Programs/Content
Why APM’s ‘Wits’ didn’t make it
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There are lessons for everyone in public media from the rise and abrupt fall of the variety show.
System/Policy
American Public Media Group lays off 10 in newsroom, cancels ‘Wits’
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The changes complete a planned reorganization first revealed earlier this month.
Programs/Content
Wits introduces social club in advance of fourth-season launch
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American Public Media’s Wits is introducing a “Social Club” for fans as producers prepare to launch the show’s fall season. For $35, fans become members for the fall 2013 and spring 2014 seasons and gain early access to tickets for live performances of the variety show, hosted by John Moe and recorded in St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater. They also receive a 10-percent discount on up to four tickets per show and other perks. “Social media has been embedded into Wits’s DNA, so a social club seemed like a natural fit,” APM spokesperson Tara Schlosser told Current.
Programs/Content
Wits to deliver 10 new episodes this season for nationwide carriage
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The fourth season of the Minnesota Public Radio-produced St. Paul variety show Wits, which piloted as an MPR-only broadcast, will be the first debuting in national distribution. All MPR News stations carry the show, as well as “more than a dozen” other stations, according to MPR spokesperson Tara Schlosser. The season premiere, featuring Wait, Wait . .
Programs/Content
New youth-flavored variety entries move genre out of its Prairie Home
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Once thought to have been left for dead after the vaudeville era, variety shows have re-entered the public radio reinvention conversation — and it doesn’t take Guy Noir to find out why.
Programs/Content
Wits: Writers banter, tweeters tap in new MPR variety show
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After a four-show trial run last spring, Minnesota Public Radio is mounting another season of Wits, its concept for a next-generation stage-show broadcast pairing smart, literary humor with contemporary music and powered in part by social media. For the season’s opener, March 25, host John Moe welcomes comedian Patton Oswald and musician Grant Lee Phillips to the stage of MPR’s F. Scott Fitzgerald Theatre, the St. Paul home of A Prairie Home Companion. That performance of Wits will be live-tweeted, webcast with video on Ustream.net, and recorded for statewide radio broadcast. Lineups for subsequent shows, monthly through June 24, will feature pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman, comedian Sandra Bernhard and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman.