Veteran broadcaster Bob Edwards, the longtime National Public Radio host who helped build the “Morning Edition” news program, has died at the age of 76, NPR announced Monday.
An institution at NPR, Edwards joined the station as a newscaster in 1974 and went on to become the voice “NPR listeners started their day with” for 24 and a half years as the host of “Morning Edition,” NPR CEO John Lansing said in a statement Monday morning.
“We are saddened to hear that Bob Edwards has passed away,” Lansing said. “Bob Edwards understood the intimate and distinctly personal connection with audiences that distinguishes audio journalism from other mediums, and for decades he was a trusted voice in the lives of millions of public radio listeners.”
No cause of death was shared.
“Staff at NPR and all across the Network, along with those millions of listeners, will remember Bob Edwards with gratitude,” Lansing added.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1947, Edwards started his career as a newscaster for a local Indiana station and worked in Korea with Armed Forces Radio and Television, according to his Radio Hall of Fame biography.
After joining NPR in 1974, he was asked to join Susan Stamberg as co-host of the new NPR news program “All Things Considered.” In 1979, “Morning Edition” launched — a brand he soon became synonymous with.
During his work for “Morning Edition”, he won two Gabriel Awards from the National Catholic Association of Broadcasters, the Alfred I. du Pont-Columbia University Award, and a Peabody Award. He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2004.
Edwards was ousted as the host of “Morning Edition” in 2004 after his decades-long stint — a move that sparked much outcry from longtime listeners, prompted outraged newspaper editorials and provoked condemnation from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) on the Senate floor.
“It turns out Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle feel as I do — that this decision by National Public Radio is the wrong decision; that Bob Edwards, who has been not only a host of this program but the most successful morning voice in America, is being moved away from this assignment in a situation and in a circumstance that is almost impossible to understand,” Durbin said on April 1, 2004.
At the time, NPR said Edwards would become senior correspondent with reports heard on various network broadcasts, a change made to “refresh” the network’s broadcasts, The Associated Press reported.
Instead, Edwards left NPR and moved to XM Satellite Radio to launch “The Bob Edwards Show,” which ran through 2014. He went on to host the podcast “Take On Today” by AARP.
He also wrote three books: “Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast,” “Fridays with Red: A Radio Friendship,” and “A Voice in the Box: My Life in Radio.”
