Making The World go 'round: not an easy task

Originally published in Current, Aug. 25, 1997

By Jacqueline Conciatore

A staffing and structural shake-up at public radio's daily international news program, The World, points to the problems that can arise when houses on different sides of an ocean collaborate on an intensive, daily production.

Neil Curry, executive producer of the PRI-BBC-WGBH co-production, is returning to the BBC, where he'll have one boss instead of three and presumably all the fewer headaches. To begin its search for a new e.p., PRI announced Curry's departure late last month, but Curry won't be leaving the show until March 1998.

Meanwhile, Boston-based co-host Tony Kahn is negotiating his future with the program, while London-based co-host Mary Ambrose leaves that role at the end of September.

Other positions, not all of them filled, have been dropped, and the staff has been told of budget cuts. PRI programming chief Melinda Ward says the cuts are minor and the result of efficiencies--the $6.2 million projected budget will drop 6 percent, or $372,000.

Eliminating Ambrose's post and consolidating other jobs are part of a restructuring that will, among other things, put the London staff in charge of news coverage and the Boston staff in charge of feature story production. The change capitalizes on the strengths of each outfit, but some staff members worry that the result will be more of the BBC's hard-news thrust and less of what American public radio audiences want--the human side of important stories.

That Curry would announce his departure before the program is even two years old is surprising, but Curry says his journalist wife is itching to get back to the BBC, for which she covers Latin America. "We have always intended ultimately to return to our home base, as it were," he says. "There's nothing ... odd or untimely" about the departure. Curry, who has technically been a PRI employee while at The World, says he'll return to the BBC.

Rumors in the public radio system that former NPR news chief Bill Buzenberg--who will head the news operation at Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) beginning in January--will assume the helm of The World are unfounded, says MPR Program Director Craig Curtis. The rumor is "baffling" to everyone at MPR, he says. "We have no plans to take over The World. Bill Buzenberg and I have plenty to do at Minnesota Public Radio." MPR and nearby PRI have close working ties and share the influence of MPR President Bill Kling, who founded PRI (then American Public Radio).

Ward says the new e.p. will not necessarily be a BBC journalist, although it's possible. PRI will tap the list of candidates it developed during the initial search, and look internally and externally for Curry's replacement.

Asked if she was a candidate for the job, Marifi Chicote, the program's London editor, said, "I can't tell you that right now." Boston series editor Carol Hills was not available for comment.

The unique co-production is in good shape, Curry said recently. "I feel good about where the program's at. It's got a real sense of momentum going. We've got a language of the program, a culture of the program, an attitude. The decision-making process is much more consistent than it was a year ago. I think it took us a fair bit of time to find a vernacular, as it were. But I think we've found it."

Since it launched in January 1995, The World has won carriage on 111 stations (including repeaters), including nine of the top 10 markets (Dallas dropped the program). It was recently picked up by the New Jersey Network. The program also feeds over a European satellite service, America One, and reaches South Africa via the World Radio Network. The World also won a major New York Festivals award recently.

Many program directors say The World still needs that certain something to distinguish itself and justify the high price tag PRI hopes to charge (currently it's giving stations a 40 percent discount), but the program's publicists have said from Day One that The World has plenty of listener loyalists, who often write fan letters.

Perhaps the harshest criticism of The World comes from inside, where staff members complain that BBC-WGBH sharing of editorial control, and a system of rotating positions, have prevented the program from coming into its own.

Until the restructuring, the show had mirror production functions, with staff in London and Boston trading off the lead. Says Anthony Brooks, a senior producer, "One day, you'll hear, 'This is the important point, the World style.... Two days later, that person isn't producing the show, and you hear different things. So the show to this day has a herky-jerky feel. Is it a watered-down BBC? A Brit-sounding NPR? It's neither fish nor fowl."

Says another: "Two heads are not better than one, if they're replacing each other every day. And compromise is not the same as style."

Frustration is so high, says William Troop, outgoing Washington correspondent, that "some of us on staff would have been happy if it were clear the BBC had entire control."

There are different sensibilities on each side. The BBC tradition emphasizes breaking news, and, as co-host Lisa Mullins puts it, "being everywhere that news happens." In contrast, U.S. public radio reportage is known from pulling the listener in with human pathos, personality, creative use of sound and high production values.

