Luke Burbank is returning to Seattle

Luke Burbank, co-host of NPR's groundbreaking Bryant Park Project, is returning to Seattle.

He says he needs to spend more time with his family.

In a video , Burbank, a Seattle native, and Nathan Hale alum announced his decision to quit New York and his $4000 a month  crappy apartment to spend more time with his daughter, Addie, who will be 14 in February.

"Living 3000 miles aways from your kid really sucks; you miss her all the time; wonder if you have your priorities straight. All this makes your getting up at 3a.m.particularly unpleasant."

Luke will stay on at BPP until mid-December.

Comments

[sparky]

Good for him...kind of odd, though, to leave a brand new project so soon.

[Duffman]

"He says he needs to spend more time with his family."

Yeah, that statement usually connotes some deeper reasons.

[Duffman]

You know if/when the real 'truth' ever comes out on what's really going on at KVI, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Carleen is the root cause of all this?

[rev]

Has anybody else here tried to listen to Bryant Park? It's on KXOT (91.7) from 5:00 am.

I admit that I'm not in the target audience for the program, but I've tried a few times, and I can't stand it.

The conversational presentation is a nice alternative to the much more serious NPR style, but the content is so heavily skewed toward sports and pop culture that it comes across as fluff rather than news.

It's an interesting experiement, but in the present form, and on most NPR stations, it's doomed to failure.

Maybe Luke saw that coming and decided to bail out before the program disappears. Or maybe he's getting pressure to change, and the current form fits his vision of what the show ought to be.

It will be interesting tohear what he has to say after he's away from the show.

And let's all hope somebody local carries the other new competitor to the NPR morning news show, to be produced by WNYC (http://www.current.org/news/news0717morn-wnycpri.shtml).