR listeners.”
Susan Stamberg, his co-host on “All Issues Thought-about,” in an interview with NPR for its obituary about Mr. Edwards, described their oil-and-vinegar chemistry.
“We had 5 good — if rocky — years collectively, till we kind of obtained each other’s rhythm, as a result of he was Mr. Cool, he was Mr. Authoritative and straight forward,” she mentioned. “I used to be the New Yorker with one million concepts and a giant chortle. However we actually adjusted reasonably nicely.”
She referred to as him “the voice we woke as much as” for 1 / 4 century.
On “Morning Version,” Mr. Edwards interviewed hundreds of distinguished figures within the information, together with the singer Dolly Parton and the famend baseball announcer Pink Barber, with whom he carried out a preferred common section of commentary.
Mr. Edwards was ousted from “Morning Version” in 2004, a transfer that led to protests from listeners and even reached the reached the halls of Congress, the place Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, rose on the Senate flooring to object, calling Mr. Edwards “probably the most profitable morning voice in America.”
Mr. Edwards’s mentioned his departure on the air together with his NPR colleague Scott Simon, saying “tastes change, and so they have totally different concepts about this system and who must be doing it.” He was changed by Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne.
Robert Alan Edwards was born on Could 16, 1947. He knew he had a voice for radio when, as a toddler, he would reply the telephone and callers would say, “Howdy, Mr. Edwards,” assuming he was his father, he instructed Mr. Simon.
Early in his profession, he labored for a station in Indiana and in Korea for the Armed Forces Radio and Tv, based on a biography on the Radio Corridor of Fame, which inducted him in 2004. He gained a Peabody Award in 2000 for “Morning Version,” which the awards committee described as “two hours of each day in-depth information and leisure expertly helmed by a person who embodies the essence of excellence in radio.”
After his closing “Morning Version” broadcast, on April 30, 2004, Mr. Edwards went on to host “The Bob Edwards Present” on SiriusXM Radio, which ran by 2014, and “Bob Edwards Weekend,” which was broadcast on public radio stations.
“He was a stickler for even the tiniest of particulars and lived by the philosophy that ‘much less is extra,’” his spouse, Windsor Johnston, an NPR reporter and anchor, wrote on Fb on Monday. “He helped paved the best way for the youthful era of journalists who proceed to make NPR what it’s immediately.”
An entire obituary will seem quickly.
