KCRW’s Olney Taking His Style Nationwide

“Which Way, L.A.?” host Warren Olney soon will be discussing more than just “the issues Southern Californians care about,” as he takes his round-table radio talk show national, starting next month.

KCRW-FM (89.9) will announce today that it is launching in national syndication a new show, “To the Point,” which will follow the format of its 8-year-old signature series, the hourlong “Which Way, L.A.?” The show debuts Oct. 2 and will be produced in partnership with Public Radio International, which will also distribute the program.

“We have a show that’s unique in many ways. I think it’s really good radio and good journalism, so why not have a broader audience?” Olney said. “We’ve been thinking about this for a long time, sort of kicking it around. I’ve always been interested in national news. There’s something intoxicating about a national audience.”

“Which Way, L.A.?” currently airs weekdays at 1 p.m. on the station, and is rebroadcast at 7 p.m. It handles local, national and international subjects during its three segments--short Newsmaker and Reporter’s Notebook pieces sandwiching about 40 minutes on the main topic--with Olney moderating anywhere from seven to 11 guests from a rainbow spectrum of backgrounds.

“To the Point” will copy the template of its predecessor, but examine issues with an eye to the audience beyond Southern California. It will air at 1 p.m. and “Which Way, L.A.?” will move to 6:30 p.m., without a repeat broadcast.

“The wonderful thing about it--anything is fair game now,” Olney said. “Every day we discard topics because we don’t have time for them. At the same time, though, I don’t want ‘Which Way, L.A.?’ to become totally parochial.”

“We’re excited about it,” said Peter Herford, senior executive in charge of PRI’s news programming. “We think it fills a niche, which is to do a timely show tied to the daily news, which deals with issues without people throwing chairs at each other.”

Olney has won numerous journalism awards and nationwide critical praise for his work on the show, overseeing often clashing guests and steering the discussion like a judge in a courtroom, said KCRW general manager Ruth Seymour.

The style of his shows, Olney said, is to take “a topic and surround it with different points of view, rather than painting it as black and white and you have a shouting match. I think people appreciate that. It gives you confidence in democracy. There are people who want to be educated, to know issues better, and not just be entertained.”

“Which Way, L.A.?” arose from the Los Angeles riots in April 1992. That June, partly in response to criticism that the station was too concerned with national and world news, KCRW sponsored a round-table on the riots in concert with PBS affiliate KCET. Seymour asked Olney to host, and the popularity of that initial show spawned a week of follow-ups on the radio, then a month, and it’s been on the air ever since, becoming required listening for power brokers and private citizens alike.

“I don’t think we had a clue as to the fact that people looked to this show for consolation. They clung to it like a lifeline” in the wake of the riots, Seymour said. “We in Southern California know it’s hard, say, to the people outside this area, to get them to believe the program is that good.”

She said about a third of KCRW’s audience, or 100,000 to 150,000 people, listen to the show during the week.

“What’s gratifying to me,” Olney said, “is the audience goes way beyond what you would think of in Santa Monica, the yuppie Westside. They hear voices there they don’t hear anywhere else.”

And Herford said the variety of guests--”Which Way, L.A.?” producers have a database of about 20,000 people they can contact on a panoply of subjects--will help the new show stand out on the national scene.

“It does not have an ‘inside the Beltway’ or an East Coast point of view,” he said. “They have gone after guests who I have not heard on public radio before. I think that’s of great value--different ears, different eyes, different sensibilities.”

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“Marketplace,” the 11-year-old public radio program that reports business news from its USC studio and currently is the only national news show originating daily in Los Angeles, has found success in offering up a different voice.

“We know from talking to our listeners that they identify a certain West Coast je ne sais quoi. In theory, we pick up trends a little faster. Listeners seem to like that,” said “Marketplace” host David Brancaccio. “We have a rich diversity out here. It’s good we get a Southern California voice for some of these things.”

He said that diversity of views, plus the strength of its host, will help “To the Point” succeed. “There’s no shortage of talk shows, but Warren is the key,” Brancaccio said. “He’s a very engaged host.”

Olney, a fourth-generation Californian, brings a 35-year career as an award-winning print and broadcast journalist to the microphone. He was available to host “Which Way, L.A.?” because he quit his TV job in 1991, when he felt his bosses were no longer interested in serious journalism. And with “To the Point,” Olney will have to leave television again, quitting his job as host of KCET’s “Life & Times Tonight.”

“I do that with great regret,” he said. “I wish I could do it all, but my God, I could not do all of this simultaneously.” Olney, who will leave after tonight, has been on the KCET show since the summer of 1999.

“Warren’s done a terrific job in the time he’s been here in this--he and [co-host] Val [Zavala] have been a terrific team,” KCET President Al Jerome said. “In the last six months, audiences for the show are up 36% over the previous year, so we’re very pleased with the way it has been and sorry to see Warren leave. But this is something Warren wanted to do for himself.”

Though Olney officially leaves “Life & Times” tonight, Jerome said KCET expects the connection to remain, although redefined.

“We will be having conversations with Warren about some type of continuing role with ‘Life & Times,’ ” said Jerome, adding that, as to filling Olney’s position, no decision has been reached. “The plan will be that Val will to solo host until we have made a decision on an additional anchor.”

As to Olney’s ability to make the move from a largely local stage to a national venue, Jerome says he has no doubts. “Warren is an excellent journalist, and the way in which he goes about understanding and reporting a story will serve him well,” Jerome said. “I’m certainly comfortable as a listener that, as Warren attacks national stories that are perhaps larger in scope, that the journalistic disciplines that have stood Warren so well will certainly apply.”

“Marketplace’s” Brancaccio noted that the way in which KCRW is choosing to take Olney national is really typical of the journey from local to national that many public radio shows take, such as “Car Talk,” which began at WBUR-FM in Boston. With “To the Point,” partners PRI and KCRW will announce the new show and start signing up stations to carry it at the Public Radio Program Director’s conference, which opens today in San Diego.

“It takes several years, usually, for a program to grow,” said Melinda Ward, PRI’s senior vice president of productions. “I think we’d be very happy with 50 stations in the first year.”

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The show won’t be cheap. Ward said “To the Point” will cost about $400,000 for salaries, satellite uplinks and other expenses. In addition, Olney’s two shows will need to move to different facilities at KCRW, so the 11 a.m. taping of the national show doesn’t conflict with KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic.”

Seymour said both station and PRI executives believe “To the Point” may pay for itself--by attracting grants and underwriting--after three years. “Nobody here went into this with the idea that it was going to be a moneymaker. I don’t see this as the second ‘Prairie Home Companion,’ ” she said, a reference to the popular nationally syndicated show hosted by Garrison Keillor. “We went into it for the glory. We have always worked under the assumption that, if you build it, they will come.

“On Monday, Oct. 2,” Seymour added, “we take the baby out in the carriage for the first time.”