Why is Tavis Smiley quitting his NPR show? He says that his audience on NPR is not high enough and that NPR needs to do more to reach out to minority audiences. “The show, carried by 87 public stations nationwide, was created by NPR with the African-American Public Radio Consortium, in response to a campaign by public radio stations at historically black colleges for more programs aimed at minority audiences. Mr. Smiley’s show reached just under 900,000 listeners a week, according to NPR, many of them young and African-American.” But the show has built audience steadily, beginning with an audience of only 300,000 two years ago.