Experts in human psychology have known for centuries that the single most pleasing piece of information a person can learn is how much money somebody else is making.

That’s why, when some busybody earlier this month unearthed a list of salaries for employees at National Public Radio, the thing was passed around the Internet like a bowl of hot buttered popcorn. After all, what listener, awakening at dawn’s early light to the murmurous tones of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” or lurching through afternoon traffic as “All Things Considered” delivers the latest news on an unexpected slowdown in the Peruvian mining industry, hasn’t wondered, “Jeez, how much do they pay these people?”

Well, now we know. The senior host of ATC, as we NPR listeners call it, Robert Seigel, makes $282,742. His co-host, Michele Norris, gets $202,246. Heading the list is Kevin Klose, NPR’s chief executive, who brings in $377,999.

These are very good salaries but they are not, let’s face it, the Big Green that press and broadcast industry stars often pull down – which comes as no surprise to me. I have long been a student of the intersection of money and NPR.

My obsession began years ago with an ardent libertarian belief that the government funded press should be shuttered, or at least cut loose and left to the mercies of the marketplace – a belief that was widely shared by Republicans until they got control of the government that funds the government-funded press.

Like the Republicans, I’ve abandoned this astringent idea of privatization as unworkable, or anyway as politically untenable. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which underwrites both NPR and its television counterpart PBS, is here to stay.

Now the great issue facing government funded radio is what kind of service it will be, what constituencies it will serve, and what formats it will embrace. These questions have recently become acute, thanks to the American passion for cheeseburgers.

Earlier this year, NPR banked a bequest of $235 million from the will of Joan Kroc, widow of Ray, founder of the McDonald’s Corporation chain. It’s the largest gift ever made to an American cultural institution, and with her staggering generosity Kroc doubtless hoped to advance the cause of noncommercial radio in America.

Yet it’s unclear whether Kroc’s gift will have that effect. The purpose of government funded radio is to insulate some segment of the broadcast universe from market pressures – from the need for finding the largest sustainable audience – so that it can serve smaller audiences whose tastes are ignored by the commercial broadcast industry.

Public radio originally grew as an oasis of arts programming, particularly classical music, jazz, gospel, bluegrass, and other minority tastes. Slowly, over the last 20 years, however, public radio has fallen into the same desperate struggle for revenue and market share that made commercial radio so insipid.

You can hear it in the advertisements – though, of course, that vulgar term is never used – that festoon the opening and close of public radio programs. More importantly, you see it in the programs themselves.

Music and other arts programming is gradually being eliminated from public radio, replaced by chat shows and news.

According to the trade group M Street Group, the number of noncommercial newstalk stations has tripled since 1993, while the number of classical stations was cut in half. From 1995 to 2002, the number of public radio hours devoted to music declined while those devoted to news and talk tripled. By my count, of the nearly 40 programs NPR produces for distribution to its member stations, seven are devoted to the arts or music.

The reason for this transformation is clear: News and talk draw big audiences. Advertisers prefer them. Chit-chat sells.

“Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” NPR’s two signature news shows, are now the second and third most popular nationally distributed shows on American radio, after Rush Limbaugh. Public radio is no longer in the business, or the anti-business, of serving minority tastes.

Of course, anyone caught criticizing NPR news will quickly and permanently lose membership privileges in the cultural elite, and – again, of course – NPR news does, indeed, broadcast many splendid stories.

Yet, in a culture already awash in information, where arts education withers for lack of even minimal support, it’s not clear that setting up a national news service is the best use of government-funded airwaves. And it’s absolutely clear that this is not the original purpose of public broadcasting.

Kroc’s gift might have been used to reverse this process – to free public radio to revive its original purpose of making art, and particularly good music, accessible to people throughout the country.

Instead, the first decision made at NPR when Kroc’s money rolled in – after every employee was given a bonus – was to hire 45 more news reporters, the better to serve the interests of wealthy baby-boomer news junkies.

Pardon my heresy, but it might be time to revive the discarded idea of privatization. Given its success in the marketplace, some entrepreneur would surely be willing to buy the broadcast colossus that NPR has made itself into.

Privatization might even make life at NPR more bearable. As we saw from that salary list, some of those guys might like a raise.

Mr. Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News.