1972

The program survives its first year with the help of "panic buttons" - extended pieces of music to be used when reporters' tapes fail to materialize on schedule. Thus is born the term "button" for any NPR musical break.

Susan Stamberg joins Waters as host, becoming the first woman in the United States to anchor a national daily news program. At Thanksgiving, she launches what will become an NPR tradition: an on-air reading of her mother-in-law's recipe for cranberry relish.

On the January 20 show, ATC aired an excerpt from President Nixon's State of the Union message. And then, Linda Wertheimer recalls, "the show 'listened to voices from around the country, people talking about the state of their own lives.'"

A Hispanic man spoke about doing his duty in Vietnam, then facing discrimination when he got home. A woman fretted, "I don't feel that the country is going to get better. I think there'll be some kind of a revolution." And a third listener concluded, "We elect the people who serve in these high offices and they promise before they take the offices what they're going to do. But they're all alike and it's all the same thing and, really, I can't see much different in the state of the Union."

Hear the broadcast.

Contents Copyright 2001, National Public Radio