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You ever get sick of radio because it’s too shrill or too ideological? Or you’re not quite the NPR type?

Well, bad news. A highly-publicized attempt at breaking out of that mold is going under.

The grand experiment of Washington Post Radio (WTWP) – dubbed “NPR with caffeine” at its outset – has failed. According to the Post’s Paul Farhi:

Washington Post Radio, which brought the newspaper's journalists to the local airwaves, will go off the air next month after failing to attract enough listeners and losing money during its 17-month existence.

Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher weighed in early this morning on the “difficult marriage of two very different news cultures,” offering why he thought the station never fulfilled its potential:

Radio requires different skills. Skills that most print reporters don’t have. (Just as print demands different skills of its practitioners.)

The station’s slogan “There’s always more to the story” suggested that listeners could expect more, but focus groups sponsored by a rival NPR station found that listeners weren’t getting more. (Full disclosure: That NPR station is WAMU, where I frequently guest-host. But then again, I was a frequent guest on WTWP, so make of that what you will.)

When the initial format didn’t work, the station went for quicker hits on “a more populist and lowbrow selection of stories.”

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