Thursday, July 25, 2019

WFYI GOES “ALL IN” ON NEW STATEWIDE NEWS PROGRAM • HAWK MENDENHALL SET TO RETIRE • MORE NIELSEN SPRING RATINGS


WFYI will soon make radio history in Indiana. 

This fall WFYI will be the hub for the first statewide daily news/talk program All IN

The new program is a major commitment for the primary sponsor, IPB News, an offshoot of Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations (IPBS), an organization the represents the state’s public radio and television stations.

Matt Pelsor
The host of All IN is Matt Pelsor, a reporter and producer at WFYI. Pelsor is a native Hoosier.

IPBS is backing the creation and the initial years of All IN with the support of the Lilly Foundation.  Lilly has pledged $1.3 million for the project. CPB may also be involved. WFYI is the fiduciary and production center for All IN.

The show is already on WFYI two days a week. You can hear the beta episodes here.

The plan moving forward is for All IN is to air Monday – Friday from 1pm – 2pm on WFYI beginning September 30th. On that date, All IN will be available to public stations across the state. Several stations have made commitments to air All IN. They will be announced soon.

WFYI Chief Content Officer Matt Shafer Powell is excited about the new program:

“The show will be rooted in hearing from and about people of Indiana. It will have a strong sense of place – what it means to be a Hoosier.”

Shafer-Powell says All IN is similar in structure to 1A. It is basically a talk and interview program with three segments. Because the show is live, quick decisions can be made about topics depending on the day’s news:

 “We’ll have the full resources of IPB News to help deliver up-to-date information from all over Indiana, and we have a lifelong Hoosier with keen insights and natural curiosity that we think will keep listeners fully engaged.”

HAWK MENDENHALL TO RETIRE AT END OF 2019

Hawk Mendenhall
One of public radio’s most charismatic and influential programmers and content creators, Hawk Mendenhall, has announced that he will retire as Associate Director for Broadcast and Content at KUT and KUTX in Austin. 

Mendenhall started working at KUT in 2001.

During the past two decades, Mendenhall has quarterbacked several notable initiatives at KUT. 

He led the effort to create KUTX, a very popular full-time AAA station. This allowed KUT to switch to a full-time NPR News/Talk schedule.

Mendenhall had a major impact on KUT’s news capacity. He helped launch Texas Standard, a statewide daily news magazine. 

Debbie Hiott, General Manager of KUT/KUTX praised Mendenhall in a press release:

“Most important of all, Hawk has led the way in creating the sound and tone that lets anyone who tunes into our stations know that they are listening to Austin, Texas – with all of the fun, storytelling, creativity and weirdness that entails.”

SPRING 2019 NIELSEN AUDIO RATINGS FOR GRAND RAPIDS, BURLINGTON & TUCSON





Grand Rapids, known as “GR” to locals, has always been considered a great radio town. GR is the home of one of the nation’s best Contemporary Christian (CCM) stations WCSG. There are no satellite delivered hosts on WCSG.  The station is aggressively live, local and involved.


GR also has a mystery radio station  Hometown WGVU-FM. WGVU-FM has under-performed for many years. In a perfect world, they would do what WAER is doing in Syracuse:  Cut the crap during the prime weekday hours and switch to News/Talk. 

WAER did this and almost doubled their AQH share. Michigan Radio’s repeater WVGR is a terrific station, but WGVU-FM can play a larger role in GR.



Vermont Public Radio’s News channel is one of the most successful NPR News/Talk stations in the U.S. However, they seem to have the same “news fatigue” flu that is being felt elsewhere.

The Burlington-Plattsburg metro is a geographically large market. 

In some ways this explains why North Country Public Radio (WSLU) from far-north Canton, New York shows up in the book. NCPR has oodles of repeater and translator signals.




NPR News/Talk KUAZ AM/FM continues to build listening in Tuscon.

We added AAA KCXI to the chart even though they haven’t subscribed to the Nielsen Audio ratings for several years.   



KCXI is one of the best "community" stations around. 

They evolved from being a "hippie dippy" Pacifica-ish station and have become a factor in the local music scene and community in general. 

Check them out here.

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