Every other month, Nashville Public Radio hosts either a News Briefing or Classical Conversation luncheon event at our station. The News Briefing is a chance for listeners of WPLN 90.3FM (the news station) and local community leaders to visit the station, meet local hosts, hear first about upcoming projects and, most importantly, to ask questions and provide feedback directly to the station.
Nashville Public Radio was looking for a chance to bring listeners, potential and new members and experts in certain fields into our station. To accomplish these goals, we invited members of the community who fit these categories to join us at our station to enjoy lunch and hear from a small panel of our on-air reporters and hosts. The News Briefing features strictly reporters and hosts from our news station, WPLN 90.3fm. The Classical Conversation features on-air hosts from our classical station, WFCL 91Classical.
The events are held roughly every other month on a weekday from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., with a guarantee that we will stop no later than 1 p.m. in order to get attendees out the door on time. The first thirty minutes of the event often entails a brief tour of the station as guests make their way back to our largest studio, Studio C, in which the event takes place. There, guests pick up their boxed lunches and mingle in Studio C with members of our staff.
At 12 p.m. the event begins with introductions and updates on upcoming events, then the panel begins to discuss upcoming projects such as the importance of a new healthcare reporting position, a new limited-series podcast launching or a more complete focus on local arts. This segment often includes short audio pieces from segments the team is working on, providing attendees the first chance to hear such segments and leaving them with a sense of exclusivity. The remainder of the time is spent opening up the floor to questions and comments from attendees. This portion of the event becomes the most vital to the event. It is a chance for our staff to answer questions from the community, but more importantly, it is a chance for us to hear the ideas and concerns from these community members.