‘Marketplace’ of Economic News, Ideas : Radio: The financial program has an op-ed feel, thanks to commentators ranging from experts to ‘The Waitress From Nashville.’

Public broadcasting must have this thing about voices.

What you generally hear are natural, organic, unadulterated health-food store voices. No preservatives added. The voices are slow and subdued. Electronic Zen.

Into that great democratic mix of voices has come Amanda Greenleaf Whelan. She calls herself, depending on residence, “The Waitress From Nashville” or “The Waitress at Large.”

Whelan is the populist commentator voice on public radio’s daily “Marketplace,” one of 60 observers who give an op-ed feel to the half-hour financial show that variously includes such heavyweight commentators as former Labor Secretary Lynn Martin, businessman T. Boone Pickens and economist Lester Thurow.

Whelan’s segments are like a bit of MTV come to Wall Street, rock ‘n’ roll for the profit-and-loss set. Achy Breaky economics.

What Ross Perot is to the deficit and nasality, Whelan is to trickle-down and Valspeak.

She’s Amanda, and she’s your waitress, serving up plates full of thoughts, from telling the President to give tax credits to volunteers working inside prisons to suggesting the need for a new market niche . . . light potato chips.

What is Whelan doing on what some would describe as an otherwise serious, well-intentioned business show?

Getting lots of telephone calls.

Getting lots of mail . . . more mail than the degreed experts and think-tank types.

She has become a quirky part of an otherwise carefully developed program that examines economic news and developments in often personal terms and most often from a global perspective. The show may be setting a standard in how radio and television covers business and economics, for it offers more than statistical sideshows and galloping numbers and has no 800-number investment hawkers.

In a time of almost daily economic summits, hearings and debates, the show tries to offer its many different voices . . . from Tokyo, from London, from Washington and, at times, from Nashville. Its roster of commentators was recently reduced by two when Robert B. Reich and Bruce Babbitt moved on to Cabinet positions, Labor and Interior, in the Clinton Administration.

“Marketplace” has been on the air for four years, starting in Long Beach but now firmly rooted as a production of USC Radio. This month it hit its high in listenership--2 million a week--and says it has public radio’s fastest-growing audience.

The afternoon, early evening, half-hour daily show--its air time varies, depending on which of the 193 stations that carry the program you can pull in--successfully sent out a morning edition last year to 115 stations and may be looking for other new territories, says Jim Russell, the show’s originator and executive producer.

A television show has been suggested.

. . . Maybe other radio shows based on “Marketplace” features.

Four years ago when the show was being formulated, network officials insisted the word “Business” had to be in the title.

Not a business show, said Russell.

Not just for business people.

“We’re not covering business,” Russell says. “What we do do is take all the major stories of the day and put a spin on them, how those events affect you, how they make a difference in your life.”

The first third to half of the show, hosted by Jim Angle, is made up of national and international news reports. The rest: features, commentary--the op-ed approach.

The program, says Russell, operates on certain basic tenets: It never dumps raw data on listeners, never floods the air with statistics without a context, tries to explain why certain numbers are important, and it thinks globally, stressing international reports not always from an American perspective.

“We follow the money,” Russell says, echoing someone else’s principle of news coverage but giving it a different slant.

“Marketplace” has one corporate sponsor, General Electric. The rest of its $3-million annual budget comes from public broadcasting sources.

“If there’s a mission to what we are doing,” says Russell, a veteran UPI reporter and public radio and television executive, “it’s that you can’t run your life without knowing something about the subject of economics and that from a guy who got a D in Economics 101.”

He’s found that 40% of the show’s listeners are women, a high percentage for a business-related show, he says, with almost two-thirds of listeners in the 18-49 age group.

Diversity plays a strong role in the show, with such “non-business” features as “The Savvy Traveler,” “The Trend Lady” and those many commentators.

Plus “The Waitress From Nashville” who is really a youthful waitress from Santa Monica who currently lives in Nashville.

You get the idea that serendipity plays a part in Amanda Whelan’s life.

She’s not an economist but she’s on a show that stresses economics. She also had no previous radio experience.

She says she has had 58 different waitressing jobs since Santa Monica High. She and her husband--he is a waiter--are rock musicians, the acoustic variety, trying ironically to make it in Nashville, the capital of country music.

“People think waitresses are uneducated, but I’ve had more college than I care to admit,” she says, her voice climbing down from its kicky radio heights, then she admits to studies at UCLA, Berkeley, Harvard. She’s been writing since she was 6.

“Now I have a forum for my views,” she says. “Lots of people think it’s funny to have someone from the bottom rung giving her views on the economy. Well, I hope it is funny when I talk about such things as lightly salted potato chips. Then when I talk about the lack of women obstetricians for Medicaid people and the waste of people in prisons, maybe my audience will listen.”

How did the former Amanda Thompson of Santa Monica become the “Waitress From Nashville”? She heard a request on “Marketplace” for personal essays on summer jobs. She sent in some of her writing, hoping that maybe she could land a job, really hoping for “All Things Considered.”

Instead she and “Marketplace” staffer Penny Dennis struck up a telephonic friendship while she kept sending in essays for the radio program. The long talks eventually led to art imitating life: a waitress talking easily about people, events, maybe even at times the economy.

The start of a radio career? First, there’s the baby she’s expecting. “As a career, I hope the radio show goes as far as it goes. My music is my primary focus, along with my writing. A restaurant chain here, Hardy’s, called about being a spokesperson. I auditioned but haven’t heard from them. I’d love to be a spokesperson for someone.”