BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON - Yesterday, the public radio program Marketplace turned twenty years old. The half-hour weekday program has been bringing United States audiences financial news and information each evening on several hundred public radio stations since 1989. Besides more significant honors, it has been on my ideal radio schedule since that feature was created in 1998.
Interestingly, this means that I have been listening to public radio for nearly twenty years. Previously a commercial radio listener, I happened to flip to FM on an analog radio when the pre-game show for a Seattle Mariners game began on KIRO 710 AM in the summer of 1989, which started for home games at 6:30 pm. KUOW 94.9 FM just happened to be on the same dial position on that band, and I heard news programming, so I kept listening. The program was Marketplace; KUOW was one of the early stations to adopt the program, and it has been in that time slot nearly the entire two decades except for a brief period when it was moved to 7 pm.
The early Marketplace was a very different program than it is today, much closer to the Nightly Business Report in content. One of the first shows I listened to happened to run a story on the ill-fated Southern Pacific Santa Fe (SPSF) railroad merger, and that convinced me that I should listen every day. It has been a staple of my evening listening ever since--and as a result of Marketplace, I started listening to KUOW in other time slots and was soon introduced to Weekend Edition Sunday, All Things Considered, and the BBC Newshour.
While the show has changed, from the beginning it was intended to have a consumer focus, so even the stock and market information given has always been aimed at the casual investor with a 401(k) plan, not a finance professional. In fact, the case could be made that a regular listener to Marketplace may be the only non-finance professional that can manage their own diversified investments.
It is amazing to me that I have been listening to that show for nearly twenty years, and even more amazing to me that I am one of a relative handful of people that still remembers Michael Creedman as Marketplace host. Jim Angle, quintessential host David Brancaccio (with the longest tenure, about ten years from 1993 to 2003), David Brown, and Kai Ryssdal have followed.
Thank you to all that have worked on Marketplace over the years. May the show and my public radio listening continue indefinitely.
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2 comments:
i think you have a typo in your first paragraph. Marketplace was created in 1989, not 1998.
Marketplace was created in 1989, but my Ideal Radio Schedule was created in 1998. A bit of re-writing should have clarified those dates.
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