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Fresh Air

 
Wikipedia: Fresh Air
 
Fresh Air
Other names Fresh Air from WHYY,
Fresh Air Weekend
Genre Talk radio
Running time ca. 50 min.
Country United States
Languages English
Home station WHYY-FM
Syndicates NPR
Hosts Terry Gross
David Bianculli (Friday)
Dave Davies (guest host)
Directors Roberta Shorrock
Producers Amy Salit
Phyllis Myers
Exec. producers Terry Gross
Danny Miller
Recording studio Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Air dates since 1975
Audio format Stereophonic
Opening theme "Fresh Air"
Website freshair.npr.org
Podcast Podcast site

Fresh Air is a radio talk show hosted by Terry Gross, broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States. As of June 2009, the show was syndicated to 450 stations and claimed 4.5 million listeners.[1] In addition, some stations carry Fresh Air Weekend, a re-programming highlights of the past week's interviews.

Contents

Beginnings

The show began in 1975 at NPR affiliate WHYY-FM in Philadelphia with Judy Blank as host; in September of that year Terry Gross took over as presenter and producer; over thirty years later she remains its chief presenter. The main segment of the show is an extended interview, often of persons in the arts and entertainment field, although other newsmakers, cultural figures, and journalists have been featured. Shorter segments follow the main segment and carry reviews of various cultural and entertainment diversions on a rotating basis. The subjects of the shorter segments include movies, books, stage plays, television programs, as well as recordings of popular music, jazz, and classical music. The program also features commentary from a range of regular contributors.

Background

Most of the program's interviews are recorded on tape and later edited down. As in the case of many such radio programs, guests are often not in the studio during recording often speaking by ISDN telephone lines from a sister station. While nearly all other radio programming now uses digital recording, Fresh Air is still recorded, edited, and played on analog reel-to-reel tape.[citation needed] However, the program's website announced[cite this quote] in 2006 that the aging tapes were now deteriorating and that they would soon begin transferring the thousands of interviews "to a digital format and indexing them." The show usually uses fiber-optic lines to conduct its interviews[citation needed] leading to a superior[peacock term] sound quality. When pressing news requires, it has gone live, such as during the Soviet coup attempt of 1991.

In 1993, NPR, Fresh Air, and Gross were presented with the George Foster Peabody Award with praise for her "probing questions, revelatory interviews, and unusual insights."[2]

In February 2002, when Gross interviewed Gene Simmons of Kiss, Simmons discussed his sexual experimentation with women of all age groups and propositioned Gross in demonstration; according to NPR's web site, Simmons withheld permission to supply transcripts or audio of the interview on their website.[3][4][5]

Fresh Air interviews are generally first aired on the Monday through Thursday shows. The Friday shows are rebroadcasts of past interviews.

The show's theme, "Fresh Air", was composed for the program by Joel Forrester of The Microscopic Septet.

In 2004, Gross published a book of her favorite interviews from the show under the title All I Did Was Ask.[6]

Staff

As of June 2009:[1]

  • Terry Gross – host, co-executive producer
  • Danny Miller – co-executive producer
  • Roberta Shorrock – director
  • Dorothy Ferebee – station services coordinator
  • Amy Salit – producer
  • Phyllis Myers – producer
  • Monique Nazareth – producer
  • Ann Marie Baldonado – producer
  • Sam Briger – producer
  • Joan Toohey-Wesman – producer
  • Jonathan Menjivar – associate producer

References

  1. ^ a b "Fresh Air from WHYY: About the program". Fresh Air. NPR; WHYY. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13. Retrieved on 2009-06-25. 
  2. ^ "The Peabody Award Winners Archive". The Peabody Award. http://www.peabody.uga.edu/archives. Retrieved on 2007-03-13. 
  3. ^ "Leader and Bassist of the Band Kiss, Gene Simmons". Fresh Air. NPR; WHYY. 2002-02-04. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1137499. Retrieved on 2008-01-17. 
  4. ^ Gene Simmons. Interview with Terry Gross. Fresh Air. WHYY; NPR. 4 February 2002. (Interview [Transcript]). Retrieved on 2008-01-17.
  5. ^ Gene Simmons. Interview with Terry Gross. Fresh Air. NPR; WHYY. 4 February 2002. (Interview [Audio]). Retrieved on 2008-01-17.
  6. ^ Gross, Terry (2004). All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 1401300103. 

External links


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Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Fresh Air" Read more