‘GBH News Rooted’ reimagines ‘Basic Black’ as digital-first series, continues focus on Black audience

The most popular segment so far from GBH News Rooted, a new digital-first video and television series geared toward a Black audience, focused on last month’s call for an economic boycott against major companies who rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion commitments following the election of Donald Trump.

During the March 4 segment, host Paris Alston led a conversation about whether the boycott, which galvanized some Black consumers, impacted the targeted companies on the designated Feb. 28 protest day. “It gets us to think about, should this boycott be more than a day? Should it be 48 hours? Should it be 72 hours?” said Imari Paris Jeffries, CEO of the nonprofit Embrace Boston.

Daniel Laurent, CEO of Boston-based clothing company Black Dollar, jumped in. “The Montgomery bus boycott was 13 months,” he said. “We are in a time of so many distractions, people pulling constantly … I think being on code is super important. … If you are not going to go and call your legislators, march, sign petitions, support organizations that do work that you believe in, then do not get in the way. Don’t go out of your way to be a contrarian.”

It was the kind of conversation about economics and politics that’s familiar to Black people, and Alston captured the energy of such debates. Alston injected levity into the serious conversation and offered insights about the topic that drew on her experiences as a Black woman.

The segment is inching towards 500,000 views on YouTube and has drawn almost 3,000 comments. Some commenters described their own efforts to boycott companies. Others agreed that strong protests take time to become more effective. The segment’s success spurred GBH to publish a brief follow-up video based on the YouTube comments.

“Not only have we seen the likes and the views and the comment numbers go up, but we have seen that people are really wanting to be part of the conversation in a productive way,” Alston said in an interview. “I want to be hosting and co-creating a program that I would be interested in watching, that feels relatable, that feels like your friend on the internet, TV or radio. We want to be not only digital first, but also audience-focused. We want to be engaged in a way that makes people want to keep up with whatever we’re doing.”

From ‘Say Brother’ to ‘Basic Black’ to ‘GBH News Rooted’

GBH News Rooted is the latest installment in a lineage of GBH shows focused on Black issues that goes back to Say Brother, which debuted in the summer of 1968 at the tail end of the civil rights movement. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated just a few months earlier. As noted by Boston’s weekly Black newspaper The Bay State Banner, Say Brother quickly found an audience as “a prime-time forum” for discussions about poverty, inequities in education and the rise of the Black Power movement.

Say Brother aired until 1997. The following year, GBH renamed it Basic Black and modernized it for the late 1990s, a golden age for Black media. Say Brother and Basic Black outlasted other public media shows focused on the Black community, such as Black Journal, which debuted on National Educational Television in 1968 and later aired on PBS and WNET in New York before ending in 1977.

Fast forward to the present, and the media landscape is much more splintered and financially challenging. GBH laid off 31 staffers last May, including production staff for Basic Black. Announcing the decision, GBH promised to “reinvent” Basic Black as “digital first programming.”

It also needed a new name, according to Lee Hill, executive editor for GBH News. When Basic Black launched, “‘basic’ at that time had more of a connotation for ‘classic’ and ‘regal,’” Hill told Current. “But that’s not what ‘basic’ means today. If you listen to how young people talk, and how even me and my friends talk, if you call somebody ‘basic,’ that’s not necessarily a compliment.”

Hill worked with GBH’s Digital Video Accelerator program to execute the vision for the new show. GBH News Rooted started rolling out segments on YouTube in November. For TV airings, producers will “button up” the online segments each week into a half-hour show with “fresh toppers” on the news of the day, said Dan Lothian, editor-in-chief of GBH News and The World.

The show will air Tuesday evenings starting April 8, with repeats airing Friday evenings and midday on Sundays. Later this year, GBH will also air an audio version on its Boston radio station as well as sister station CAI, which serves Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

“I’ve always felt that this is an important program to have, not only for the Black community in the Boston area, but for everybody,” Lothian said. “We had a lot of people who were not people of color who enjoyed the program because there was a lot of knowledge, education and entertainment that took place. We really wanted to make sure that when we came back with something that it was expanded more broadly in terms of the kinds of things we would explore.”

Lothian noted that most news and public affairs programs for television launch on broadcast and later get chopped into smaller segments for digital platforms. The digital-first approach for GBH News Rooted is “less risky,” he said.

“With TV shows … you think you have what the audience needs and wants, and then you put it on TV in its polished way, and they may or may not come. And so there’s more risk in that,” he said. “But when you do it this way, you are really giving the audience a chance to understand what it is that you’re doing and what this new concept may be about.”

Lothian said he used to view YouTube and other online platforms as a “door” to get people to a TV, radio station or website. He now thinks GBH should “bring people in and keep them there in that place that they came.” It would be nice if they explored other aspects of GBH, but Lothian said he’s learned to accept people “being part of the family” in the way that works for them.

Listening to what audiences want

Hill said the name GBH News Rooted comes from the program’s goal of centering Black voices from various walks, or “roots,” of life, including people with connections to Africa, the Caribbean and other parts of the world. He thinks of it as an extension of the station’s ongoing efforts to ensure that GBH is producing programs that can appeal to everyone.

“In the concept of building a newsroom without walls, it really calls for us to be constantly listening,” Hill said, noting that GBH projects like “Life After Prison” were based on audience feedback.

