Radio’s destiny manifests West

At 11 p.m., the Culver City outpost for Washington, D.C.-based National Public Radio is almost empty, except for a security guard and the skeleton crew accompanying “Morning Edition” co-host Renee Montagne, who has just arrived, perfectly coiffed, properly caffeinated and ready to report the news millions of listeners will wake up to the following morning.

By 1:30 a.m., Montagne’s in the studio, prerecording whatever bits of the show are possible. At 2 a.m., she’s live. She won’t leave for another nine hours.

It’s a brutal schedule, but it’s necessary for public radio’s most popular morning news program to provide its West Coast listeners with the latest news and to remain competitive with agile, round-the-clock cable and Internet services.

Last month, Montagne’s position as “Morning Edition” co-host became official -- just the latest indication that the West Coast’s years as a mere spoke on public radio’s East Coast hub have ended. Now more than ever, the smooth-voiced cognoscenti are recognizing California’s economic power, cultural clout and geographic advantages, and they’re giving Los Angeles a starring role that is likely to grow even brighter over the next few years.

A strong West Coast presence means local stories are showing up on the national radar earlier than they would if the decision makers were predominantly in the East. It also means that national news stories play differently in different areas of the country and can be reported from multiple angles accordingly. And it means that expert commentary is coming from UCLA, Stanford and other top-notch West Coast universities, not just the Ivys.

“People, irrespective of whether they’re in New York or Des Moines, Iowa, or Lawrence, Kan., recognize that what’s going to happen in their communities probably already is in Southern California in some way, for better or for worse,” said Bill Davis, former senior vice president of programming for NPR and current chief executive of Southern California Public Radio, which operates the Pasadena Community College radio station, KPCC. “Whether it’s Latino American immigration, whether it’s new musical styles, fill in the blank. There’s a lot of cutting-edge demographic, economic, social, cultural activity that’s happening in Southern California that takes a while to work its way through the rest of the country. And there’s interest in that.”

Jim Russell, senior vice president and general manager of American Public Media-Los Angeles, said the change is welcome: “The perception is that L.A. is the home of entertainment, not the home of serious thinking. [But] we’ve got the Rand Corp., we’ve got great universities. We think that it’s time for L.A. to take a position in the national idea leadership.”

Russell was one of the first to believe in L.A.’s potential for public radio programming. When he created “Marketplace” 15 years ago, he recalled someone asking, “What are you going to do? Business from the hot tub?”

Now the contrarian, L.A.-based business show is the third-most-popular show on public radio, with 8 million weekday listeners nationally precisely because it is here, not on Wall Street.

“Southern California is a place where testing happens, where new ideas are thrown out, and there’s such a population diversity that they have a chance. There’s no one group that can say no,” said Russell, who’s been greeted with a lot of yeses for his most recent program, the weekly two-hour culture magazine, “Weekend America.”

Co-hosted by “Fresh Air” backup interviewer Barbara Bogaev and transplanted Seattle radio personality Bill Radke, the show debuted in October -- the first new offering from Minnesota Public Radio’s recently launched production and distribution arm, American Public Media. MPR says it has only begun to mine Los Angeles’ resources.

Next year it will use “Marketplace” and its recently retooled “Sound Money” program as national testing grounds for a new “public insight journalism” initiative. Backers says the interactive news-gathering model will help them identify new sources for experts, stories and trend pieces.

Because of the added shows and staff, American Public Media recently expanded into an adjacent office space and built an extra on-air talk studio at the Frank Stanton Studios in downtown Los Angeles, where American Public Media and its locally produced shows are based.

A similar expansion has been taking place at NPR West, where a storage area was recently cleared to house a staff that’s almost tripled since opening -- and it’s still growing. The office manager is eagerly waiting for the lease to expire in a nearby building so that NPR West can continue its Manifest Destiny.

This spring, NPR West will debut “NPR Conversations,” a series of live discussions hosted by various luminaries at L.A. venues, including REDCAT and Pacific Design Center. NPR hopes the series will serve as a national model for community outreach. NPR West is also looking into adding dedicated West Coast staff to its afternoon national news program, “All Things Considered.”

Until 2000, only a small handful of locally produced programs were distributed nationally. That started to change dramatically when Minnesota Public Radio came in and purchased Marketplace Productions. That year, it also set up Frank Stanton Studios and established Southern California Public Radio, which took over operations at KPCC.

In 2000, KCRW began to step up the pace on its shows’ national syndication, launching music director Nic Harcourt’s weekly music program, “Sounds Eclectic,” and Warren Olney’s weekday political talk show, “To the Point.”

Two years later, NPR replaced its single-office L.A. bureau on Wilshire Boulevard with a full-blown production facility. It has since launched two new shows: daily magazines “Day to Day” and “The Tavis Smiley Show.”

