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Minnesota Public Radio Invites Live Audiences to Participate in Taping its New Show, In the Loop
November 7, 2006
WHAT: In the Loop, hosted by Jeff Horwich
TOPIC: "Diplomatic Overtures"
WHEN: Thursday, November 16, 2006, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
WHERE: The UBS Forum at Minnesota Public Radio, 480 Cedar Street, St. Paul
TUNE IN: In the Loop will air on Minnesota Public Radio News & Information stations, including KNOW 91.1 FM in the Twin Cities, at 9 p.m. Friday, November 17 and again at 6 p.m. Sunday, November 19
TICKETS: FREE; registration is requested. Guests can go online at www.mpr.org and find In the Loop on the Programs menu. Refreshments are served in The UBS Forum lounge before the show.
(St. Paul, Minn.) November 7, 2006—Minnesota Public Radio announces the next live, in-studio recording date of its new monthly program, In the Loop, for Thursday, November 16, 2006 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
In the Loop: "Diplomatic Overtures"
Whether the setting is North Korea, Congress, or your family's Thanksgiving table, the delicate art of negotiation and compromise is very much on people's minds these days. For its next show, In the Loop explores the concept of "diplomacy" from a number of surprising viewpoints. As always, the audience in The UBS Forum will be a part of the action, as will this episode's house band, The Smarts.
Through interviews, music, humor, and commentary, we'll explore questions like: When does diplomacy work? When does it make sense to ditch it? Why is the diplomacy of parenting just a little like dealing with North Korea? And could "Minnesota Nice" help aid our nation's diplomatic efforts?
About In the Loop
In the Loop, dubbed "the show for people who talk back to their radios," is hosted by former MPR business news reporter Jeff Horwich and covers a single topic through multiple lenses, including the perspective of the listener.
In the Loop typically focuses on an ordinarily sobering subject, such as crime, immigration or politics, and applies irreverent humor and alternative points of view.
"In the Loop gets rid of the furrowed brow of news," says Horwich. "Our goal is to push the boundaries of public radio, opening the way for new voices, new attitudes, new radio techniques and an entirely new way of relating to our listeners."
Though in one sense a live performance, In the Loop also provides an opportunity for audiences to see radio in the making, as well as offers a continuous "feedback loop" for the audience to shape the show's content.
Program development for each show begins with a brainstorming discussion with the show's producers and audience collaborators in a local pub or restaurant. Some news features and other segments are pre-recorded and played for the in-studio audience. Audience members are also asked to share their own stories relative to the topic. The entire evening of live events is then edited the following day for an hour-long radio broadcast that evening.
Highlights from previous episodes of In the Loop:
- The May 2006 show, "Immigration," partnered with local theater company Teatro del Pueblo to offer up the spoof A Prairie Home Compadre, including an important message from the Salsa Advisory Board and a sketch with Guy Noche.
- The October 2006 show on voting featured two professional voiceover artists, Susan Fuller and Gary Groomes, who gave a behind-the-scenes look at political advertising voice work and a coaching session for volunteers from the audience.
- To tell the story of rising crime in North Minneapolis, In The Loop invited local hip hop artist Shakademic to blend his rhymes with the recorded voices of young men from his neighborhood in a live performance.
- Last year's holiday show traced a donated cow from its origins in the charitable instincts of a Minnesota family to a muddy village in Romania—where the gift was more complicated than you might think.
- A show about transportation invited a bicycle activist and the manager of the local Hummer dealership to our studios to seek common ground.
In the Loop is an extension of MPR's Public Insight Journalism initiative, a method of gathering the public's huge store of knowledge, creativity and insight to help create the strongest and most relevant coverage of news and social issues.
"In the Loop connects the audience to the production so that MPR can provide a type of journalism that isn't about the usual perspectives from the usual suspects," said Michael Skoler, executive director of the Center for Innovation in Journalism at American Public Media, which developed the Public Insight Journalism model. "The goal of each show is to take an important issue and, working with the audience, profoundly shift our way of looking at it. Often we do that by bringing voices to the conversation that never make it in mainstream news shows."
Ideas for the new show emerged out of a flurry of creative brainstorming sessions at MPR just before the launch of The Current.
"We were really itching to try something new and explore where public radio goes next," said Horwich. "And that impulse came along at the same time as Public Insight Journalism was giving us new ways to think about interacting with an audience. In the Loop is what we all hope the next generation of public radio will look like."
"[The] pieces feel like stories all of us have bouncing around in our heads but haven't ever found a place to put them," said Rex Sorgatz, founder of MNSpeak.com, reviewing In the Loop's pilot episode. "It's simply great radio."
Press Contacts:
Jennifer Haugh
Minnesota Public Radio
651-290-1369
jhaugh@mpr.org
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