When will KUOW get on the bus?

The Takeaway, starts today on New York's WNYC with veteran NPR and NBC journalist John Hockenberry and co-host, Adaora Udoji, formerly of CNN.

The show, from Public Radio International, will strive to counter the staid feel and taped interviews of NPR’s venerable Morning Edition.

The New York Times wrote Sunday, "Public radio is drawing its largest audience ever, some 28 million listeners nationwide each week. But if it’s a golden era, you wouldn’t know it from the frenetic activity to remake the genre."

Activity, if you want to call it that, ain't so frenetic around here with local public stations, KUOW, and KPLU. The Takeaway will be heard in NY, Boston and Baltimore, and presumably will be available to all; but we doubt we'll be hearing it any time soon except by podcast or livestream -- despite the local stations run ME simultaneously in the the same market.

KUOW, with all their resources, cash reserves, and penny-pinching; enjoying 2nd or 3rd place in the market every book, doesn't seem much interested in investing in the future that the rest of public radio is clamoring for. 

Listeners under 45 are MIA.

With the exception of the unfortunate pre-dawn scheduling of The Bryant Park Project (m-f, 5-7a) on KUOW's stepchild KXOT has become a repository for the Boomer audience' favorite syndicated programs that won't fit in the KUOW skedge, or ones that somebody thinks interesting despite being too arcane even for KUOW. Stuff like Radio Netherlands, CBC, Radio Australia, Goatland International, or Diane Rehm in morning drive.

Can we say that again louder? DIANE REHM IN MORNING DRIVE, ferchrissakes!!!

All that esoterica is very nice -- educational and all -- but there's not even a bone thrown to the looming generations in the process of edging all us Boomers out the door and off the cliff of life.

We don't mean to raise our voice, and we like pith as well as the next guy (with our chronic insomnia, we listen to hours of BBC each night) but committing all your energy and money buttressing your hold on the Boomer listening audience is like pissing your pants to stay warm.

The New York Times:

Executives stress that the new programming won’t abandon in-depth news, just “get away from a tone that feels too clubby,” said Graham Griffith, executive producer of The Takeaway. Nor do they want to tinker with existing programs; they just want more options for more people.

 

Best not have any baby/bathwater scenarios: Morning Edition is a big deal -- second only to Rush Limbaugh in national listenership.

“A lot of the research that guided public radio’s direction in the last 30 years focused on us discovering a niche we could serve and serve well,” of highly educated, news-craving listeners, said Maxie Jackson, WNYC’s senior director for program development. But, he added, that formula “didn’t appeal to people of color.” He called it an issue of tonality.

The Takeaway,Jackson said, could be a model. It will be interactive, and multicultural, with “voices, perspectives, contributors and stories that are relevant to a wide swath of people.” Its tone, he said, “has to be more compelling, with more verve.”

Despite verve is a word we rarely hear describing public radio, it's healthier than commercial radio. Arbitron reported in spring 2007 there were 28 million weekly public radio listeners which bettered the previous high in 2004 of 27.5 million. But research also shows that there was shorter TSL -- time spent listening. That's worrisome.

Public radio “had an enormous surge in listening over about a 10-year period from the mid ’90s up through about 2003, principally driven by a huge response to public radio’s news and information programming,” said Tom Thomas, co-chief executive officer of the Station Resource Group, a public radio consortium. But since 2003 “the audience has essentially been flat,” he said.

So where do you put a new morning news if you don't want to mess with Morning Edition?

NPR's Bryant Park Project, aimed at the 18-35 demo, is a web/radio hybrid, and not meant to really compete on terrestrial stations. (and certainly won't around here what with KUOW's weird little sister, KXOT running it before breakfast).

Or you could put up an innovative station in the same market for Junior, as Chicago Public radio did 11-months ago with :Vocalo. It's a public station with no Car Talk or Garrison Keillor -- they don't even admit their relationship to CPR for fear of scaring off the youngsters. They play content (personal stories, news, music, interviews, commentary, fiction, poetry, comedy) that listeners upload to their website. They encourage submissions through community training programs, providing access to equipment, and teaching people how to use their phones to record and submit pieces to the station.

We're sure the :Vocalo model is way too crazy-pants for the risk-averse programmers at KUOW and KXOT, but why not use the latter for some innovating?