"What WGBH brings to the product is, yes, the kind of production sensitivities this market has -- sophisticated top-end production," says Curry. "The BBC is not foreign to that. But the World Service has a real stress to deliver up-to-the-minute, extremely reliable information as quickly as possible." News delivery shouldn't be sacrificed for production values, he says. "You can't cover stories around the globe on a pristine ISDN line."

Chicote in London believes the differences loom larger in perception than reality. She points out the BBC is a huge operation, and says it has an artistic tradition to which U.S. listeners aren't exposed. She also sheds light on a different perspective of the American way of reporting. The stereotype is that "American public radio pieces are too self-indulgent, too long, not crisp or urgent enough."

"These are misunderstandings in a way," she says.

One staff member argues that the collaborative structure wastes resources. He cites as an example a four-hour morning debate over whether to cover the Heaven's Gate cult mass suicide. London didn't want to; Boston did, he says. He says Curry finally decided to cover the suicides. Curry says the debate never happened.

 

"Extra oomph"

The collaboration has worked to meld the best of both houses, Curry says. "It's a vigorous professional relationship where we have good, strong editorial exchanges," he says. "The editorial exchange is at the heart of the product, what brings the extra oomph to the program. We're not viewing the world as one little point on map." The editorial debates work to "throw up really interesting angles," he says.

Nevertheless, a recent PRI-led review showed there was need for greater efficiency--thus the restructuring. "It's about capitalizing much more on the global newsgathering infrastructure," Curry says. "And the production skills and the American public radio production sensitivities that sit over here."

It's unclear what it will mean for The World's sound and style to have London in charge of news and Boston taking the lead on feature production. Kahn says: "It's always been, and I hope it will continue to be the mission of the program to ... combine a broad global news reach with the ability to touch listeners with the homelier details behind the headlines." It is the "unfinished goal" of the show, he says.

Kahn's own position after the restructuring is unclear. Initially, he was the sole U.S. host, with London-based Eddie Mair and Ambrose. Then, WGBH hired Mullins to share the week of hosting from the U.S. Now, it looks as if Kahn will do even less hosting, he says. He is negotiating a new position with the program, and says he may "do some reports." Curry wouldn't discuss Kahn's situation, and Ward only says she's consistently heard "very good things" about Kahn's performance from stations.

Kahn says "some of the things I'm most eager to do may not be possible within the show" after restructuring. A veteran in public radio, Kahn had his own production company before joining The World.

Curry wouldn't discuss Ambrose's position either, other than to say she may work with The World on an ad hoc basis.

One of the things that won't be changing under the restructuring, according to Curry, is the system of rotating positions within the show. Says one staff member: "Literally, you come in and [today's] program director is the script editor the next day, or the next they may be producing a piece. There's a feeling everyone should be interchangeable. And there's something to be said for that. But it militates against people being able to ... develop a sense of owning their jobs." It also works against the program developing a strong voice and style, the staffer said.

Ward says it is only the American employees who complain about the system. And Curry says that there are as many who favorthe set-up for giving them variety in work. Though American staffers paint the system as a BBC tradition, Curry says it's not. It's simply the best way to schedule staff across a week of 15-hour days, he says. He also suggests that some employees don't like it because occasionally they must answer to people with less seniority.

"I don't know if [management] understands the degree of frustration people feel" about the issue, says one source.

A quite temperate voice is Mullins.' The World is still experiencing "growing pains," she says, and the BBC partnership has paid off big benefits. "As part of the growing pains of a show as new as The World is, we've had to figure out how to best use the resources on each side of the ocean," she says. "The BBC has wonderful and enormous resources. It's an archival Rolodex full of terrific sound and terrific journalistic style. We've been able to build on that and use it for the best interests of an American audience.

"When we all agree on what really sounds good, we are able to work together," she says. "The BBC is not used to running lengthy interviews, and pieces. But when they hear one and like it, then they'll do one. It's kind of a cross-fertilization. It's not all angst."

She stresses, and the critics acknowledge, the tremendous challenges facing any executive producer of a much-publicized start-up program put together on two continents, with three parent organizations. "I feel the show got off to a terrific start under Neil," she says. "He really deserves to be credited for pulling off what was no mean feat--to be able to bring together an extraordinarly talented group of people, an amazingly world-wise crew. ... and manage that crew in two newsrooms on two continents."

PRI's Ward says the network hopes to have Curry's successor hired by March.

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