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« How we'll stream, other tech stuff | Cds and Bill DeVille »

Annie Baxter joins the team
 January 18, 2005

Hurray - we have water again! City crews were working overtime to fix the problem and in the meantime we had a couple of porta-potties delivered to the parking garage and someone ordered a few gallons of coffee for us to share. It's a bit like camping in your own office, but of course compared to the outside air we were much toastier than we'd have been in a tent.

We hired a full-time news producer for 89.3 and it's Annie Baxter. Annie has been a reporter at our Collegeville station and came to MPR by way of WBEZ in Chicago where she was an arts reporter and before that a production intern at This American Life. She speaks French and has two M.A.s - in Rhetoric and in Comparative Literature, and all this education has given her a quirky sense of humor and a focused passion for the news. She has a lot of ideas for ways to bring MPR's newsroom into the new 89.3 and we think you'll enjoy getting to know her.

And I know, you want to know when will you get to know her. Steve's answer is "Soon, but not too soon." Some of our new staff had to give two weeks' notice in their previous jobs, and it actually takes a lot of behind-the-scenes work to put a handcrafted station together. Did you know you can actually buy a radio format on the Internet? You buy an entire hard drive pre-loaded with the 600 songs you'll need, and then subscribe to a service that sends you new things to go with it. This is exactly the type of station we don't want to create. So, if you can give us just a little more of your patience...... we will try to live up to your high standards for us. Tell you what --we'll give you blog readers a heads up before we flip the switch.

Nice questions about our plans for the web and for ways listeners can be involved. I've routed them to our group and will post some answers and ideas tomorrow.

Posted by Sarah Lutman at 06:15 PM | Comments (8)

Comments

Very happy to hear about the 'heads up'. : )

Please make it at least 24 hours in advance so I don't miss it. Thanks!

Posted by: InquiringMind47 at January 18, 2005 07:08 PM

Welcome Annie! I'm glad to hear that creative energy is going into the news production, instead of just rebroadcasting top-of-the-hour segments, like they do on KSJN. This is going to be a great station.

There was a lot of worry on the last thread about listening to 89.3 (and aacPlus) on the Mac. FWIW, right now, I'm on my iMac listening to the aacPlus stream that Radio Paradise offers. At 48 kbps, it sounds great -- even better than KEXP's 128 kpbs MP3 stream that I was just listening to a second ago.

Okay, I'm not using iTunes. Instead, I downloaded the open source VLC media player for Mac OS X (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html). You can find other aacPlus streams at tuner2.com. Just a month ago, only half a dozen stations were listed. Now, there's almost 40. aacPlus is where the momentum is. I think 89.3 is wise to invest money, equipment, and energy into aacPlus instead of legacy technology (MP3) which other stations are trying to move away from.

Remember, too, that every dollar that 89.3 saves on bandwidth can be put into DJ's, programming, etc. And aacPlus will allow the station to sound great even for people using modems or low-speed DSL connections.

I have an AirPort Express, so I look forward to iTunes support as much as anybody else. Steve Jobs is committed to the digital TV standard (which includes aacPlus), so it's coming -- just drop Apple a line and let them know that you want it now:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html

Posted by: Brian Dellert at January 18, 2005 08:26 PM

Any consideration of throwing a "Switch ON" party at a bar or somesuch? I know it would mean committing to a hard date (and maybe you're planning on starting in the AM - though Midnight might be fun...).

I would recommend the Triple Rock as the ideal place to do it - they could just set up a few speakers on stage for the broadcast (which I imagine you'd want to do in your own space ;) ), it would be a neat way for the DJs who aren't on the air at the start to hobnob with the public.

If nothing us, maybe we could start a meetup group? Or maybe I'm just feeling filled with love and a need to companionship this morning.

Posted by: Dieter at January 19, 2005 08:22 AM

interesting idea for a 'switch on' party. Other possible venues might include the Turf Club, or a certain polish piano bar that has, in the past, had broadcasts from a 'sparkly gold booth...'

Posted by: brian at January 19, 2005 12:28 PM

Please do NOT do any "news" about American Idol, Survior, et.al. Nothing turns me off faster than all the media outlets acting like these things are newsworthy or interesting.

Posted by: carma at January 20, 2005 05:13 PM

DOWN WITH CLEAR CHANNEL!

I'm jamm'in it down here in Texas via the web and it's great. Keep it up Minnesota Public Radio!

Posted by: wes g at January 24, 2005 04:04 PM

DOWN WITH CLEAR CHANNEL!

I'm jamm'in it down here in Texas via the web and it's great. Keep it up Minnesota Public Radio!

Posted by: wes g at January 24, 2005 04:04 PM

I love the conversational style of Annie's news updates. Keep those up!

Posted by: Petey at January 31, 2005 04:06 PM

 

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