During Basic Black’s hiatus, GBH organized six listening sessions across the state and gathered feedback on what Massachusetts residents wanted from a rebooted program. The best-attended session, held at the Springfield headquarters of GBH’s New England Public Media, drew 50 attendees. Others were held at GBH’s headquarters, Martha’s Vineyard — historically a safe haven for Black people — and Brockton, a city that Hill said isn’t reported on enough. The station also held two sessions in Roxbury, a historically Black neighborhood.

The events attracted young and older adults, longtime fans of public media and newcomers who are less familiar with GBH. “There are people who came to these listening sessions who had no concept of Basic Black,” Hill said. “That let us know something good, that we were reaching a new audience. It was an opportunity to have a fresh start with them.”

Hill and his team learned from the events that the program needed a new broadcast time and that Friday evenings alone wouldn’t draw enough viewers. Along with shifting to Tuesdays, GBH News Rooted is primarily focused on getting people’s attention as it posts segments to YouTube.

“We had people of an older generation who definitely were more fans of sitting down and doing appointment television … but we also had young people who said ‘You’re not going to reach me unless you’re on Instagram or YouTube. Those are the places where I am. I’m not going to watch TV. I’m not going to watch anything that’s scheduled television,’” Hill said.

With more than 20 segments on YouTube, GBH is gathering feedback about what resonates. Alston said the most popular topics are also prominent in online discourse, such as the economic boycott, Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show and hair care products used by Black women that contain harmful chemicals.

Alston said she aims to balance topics of national import with issues specific to Boston. A Feb. 24 segment about how Boston’s Haitian community is reacting to threats to their immigration status has more than 50,000 views and more than 1,000 comments.

“When you think of Boston, you don’t necessarily think of its Black communities first, but when you think of Atlanta, Chicago, or Washington, D.C., you do,” Alston said. “It’s important for me to highlight that not only do Black people exist here, but they are part of the diasporic pulse that runs through this entire nation. We are just as connected to any given national issue that is affecting Black communities as people in those other cities.”

Both Hill and Lothian said lessons from GBH News Rooted will inform their approach to other programs, particularly as GBH focuses on new ways to attract audiences. In addition to the relaunch of GBH News Rooted, the station is working on a revamp of the local program Greater Boston.

Meet the new host

Alston joined GBH in 2016 as a digital production assistant. In 2020, she became host of Keep It Social, a digital series, while also working for Boston’s WBUR. She became co-host of GBH’s Morning Edition in January 2022 and held the role until last October.

The transition from radio to television has brought a learning curve for Alston. Hosting GBH News Rooted required watching the clock, engaging with interviewees and taking in production cues from an earpiece. And everything has to look good. “With all that I’m in the back of mind like, ‘Well, how does my hair look right now? Is my makeup okay?’” she said.

And “studio lights are draining,” she said with a laugh. “They’re not that hot or anything, but by the time I’m done taping, ‘I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I had so much energy sort of sucked out of me.’”

Moving forward, GBH News Rooted is stepping away from its former Washington Week–style format driven by a team of journalists. Its varied style includes one-on-one conversations, group discussions and man-on-the-street interviews. GBH also plans to hire an EP for the show.

Alston said GBH News Rooted is designed to be more casual and intimate, like a living room conversation. “It’s kind of in the style of a Red Table Talk, but we don’t have a red table and we’re not talking about all the stuff that they do,” Alston said. (In jest, she agreed that GBH should buy a purple table to match its colors.)

Alston is also keen on getting out of the studio. As host and creator of the ongoing series “A Walk Down the Block,” she interviews people about issues affecting their quality of life. “People are feeling sort of disengaged from their news media, but by nature public media has always been in the community,” she said. “That’s a core foundation of what we do. So for me, it’s about getting out there to have that reflection, but also to connect with people who honestly may not even know who we are.”

For one interview with the owner of a local bakery, Alston put on a hairnet and gloves and got to work with a pastry bag. “We heard that people wanted content that felt timely and relevant,” she said. “They also wanted content that was joyful, that tapped into the infinite resources we have around here that reflect Black intellect … Black culture … and celebrating the Black joy that we see here.”

In another video, she went to Northeastern University’s campus earlier this year to ask students what they thought about the institution altering DEI statements on its website because of the Trump administration’s threats to remove federal funding, which public media stations, including GBH, have also done.

Alston’s personal touch

Lothian points to Alston’s special talent for encouraging people to open up, adding that her approach to interviews will help build the program’s rapport with viewers.

When Alston was co-hosting Morning Edition, Lothian thought she had “a spark about her” that could work with a program that had less structure and wasn’t as “married to the clock.”

“I think of it as gardening,” he said. “I was watering that concept and having conversations with her, and early in our conversations this came up as a possibility.”

Alston’s work on a live show after the Boston Celtics won the NBA Finals last year cemented Lothian’s thinking. “It was rocking and rolling,” he said. “We were all very pleased with that and put it together in a short period of time.” After a debrief of how well it went, Lothian felt Alston needed a new job description.

“I saw additional strengths that she had,” he said. “She has a great personality, and we wanted to see that come out. She also has a passion for these issues.”

Hill said that while he and Alston are at different points in their career, they share a mission to strengthen public media. “We’ve really spent a lot of time and passion thinking about how to make public media better and how to make it more relevant for a broader range of people,” he said.

For her part, Alston said she hopes to grow the audience for GBH News Rooted while elevating conversations that are important to Black audiences.

“It’s hard to satisfy everyone, but we hope that with casting a wide net in terms of where we’re putting this content and meeting people where they are, whether it’s online or it’s on television or on the radio, that we can find ways to speak to multiple people at any given time,” she said. “We want people to turn to us, not exclusively but definitely as a primary source for content for Black people.”