Russell’s team begins piloting weekend stream

Originally published in Current, Oct. 11, 2002
By Mike Janssen

The pilot of Minnesota Public Radio’s Public Radio Weekend program service was slated to air on six stations Oct. 5 [2002], featuring new hosts David Brown and Merrill Markoe.

PRW’s producers touted the pilot and introduced its hosts Sept. 20 at the Public Radio Program Directors Conference. They also played segments from the pilot, showcasing a casual tone they hope will complement listeners’ laid-back weekend attitudes.

The service aims to reverse the decline in listening that follows public radio’s one-two Saturday morning punch of Weekend Edition and Car Talk. PRW’s creators contend that the string of one-hour, one-subject shows on most stations detracts from listening.

"A program director told us that our current programming makes the assertion that either you listen for an hour or don’t listen at all," said Executive Producer Jim Russell. "We think that some people are choosing not to listen at all because it doesn’t match their weekend lifestyle."

PRW’s producers say it has elements of both a format and a show. Though they shoot for a consistently relaxed tone, individual segments are designed to be self-contained, allowing listeners to tune in and out without feeling confused or put off.

Stations are encouraged to tailor their own versions for local audiences, a principle that pilot stations expect to test. Each hour includes three two-minute cutaways for weather, traffic, local news and the like. But stations can cover the five hourly segments with longer locally produced pieces.

The pilot featured a "Stump the Cook" segment in which Whad’Ya Know? host Michael Feldman divulged the contents of his refrigerator to Brown, Markoe and Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of The Splendid Table. Kasper’s challenge was to devise a dish from the on-hand ingredients—in this case, acorn squash, cultured buttermilk and Kalamata olives. The result: "Michael Feldman’s Super-Duper Whad’Ya Know Acorn Squash."

Other segments shared a similarly light tone and some off-the-cuff humor, prompting one PRPD attendee to ask if PRW was a comedy show. "The answer is, God no," Russell told Current. "That would be setting ourselves up to fail. ‘I’m going to be really, really funny’—what a loser proposition."

Each hour’s first segment will cover current events, and the service will respond to breaking news when necessary.

Yet it’s not unreasonable to expect some laughs from PRW, especially considering Markoe’s background. She helped create Late Night with David Letterman, for which she developed the "Stupid Pet Tricks" and "Stupid Human Tricks" segments. She has also written for Comedy Central, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, Michael Moore’s TV Nation and HBO’s Not Necessarily the News.

Brown comes from public radio’s Marketplace, where he has been senior producer for two years. He anchored Monitor Radio from 1993 to 1997.

PRW producers will refine the show based on feedback from the piloting stations and launch it nationally by next fall. Funds from CPB, underwriters and foundations will support it, and Russell hopes to offer it free for its first year.

Earlier story
Russell: ‘We don't know what it is yet’

Originally published in Current, June 3, 2002

Public Radio Weekend is taking shape — or at least as much shape as it needs. The weekend program service, now in the brainstorming stage, is deliberately something of a shapeshifter, in fact — planned as a customizable feed of music, humor, interviews and soft features that could sound different in Poughkeepsie than it does in Peoria.

"The biggest problem we have is saying, 'We don't know what it is yet,'" says Jim Russell, Minnesota Public Radio's senior v.p. of national programming and the chief developer behind Public Radio Weekend. But the effort to define it has begun, with gatherings of producers and station and network executives, and a few briefings at the Public Radio Conference in Washington, D.C., May 15-18.

Last year, Russell started pitching the idea of a new service to improve listening from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, based on the precept that the present diet of one-hour, one-theme programs doesn't fit with the ways people use radio on weekends.

After Scott Simon and the Magliozzis sign off, Saturday ratings charts generally look bleak, picking up only when Weekend All Things Considered hits the air at 5 p.m. and continuing through A Prairie Home Companion.

Public Radio Weekend, in contrast, will offer shorter segments, friendlier to the restless weekend listener's itinerary of kicking back, running errands and doing chores. The service would draw on the one-hour shows already in production for some material, and solicit new pieces from stations and independent producers.

At the PRC, Russell introduced his new staff: coordinating producer Tim Owens, also NPR's e.p. for jazz; and project manager Michael Flaster, a consultant who left his post as associate g.m. for programming for KPBS-FM/TV in San Diego last year.

"There's a feeling we ought to be doing something more live, and a-live, on weekends," Russell told his audiences. "Weekends are a time to take risks."

At a series of meetings across the country, program directors, network executives and others have said they want Public Radio Weekend to be fun, funny and flexible, with room for local content and elements of Saturday Night Live, CBS's Sunday Morning and David Letterman thrown in.

