PRI And WNYC(R) Radio Announce New Morning Drive Time News Program For Public Radio
The New York Times, The BBC and WGBH to Collaborate
NEW YORK and MINNEAPOLIS, March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Public Radio
International (PRI) and WNYC, New York Public Radio(R) will reinvigorate
morning drive time with a dynamic and lively new two-hour national news
program, Alisa Miller, President and CEO of PRI, and Laura Walker,
President and CEO of WNYC Radio announced today.
The show will be created in collaboration with other journalistic
leaders -- The BBC World Service, New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston -
and will capitalize on their formidable local, national and international
reach and reputation. It will be produced out of WNYC's new,
state-of-the-art studios in Lower Manhattan, where WNYC will move in Fall
2007.
The show is scheduled to launch in early 2008.
The program will represent an entirely new sound in public radio's
morning drive time. Departing from the highly-packaged format -- with
pre-recorded interviews and long features -- that has become the medium's
hallmark sound, it will bring a wholly live, open, and unprecedented
personality-driven format to public radio's renowned news and information
programming.
Up-to-the-minute local, national and global news will be delivered by a
charismatic host -- to be announced later this year -- and a vibrant team
of national and international contributors. The breadth and unique
capabilities of the show's media partners will allow in-depth news coverage
and live reports from the field from within the US and around the globe,
with BBC reporters and analysts joining in on the discussion.
The show will launch as a multi-platform program, and will be
interactive and engaging, inviting listeners to respond immediately to news
and participate in editorial decision-making, as well as to build a
significant online community around the broadcast.
Graham Griffith, former Executive Producer of NPR's On Point, has been
named Executive Producer during the development phase of the program.
Griffith has a strong track record of creating dynamic talk radio. He led
the team that launched the show that became known as On Point in less than
48 hours following the 9/11 attacks, as well as the team that produced the
first public radio show out of Rhode Island.
"Our goal is to create a show that stays true to public radio's mission
of helping listeners make sense of their world and put the day's news in
context," said Miller. "But that also sounds the way people really
communicate with each other: conversational, unscripted, sometimes
opinionated. People are looking for both companionship and current news in
the morning. Pairing a conversational tone with public radio's stellar
journalism will do both."
"Through this extraordinary collaboration, we will bring the highest
journalistic standards to a dynamic morning conversation, reaching around
the globe to report the latest news, offering in-depth analysis of complex
events, and finding the people with whom our listeners can connect every
morning," said Walker. "We are very excited about this project and we are
confident that it will speak to current public radio listeners while also
bringing a broader, more diverse audience to the table."
"This is an excellent way for The New York Times to extend its
journalism to a new platform," said New York Times Radio President Tom
Bartunek. "Public radio listeners are voracious consumers of intelligently
presented news and information, and we look forward to presenting Times
content to them in a new way."
Phil Harding, Director of English Networks at the BBC World Service,
said, "We are extremely excited by this project and the prospect of
bringing the BBC's worldwide journalism to new audiences in a new looser,
edgy format. We will keep all the accuracy and authority you would expect
from the BBC but offer it in a multi-media format which will break new
ground -- and sometimes break the rules. This will be high quality news and
information for the I-pod generation."
The opportunity afforded by technology to enhance our engagement with
increasingly complex, multi-generational, multi-ethnic audiences is at the
heart of our work," said Marita Rivero, WGBH's Vice President for
Television and Radio. "We have confidence in how successful such a bold
approach can be. WGBH looks forward to extending our partnerships with PRI,
the BBC and WNYC -- and building this new one with the New York Times -- to
develop the next groundbreaking public radio show."
While the content and substance of the program will appeal to existing
public radio listeners -- an audience which has grown dramatically to 30
million in recent years -- its inviting, contemporary format will expand
the circle across the demographic spectrum.
WNYC will air the show on AM 820, and continue to air Morning Edition
on 93.9 FM. The program will originate in East Coast drive time and will
remain relevant for West Coast drive time as well.
