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Thursday, October 11, 2007

A New Type of Morning Radio Show

Clea Simon talks to John Hockenberry about his new morning radio show which is "a joint effort of Public Radio International, WNYC, BBC, The New York Times, and WGBH:
Although the upcoming show, like "Morning Edition" (which will continue), will be news driven, it will, he promises, be faster - and different in style and content. Instead of prepared, researched segments, Hockenberry and Udoji will talk with reporters in real time, as well as with listeners via phone calls and e-mail. What listeners will hear is "two people trying to get to the bottom of this live, rather than people reading intros to pieces that in this century begin to sound like podcasts."
"We believe in reporting, even if we don't believe in packages," Hockenberry says. "The show still has to be incredibly rigorous and fastidious, but the resources won't be going into the production of pieces."
This is a timely article for me.

Yesterday morning when I was driving to the airport at 4:53 AM there was no traffic on the threes. I did hear a caller call in and talk about a mess of garbage strewn along I-93. The host said he'd inform the traffic department.

Phoned in twittergram (audio)

What I would have preferred to hear was a call to people out on the road to call in and report what they were seeing on I-93.

When I got to the end of Storrow Drive, 93 South was closed and the road crew was just removing the barriers. I rolled down my window and asked how long until the road would open. He said it would open in a minute and loop around.

Loop around?

Ha ha. That's funny. How the heck do you loop around in BOSTON? At that point I was thinking that a real time chat with people would have helped me navigate he streets to 'loop around'.

Something like a live call in radio show where I could report the road closure nad get help from others on how to navigate the streets.

I figured it out and was able to 'loop around', but I did it on my own, with no help from morning radio.

Is there any news station that's actually live, taking calls from people in the morning as the theme of the show? The Talk of Boston?