The lead story on yesterday morning’s “Bryant Park Project” was that National Public Radio had cancelled the show. Unfortunately, they’d already been scooped by the New York Times. Fill-in host Mike Pesca led off by confirming that NPR was pulling the plug on the experiment designed to draw Internet-oriented young listeners to public radio. To some extent it succeeded. The Times quoted one insider as saying the web stream of the two-hour weekday program had drawn a million unique listeners each month recently. But it only aired on five broadcast stations, plus 19 HD2 channels. That doesn’t cover the budget for a national network program. Host Allison Stewart, who had been with the show since its debut last October, will return from maternity leave next week to host the final five days.
