I’m sad to announce my departure from Blue Ridge Public Radio

I started with the station in 2017, doing the odd hour to help out with the launch of their second channel, BPR News. (It’d been more than two years since I left the BBC World Service, and I was itching to get back into radio, which you may or may not not was my first love…) That turned into hosting a morning show from home, being a frontman at events like the Asheville Moth StorySLAM, and even becoming a classical music host (admittedly with some very good help - thanks Darko!) 

Roll on three years, and my commitment to BPR has become a part time job that takes up, on average, well over a quarter of my working week. I’ve done this gladly, and with a desire to serve the station and its listeners. Much to my surprise, I also turned into one of the most instantly recognisable voices in Western North Carolina - something I (naively, at least in Marc’s opinion) never expected. Getting recognised as “the guy off the radio” by the clerk at the feed and grain store while buying goat food, is a particular highlight. That certainly never happened at the BBC… I honestly didn’t know whether our little corner of Appalachia would take to hearing an Englishman on the air. But fortunately, most people could still understand me when I said things like “shedule”. And most of them seemed to think I was Australian anyway, so it was never really an issue.

But it was becoming increasingly clear that although I was having a lot of fun, things were getting out of balance. Worse still, further developing my main voiceover business, which I’d spent over a decade building, was taking a back seat as my creative energies flowed increasingly in the direction of the radio station. The pay rates of the two things differ by more than an order of magnitude, so this is something I just couldn’t allow to happen. Sadly, even with a very substantial discount, I received news last week that BPR doesn’t have the budget to fund my role at a level that makes financial sense to the other three quarters of my business. So, love it as I do, as a freelancer, with a family to support and a desire to build the best new life in America that I can, I have had to take my feelings out of it, and have made the very tough business decision to step away - at least for now. My door remains open, and I hope that when budgets improve, theirs might still be too.

On point: funding for Public Media is a choice we, as Americans, must choose to make, if we want to continue to have resources like NPR and PBS. But these services are made possible only with listener and viewer support, and by the existence of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which currently finds itself under renewed fire from the Administration. If you’re casting your Primary vote today - and if you’re American, I sincerely hope you’ll be joining me in doing that - then remember: your choices directly affect organisations like the CPB and Blue Ridge Public Radio.

I’ve met - and worked with - some wonderful colleagues, members and major donors these last three years, and I remain fully supportive of BPR’s mission to provide great, local public radio to the people of the thirteen counties in Western North Carolina. As I said at our Program Director, Barbara Sayer’s, retirement party last summer, I never looked back for a moment when I left London for the mountains. Asheville was home the minute I arrived. But finding my radio home at BPR was the final piece in putting together the jigsaw puzzle of this particular American Life. 

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve the audience. It’s been a privilege.

- Mike Cooper