New KPFA morning show

New KPFA Morning Show

December 17, 2010

For Immediate Release

KPFA Set To Launch New Morning Show With Diverse All-Volunteer Staff

Daily One-Hour Program With Local Emphasis Will Join Al-Jazeera News and Democracy Now! In Revamped Drive-Time Lineup

Berkeley-Radio station KPFA (94.1-FM), the Pacifica Foundation's Northern California outlet, is bringing back its Morning Show next week, anchored by veteran programmers from the station's unpaid staff together with other Bay Area progressive journalists.


The restored one-hour Morning Show will run every weekday at 8:00am, filling out a revamped drive-time lineup that includes Al-Jazeera English news at 6:00am, and Democracy Now!, the award-winning national news magazine at 7:00 and 9:00 am. The Morning Show will focus primarily on local Bay Area news and culture, while incorporating diverse voices from communities marginalized in the mainstream media.

"The Morning Show is part of the local landscape," said Adrienne Lauby, one of the unpaid programmers putting the show together. "It helps cross-pollinate activists and cultural workers and brings critical information to people as they start their day. I'm thrilled our all-volunteer host teams could bring it back to KPFA's air."



The show's rotating hosts will include:


--Tara Dorabji, who has co-hosted La Onda Bajita Friday evenings on KPFA for five years and currently runs arts education programs for youth in disenfranchised communities in San Francisco and Oakland

--Leslie Stovall, who first appeared on Bay Area radio with KMEL-FM in 1985 and served up music and
stimulating topics for twelve years at KBLX-FM in San Francisco

--Dr. Peter Phillips, professor of sociology at Sonoma State University, President of the Media Freedom
Foundation and long-time director of Project Censored, a unique investigative news project that enlists students and faculty from more than thirty colleges and universities to expose media censorship and under-covered stories and Mickey Huff, associate professor of history at Diablo Valley College, the new director of Project Censored and a Media Freedom Foundation board member.

--Anthony Fest, a KPFA News Department producer since 1994, and a current host of KPFA's Sunday and holiday evening newscasts.

--Adrienne Lauby, a member of the collective producing Pushing Limits, KPFA's ground-breaking disability rights program for seven years and a co-coordinator of outreach and fundraising for Free Speech Radio News, a global grassroots news-gathering team serving Pacifica and hundreds of other community stations.

"A new day is dawning at KPFA," said Dorabji. "As volunteers, we are committed to bringing the back the Morning Show and keeping the heart of KPFA alive".

"We aim to deliver professional radio that informs, entertains and interacts." Stovall added. "We hope to illuminate what makes the Bay Area so special and vibrant."

The show will begin on the heels of an emergency fund drive, which produced a strong and gratifying show of support from listeners who want to help KPFA survive a severe financial crisis. Recently in an effort to bring expenses into line with revenue, seven KPFA staff members took voluntary layoffs and two staff members, the former hosts of the Morning Show, were laid off involuntarily.



A new general manager is expected to begin work at KPFA in the next month.