WGBH is introducing a new voice to its weekday morning lineup
"Our job is not to turn down the volume. Our job is to clear away the noise and have more signals."
WGBH listeners will notice a change in the station’s weekday morning schedule beginning Monday morning.
The Boston public radio station is debuting “1A” — a national, listener-focused news and politics show based out of Washington, D.C. — in the 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. time slot, replacing “The Takeaway” and leading into the three-hour “Boston Public Radio” block hosted by Jim Braude and Margery Eagan.
“The fact that we’re able to complement a distinctly, uniquely Bostonian voice with a larger national presence that can also have Boston reflected in it is fantastic,” Joshua Johnson, the host of “1A,” told Boston.com in an interview.
The live WAMU show replaced the nationally syndicated Diane Rehm Show in 2017 and is now carried by more than 340 stations. With its latest expansion, Johnson hopes to increasingly incorporate the views and perspectives of Bostonians — and New Englanders at large — into the program through its active audience engagement.
“We literally cannot do ‘1A’ without you,” Johnson said, encouraging listeners to pitch stories and share their views over the phone, email, social media, or their voice-recording mobile app.
“We wouldn’t come to any community, including one that is as rich and as intelligent and outspoken and historic and as valuable as Boston, just for you to hear us,” he said. “That would be a waste of your and our time. The reason we wanted to come to Boston is because we’re trying to hear you. We need you to be a part of ‘1A.'”
WGBH will run only the first hour of the live-taped show, which goes for a full two hours nationally. In the 10 a.m. time slot, “1A” supplants what has for years been the first of WGBH’s two rebroadcasts of “The Takeaway,” a nationally focused WNYC news show that recently replaced its longtime host amid accusations of workplace harassment. “The Takeaway” will continue to air during the 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. time slot on WGBH.
Johnson says his show has a similar “broad-spectrum” focus as “The Takeaway” — policy, politics, technology, pop culture — but with less of a magazine-style format, generally devoting more time to fewer subjects during the course of any given episode.
“We will do breaking stories, but we prefer to talk about stories that have been out for long enough for people to have generated intelligent questions and thoughtful responses,” he said.
WGBH’s local public radio rival, WBUR, already airs an hourlong “1A” rebroadcast at 11 p.m. However, Kate Zachry, the news director for WGBH, says the new morning live broadcast will give their listeners a live source for national news, in addition to the radio station’s live local coverage.
“89.7 listeners care as much about what is taking place on the national stage as they do about what is happening across Massachusetts,” Zachry said in a statement. “Today, the news cycle is constant and breaking news happens all day. 1A’s approach allows for in-the-moment coverage and conversation about national issues that are top of mind for our listeners.”
The name draws from two inspirations, both of which speak to the show’s central mission and format.
“‘1A’ stands for the First Amendment, which is the basic rules of the road for how we interact with each other in a democracy,” Johnson said. “It’s sort of the basic driver’s manual for being a citizen in a democracy, and if ever there was a time when the freedoms of the First Amendment were being exercised and examined, it’s now. So a lot of what our show is built on is just creating space for people to express themselves and speak freely.”
But it also harkens back to his days as a public radio broadcaster working in partnership with the Miami Herald, which called its front page “1A.”
“Those are the kind of stories we tend to do — the big front-page headline stories that everyone is talking about, but need to be talked about more deeply,” Johnson said. “And then those below-the-fold stories that aren’t the top stories, but they’re interesting. They’re reflective of something about us. They captivate our attention. They’re insightful or surprising — or fun. We make room for that, too.”
While the show’s focus expands far beyond politics (Johnson mentions their Mother’s Day series and the time the rapper Common free-styled live on air among his favorite moments), he is gearing up to bring their unique approach to the Democratic presidential primaries and general election. Having launched in the wake of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Johnson has experience covering heated topics and says his show’s job is to create space for a “raw, but respectful” conversation that honors the fact that “people are fired up about things for very legitimate reasons.”
“Our job is not to turn down the volume,” he said. “Our job is to clear away the noise and have more signals.”
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