As he discussed the project, Russell acknowledged several barriers that Public Radio Weekend will have to worm its way around. For one, underwriters might hesitate at buying spots on a service so unlike the one-hour shows they have come to know.

Whereas Target Corp., for example, gave major support to The Splendid Table based on its identity as "public radio's food show," the more complicated flavor of Public Radio Weekend's gumbo might lack that allure.

"What that says to me is that we need to re-educate funders," Russell says. "You don't produce programs that people don't want just to please funders." It can be done, he says: When he was involved with public TV's Newton's Apple, a modular spin-off landed on more stations and gave its underwriters much more exposure.

Another issue is staffing. Though Public Radio Weekend will be able to air as a continuous program, stations will be encouraged to cherry-pick segments from the feed, cushioned with local coverage and inserts. But that takes experienced weekend hosts and producers, which most stations don't have, sometimes because they lack the money to pay them.

Russell's solution is to secure not one, but two grants from CPB when production of Public Radio Weekend begins. One would fund content, but the other sum could help stations hire and train better weekend staff. Ultimately, Russell envisions that key stations could take the raw Public Radio Weekend feed and, by adding new material while cutting out other stuff, tailor a new feed for stations that share their location or format--creating different flavors such as jazz, urban, rural, or Southern.

Russell and his staff are hosting two producers' summits in Baltimore and La Jolla, and plan to have two three-hour pilots in the can for this September's Public Radio Program Conference.

Minnesota may develop multihour weekend feed

Originally published in Current, Nov. 19, 2001

As a whole, public radio's weekend shows take listeners on a tour of many interests: health, the media, food, finances, humor, you name it. What they fail to deliver is ratings that match those of the weekend "tentpoles" — Car Talk, A Prairie Home Companion and NPR's newsmags. Apart from a few exceptions, small weekend audiences make public radio's programmers wonder if a new approach is needed.

Minnesota Public Radio is proposing such an approach — a new "program service" named Public Radio Weekend. Following the mantra of "Programming, not programs," it aims to boost ratings with a stream of segments that may be more friendly to listeners than the discrete hours of themed programs.

The idea will be developed with $200,000 in backing from CPB, whose radio veep Rick Madden has also expressed skepticism about the excess of hour-long programs.

Between Saturday's tentpoles, audiences sag in a pattern that mirrors weekday tune-in, and Sunday's audience shrinks after the noon hour. Yet radio stations in general maintain a steady audience level almost all day Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, suggesting an obvious conclusion: public radio listeners look elsewhere for their weekend soundtracks.

The hour-long shows are to blame, according to Jim Russell, MPR's senior v.p. of national programming. "They simply demand an attention level which none of us are prepared to give on weekends," he says. "A lot of people are coming to the conclusion that that's not the way people listen to public radio on weekends."

As a listener, Russell says, he's often curious to hear what airs between Scott Simon and Garrison Keillor, but the shows he finds don't suit the weekend activities that keep him from listening for long stretches. "Wouldn't it be great if something were on that didn't require me to make a huge commitment?" he asks.

Hence Public Radio Weekend, which Russell envisions as a "skeletal superstructure" of segments that would maintain a consistent tone and format. The looser structure would let stations dip in and out of the stream, adding segments they produce or borrow from regional networks of other participating stations. Russell doesn't know how much time the stream would cover, but guesses it could start at three hours that could be rolled over, and may grow with time.

But what will form the substance of Public Radio Weekend? Russell says he wants it to include stories on many topics that, combined, reflect America's diversity, "visiting locations across the country where people are making news, participating in festivals and events, thinking and talking about what it means to be an American in our new century."

Such an idea has been discussed before, with some worried about the fate of the existing weekend programs that might get squeezed out by a new stream. But Russell says there's no reason for them to vanish — in fact, he expects they would form Public Radio Weekend's backbone by contributing re-purposed pieces. What's more, independent producers could follow suit, tailoring shorter versions of their own long-running projects for broadcast.

Collaboration is key to MPR's plan, and early signs indicate it could happen. NPR program chief Jay Kernis has responded positively to the idea, and early next year MPR will start a series of meetings around the country with stations, producers and networks to see if their service would fill a need.

Pilot hosts Markoe and Brown.

	To Current's home page
	Earlier news: In an earlier burst of weekend activity, producers came up with Wait Wait .. Don't Tell Me.
	Outside link: Public Radio Weekend's site.

Web page posted Oct. 11, 2002
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