{"id":2537,"date":"2014-02-26T17:00:26","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T23:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=2537"},"modified":"2014-02-27T12:27:26","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T18:27:26","slug":"shift-change-at-wbez-more-npr-in-afternoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2014\/02\/26\/shift-change-at-wbez-more-npr-in-afternoons\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Shift\u2019 change at WBEZ: More NPR in afternoons"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Niala<\/a>

<\/a> Niala Boodhoo<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s been two years since the esteemed Steve Edwards launched \u201cThe Afternoon Shift\u201d<\/a> amid great ambitions and high hopes of a programming renaissance at WBEZ FM 91.5.<\/a><\/p>\n

As Chicago Public Media\u2019s first new local program in more than five years, the two-hour afternoon talk show was seen as the cornerstone of a grand plan<\/a> to add \u201cmore local service and more local programming\u201d to the station\u2019s daytime lineup under then-president and CEO Torey Malatia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIts arrival signals a new midday at WBEZ,\u201d Steve Johnson wrote in the Chicago Tribune,<\/a> \u201chours between the National Public Radio morning and evening news programs that the station, in the next several years, intends to fill entirely with locally made shows.\u201d<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t quite worked out that way. Edwards is long gone from the station, having traded radio for the rarefied air<\/a> of academia. So is Rick Kogan, who followed as interim host of \u201cThe Afternoon Shift\u201d and held true to Edwards\u2019 vision. And so is Malatia, whose dreams of a local programming powerhouse faded along with the\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0of his uninspired board.<\/p>\n

This week brought another move in that direction when WBEZ announced a change in the second hour of \u201cThe Afternoon Shift,\u201d with news anchor Melba Lara joining Niala Boodhoo as co-host. More significantly, content from NPR and other outside sources would now be added to what had been an entirely local two-hour block.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegular listeners out there may have noticed some changes the past week or so to the 3 o\u2019clock hour of \u2018The Afternoon Shift,\u2019 \u201d Boodhoo told listeners Wednesday. \u201cWe\u2019ve been incorporating national stories from NPR. We\u2019re doing that intentionally. During 3 p.m. hour, the \u2018Afternoon Shift\u2019 team is keeping an eye on the top stories from NPR and the BBC, and the result is a faster paced sound that\u2019s all news local, national and international.\u201d<\/p>\n

Executive producer Justin Kaufmann sees it as \u201ctweaking\u201d the format and quickening the pace, with up to seven segments an hour from the previous four or five.\u00a0\u201cThe goal is to be as relevant as possible to our audience at that time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the latest Nielsen Audio survey, WBEZ ranks 22nd in afternoons with a 1.8 percent share and a cumulative weekly audience of 220,400. That puts it just ahead of Cumulus Media news\/talk WLS AM 890 among overall listeners.<\/p>\n

The other news at WBEZ this week was announcement of an experiment to allow listeners to bypass those annoying quarterly pledge drives by making upfront donations.<\/p>\n

Starting March 6, the station will launch an audio stream that gives qualifying members access to a web version of WBEZ broadcasts without hearing the pledge drive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to say \u2018thank you\u2019 to our loyal members who have stuck with us year in and out with an opportunity to listen to the station they know and love outside of our pledge drives,\u201d Jillian Shepherd, Chicago Public Media membership director, said in a statement. \u201cAnd although we are investing extra resources to pull this off, giving back the trusted news and engaging stories that our listeners look to us for seems like the best reward, maybe even more than a mug.\u201d<\/p>\n

The beta test of the \u201cpledge-free stream\u201d<\/a> will be available to listeners who make a one-time donation of $40 or those who already give $15 a month or more as part of the WBEZ High Fidelity program.\u00a0\u201cThe station will consider the pledge-free stream to be a success if there are a large number of signups and those that do take advantage of the stream are happy with the service,\u201d according to the press release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been two years since the esteemed Steve Edwards launched \u201cThe Afternoon Shift\u201d amid great ambitions and high hopes of a programming renaissance at WBEZ FM 91.5. As Chicago Public Media\u2019s first new local program in more than five years, the two-hour afternoon talk show was seen as the cornerstone of a grand plan to... Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2537"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2561,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions\/2561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}