Go back to Audience 2010’s central question: How can we provide public service that is both significant and sustainable? The economics of local programming are brutal, man. We don’t need Audience 2010 to remind us of that. But, in looking at the current state of affairs, we thought it opportune to remind people of the inherent brutality of local public-service economics. Local programming is often where most of the programming budget does and certainly where most of the managerial mind-share is. Being so highly invested, many broadcasters resist the fact that listeners tend to value local programming less than they value network programming.

When I talk about value here, I mean value in a public-service sense. Local programming is generally less important in listeners’ lives. They wouldn’t miss it much if it went away. So Audience 2010 just reminds us that local programming suffers a double whammy – relatively high cost with relatively small public-service and financial returns.

— David Giovannoni, Current, 6/12/06

„ “These days, if you don’t speak any business and economics, you can’t get by – or you get by without understanding the forces that are buffeting you.”

— Jim Russell, creator of Marketplace

„ Marketplace sounds like non-businesspeople talking about business because  that’s what it is. Marketplace creator Jim Russell boasts of earning a D in  Economics 101 and says public radio honchos approached him to launch a  business show precisely because they were trying to reach a broader audience. “It  just seemed to me that people like myself needed to have access,” Russell said.  Approaching a public radio audience, most of whom were highly educated but  many of whom knew little about economics and finance, “meant we had the  privilege of defining business anyway we wanted. It turned out that we could,  under the umbrella of business, cover any damn thing we wanted to.” That meant  covering the business of sports, the business of entertainment, and the business of  religion, right alongside the more typical economic news. Continue reading →

Programmer hones strategy for public radio
Deborah Caulfield Rybak, Star Tribune
February 28, 2005

Jim Russell recently was named head of new-program development at American Public Media, the program-distribution arm of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR). Russell, creator of the enormously popular business show “Marketplace,” joined MPR when it bought the Los Angeles-based program in 2000.

Since then, Russell has created and launched “Weekend America,” a magazine-format news show that has been steadily picking up stations nationwide (it’s now carried by more than 100) and recently acquired Target Corp. as its founding sponsor. APM also distributes about 20 programs to other public radio stations, including “A Prairie Home Companion,”Sound Money”Speaking of Faith” and “The Splendid Table.”

In a recent conversation, Russell talked about public radio, its challenges and how he wants APM’s programming to meet them. Here are some excerpts: Continue reading →

Current Newspaper, 12/19/05

In pubradio, for better or worse, listeners tune to a program or network

March 23, 2004 – “a day that will live in infamy” for Bob Edwards. It was the day the veteran morning anchor was ousted from his job as the sole host of NPR’s biggest show, Morning Edition. More than 50,000 letters and emails later, Edwards now has his own show on the satellite network XM and even a weekend repackage distributed by PRI, and the public radio’s listeners and the network have moved on.

Perhaps NPR always knew it would end up this way. Because, March 23rd wasn’t about Bob Edwards. It was about the gradual expunging of individual personality as an essential ingredient on public radio.

As the Chicago Tribune noted a month later, “Edwards was as much a star as anybody in public radio, fronting a program that more or less doubled Howard Stern’s weekly audience.” But, said the newspaper article, “he wasn’t Katie Couric, the kind of star whose personality was the essence of the show.” Continue reading →

My father was a CIA agent. I am a journalist. Now, if that isn’t a topical conflict, I don’t know what is.

I was raised in the home of an active duty covert officer of the CIA, and I grew up overseas. My father served as head of the CIA Station in places like Italy, Pakistan and Greece. Until the age of 13, I thought he was a diplomat who worked “at the Embassy,” for the State Department. But, as I began to be a little more observant of my surroundings, my father told me the truth. Actually, I remember going up on the roof of our house to install a radio antenna so I could pick up rock and roll music on Voice of America. When I got there, there already was a very big antenna! My Dad sat me down and explained the CIA facts of his life. I remember thinking “this is not so cool, because I can’t tell anyone!”

As I grew older, I questioned my Dad about the need for “cover.” After all, he admitted the Russian KGB people and other spies in town knew who he was. He explained that his “cover story” — that he worked for the State Department – was a diplomatic arrangement, to avoid embarrassing the host country’s government by admitting that it permitted spies to operate in its country. Later, when a CIA Station Chief in Greece was murdered, it became apparent that another reason for “cover” was to attempt to keep spies from becoming the targets of local revolutionaries. Of course, my Dad was a spymaster, not often an in-the-field “black bag” operative. For those guys, cover was often a matter of life and death. Continue reading →

Like Motherhood and apple pie, everyone is in favor of risk taking. Everyone  believes that he or she takes risks. But, I think we fool ourselves in this department,  because we don’t know what is risky, what kinds of risks are good risks and what are bad  ones, why one is supposed to take risks and how you know if you have actually taken a  risk. And, in the end, what the hell good is taking risks anyway?

Do you take risks? Well, you cross the street. But, I mean major risks – if not life  threatening, at least career jeopardizing. Here’s a small test I have used to determine if you really take risks. When is the most recent time you failed big time, fell on your face,  really blew it? Do you know, immediately, what your last big failure was? Have you had  many failures? If so, congratulations – you are a risk-taker. If you have managed to  prevent failure, you have done so because you’re playing your cards close to the vest and  not taking serious risk.

Why is risk taking a good thing? Continue reading →