If the Mormons, stereotyped as so conservative and stodgy, will hire Luke Burbank at KIRO, give him a greenhouse, and let him grow a concept while accepting the potential losses, and risk, why in hell, won't the cultural geniuses at our most successful and powerful public radio station do something even remotely as daring?

(And by the way, putting time and money into bringing your website into the new century is not daring -- it's prudent, a word we know KUOW GM Wayne Roth loves to use).

Comments

[RedmondDem]

Hey KS even Rush Limbaugh said the Wright story is dead.

[KS]

So what ! I say Rush is wrong, just as was wrong about supporting Bush. Operation chaos that he brags about has been shown to have little if any effect - he's too egomaniacal.

[J.Hova]

So what So what, It's not fair the story's not dead whaaaaaa! I'm just going to go home and bite my McCain pillow!

[PugetSound]

Now that is a sign of the Apocalypse.
Redmond citing to Rush Limbaugh to prove a point.
What next? Will Redmond Dan be seen carriying a copy of Michael Savage's 'Political Zoo?

KS, the deal is that Dems really don't -and won't- know how effective the Operation Chaos is until November. Maybe Limbaugh wasn't effective or maybe we have a 2008 redux of Ellen Craswell?
If the latter, you don't want to know what J Hova will be doing with that McCain pillow.

[J.Hova]

How's that Iraq occupation going Putz? Mission Accomplished yet?

[PugetSound]

'Bout the same as the Afghanistan efforts.

Must suck to be in a position that good news in Iraq is bad news for your politics come November...

Not saying you are unpatriotic, just saying it must suck to be in such a position...

Good night.

[J.Hova]

What, did your parents turn into the driveway so soon? It doesn't suck to be correct, just be a man and admit your earlier discretions about Bush/Cheney were flawed.

[joanie hussein for obama]

Putsie's not worth it, J'Hova. Trust me on that.

He's the telly-reader of BW.

You notice the patriotic boys on this blog: Steven says thanks to a soldier and then sends him back to a trumped-up war to be killed eventually while Phil Donohue gives a young man back his life.

Putsie equates the worst April in Iraq in years with Afghanistan where Iran is actually helping the people all the while he's supporting Bush policies and McCain's war-is-forever,folks candidacy like the baa-baa sheep he is.

Klueless can't seem to get over his infatuation with the media-driven notoriety of Jeremiah Wright as if that's got something - anything at all - to do with governing a country.

And chucks thinks "gumment" - whatever that is - is the cause of all our problems.

Duffman - who can tell - he's so many people I'm beginning to think he may be posting from Western State. And anybody that thinks Clinton is going to win by an ever-decreasing number of super-delegates and isn't committed at Western State should be.

BTW, I turned off Mike tonight. He was over the top.

[Tommy008]

some of KIRO's sponsors apparently feel Luke's mincing, effeminate tones are just the ticket to sell products to the white women of Seattle, Hussein being target one. God forbid that a white male voice with some testosterone behind it assaults their ears. That would be "threatening" to them and so, so unacceptable. So declasse. The white women of Seattle are a national joke. Any man worth his salt here dates or marries Asian, black or "other". Have you noticed, Hussein?

[joanie hussein for obama]

No, I haven't. Checking out people's race credentials is sort of low brow and not something I'm particularly interested in. Declasse as you say.

But thanks for the news.

BTW, I've rarely heard Luke. Why don't you tell me more about his dulcet tones, Tommy.

[Tommy008]

it's not a matter of race credentials, Huseein. Only a wimp or a nerd would date or marry any of the white women around here, unless it was say a recent transplant from SoCal,like the one who once told me that when she first got here she thought the white women up here were lesbians, until she realized that their psuedo- feminist bullcrap and arrogant, unpleasant attitudes were standard hetero female procedure for them. White men of Seattle want to go with women who don't expect them to constantly apologize for being men.

[joanie hussein for obama]

How about just apologizing for racism then?

[KS]

T008 is just being politically incorrect and exercising his freedom of speech in stating an inconvenient truth in the eyes of some. There's nothing in the constitution that gives us freedom from being offended, Joanie.

Sensitivity and Diversity Training is penalty enough to have sit through and listening to all the pap that is blathered by the thought police.

[RedmondDem]

Sounds like Tommy got turned down once again. By the way, what is "other"?

[Radio Buff]

Any reports on how great this show is? I haven't had a chance to download a podcast yet.