Last April, when NPR replaced longtime “Morning Edition” host Bob Edwards, it began bicoastal co-hosting, with Montagne at NPR West and Steve Inskeep in Washington, D.C., an unusual arrangement that was tested in August 2003. The seeds of a bicoastally hosted “Morning Edition” date back further, to Sept. 11, 2001, which prompted the need for continuous news coverage.

“When ‘Morning Edition’ started, it was a studio show, a two-hour show. It was dusted off a little bit as it went west with big changes if needed, but most of the changes were minor,” said Executive Producer Ellen McDonnell. “With 9/11, the listeners turned to us to know the latest information, and so that started a cycle of news that I don’t think has let up.”

These days, “Morning Edition” is updated nearly every hour as national and foreign correspondents phone in with fresh reports.

While West Coast listeners have been thrilled about the recent Southern California ramp-up, it’s likely that few listeners elsewhere in the country have noticed the changes in content and context, or that many of them care as long as they’re getting the information they want and need. The differences are, for the most part, subtle from the point of view of an average listener who hears the same professional, intellectual presentation regardless of a show’s origin.

But the differences are enormous internally, where public radio has long been accused of “Beltway myopia.”

“What was motivating NPR, and maybe to a smaller extent Minnesota Public Radio, was this perception that public radio was too East Coast and too inside the Beltway,” said Mike Janssen, associate editor for the D.C.-based public broadcasting newspaper, Current. “California is such a diverse state, and L.A. is such a diverse area. It’s public broadcasting’s mandate to reflect diversity and also to serve diverse audiences, so having a base of operations in L.A. was a way both of serving the West better and also tapping the West’s voices.”

It’s a work in progress, however. The tone of public radio continues to be overwhelmingly Caucasian, though executives at NPR and American Public Media say they are working to incorporate more minorities. It was in response to a consortium of African American member stations that NPR created “The Tavis Smiley Show,” with Smiley hosting from his studio in Crenshaw. (NPR is currently searching for a replacement host for Smiley, who has declined to renew his contract. His last show is Dec. 16.) With Smiley, NPR had done what Minnesota Public Radio hopes to do: attract, cultivate and work with a new set of talented individuals who may not have any experience in radio. That’s the ultimate goal, said MPR founder and president Bill Kling, who discovered Garrison Keillor and grew him into one of public radio’s biggest successes.

Where the next big public radio personality will come from no one knows, but Kling said, “Talent is talent no matter where you find it. Los Angeles is a bit of a magnet. If we find that person in L.A., there’s every chance that she came from Arkansas.”

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Empowered by radio

Long focused on East Coast news and Washington, D.C.-centered events, public radio is increasingly turning to the West Coast for programming. A look at the migration west and the growing number of programs produced locally at NPR West, American Public Media and area radio stations that have launched nationally in recent years:

December 1983: Comedian Harry Shearer’s Santa Monica-based “Le Show” goes national.

October 1988: Joe Frank’s since-discontinued KCRW-based series, “Work in Progress,” goes national.

January 1989: The offbeat business program “Marketplace” launches out of Long Beach.

October 1994: Michael Silverblatt’s KCRW-based author interview program, “Bookworm,” goes national.

August 1997: “Marketplace” producer Marketplace Productions launches a nationally distributed travel program, the now-defunct “Savvy Traveler.”

January 2000: Minnesota Public Radio branches out to L.A. Its parent company establishes Southern California Radio, which takes over operations at Pasadena Community College station KPCC. Later in the year, it will purchase Marketplace Productions from USC.

October 2000: KCRW music director Nic Harcourt’s weekly music program, “Sounds Eclectic,” debuts nationally.

October 2000: Produced at KCRW, Warren Olney’s weekday political talk show, “To the Point,” debuts nationally.

January 2001: KUSC beings to syndicate Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts.

June 2001: Minnesota Public Radio opens the Frank Stanton Studios in downtown Los Angeles, making it the new home to Marketplace Productions, Southern California Public Radio and future locally produced, nationally distributed shows.

June 2001: KCRW’s political talk show, “Left, Right and Center,” goes national.

July 2001: Film critic Elvis Mitchell’s KCRW-based entertainment talk program, “The Treatment,” goes national.

January 2002: NPR debuts “The Tavis Smiley Show” from Smiley’s Crenshaw studio. It is aired nationally.

November 2002: National Public Radio’s West Coast production facility, NPR West, opens in Culver City.

January 2003: KUSC’s co-owned Classical Public Radio Network begins nationally syndicating round-the-clock classical music programming.

July 2003: NPR West launches its nationally distributed newsmagazine, “Day to Day.”

February 2004: The long-standing, nationally distributed personal finance show, “Sound Money,” moves from St. Paul, Minn., to L.A., where it’s retooled and relaunched.

April 2004: NPR’s “Morning Edition” begins regular, bicoastal co-hosting with Renee Montagne at NPR West and Steve Inskeep in Washington.

June 2004: “World Focus,” KPFK’s weekly, one-hour public affairs program about the country’s peace movements, is nationally distributed online.

October 2004: American Public Media’s weekly culture magazine, “Weekend America,” premieres nationally.