Former KPCC host Madeleine Brand, who left the Los Angeles station in September 2012, will host a new midday show on competitor KCRW.
Brand will join the station in mid-September to begin work on the hourlong program, which will begin airing shortly thereafter, she told Current.
Madeleine Brand (Photo: KPCC)
“I’m really excited and I love KCRW,” she said. “I’ve been a big fan for many years, so I’m really happy to work with them.”
Brand’s show, yet to be named, will be a host-driven, “news-based cultural show” in the vein of the show she hosted on KPCC, she said. She’ll return to the air as a solo host, as she was before the addition of a co-host to her KPCC show.
“It’s going to be a show that is set in Southern California, but it’s an aspirational place,” she said. “So what’s news here and of interest here culturally and in terms of news and trends is of interest to the rest of nation and the world.”
KCRW’s goals are “exactly right for the future of public radio,” she said. “They’re trying to get a mixture of news and culture that is going to be key in attracting younger audiences, and I’m really happy to be a part of that.”
The exact airtime has not been determined. Last year, Brand told Los Angeles Magazine that she had been discussing a 9 a.m. show with KCRW. That would have put the new show opposite Take Two, the successor to her KPCC show, and displaced KCRW’s morning music show, Morning Becomes Eclectic. But Brand told Current that the show is likely to air after noon, a time now occupied by news shows.
The station will hire “a number of new producers” and develop collaboration among the show’s other talk programs, wrote General Manager Jennifer Ferro in an email to KCRW staff. The blog LA Observed posted Ferro’s email yesterday. Brand’s show will be the station’s first new daily program since the launch of To the Point in 2001.