Public Radio International(R) to Premiere Open Source from PRI

Public Radio International (PRI) and Open Source Media Inc. announce plans to launch the first radio program to embrace bloggers, Web enthusiasts, and the Internet transformation of media. Open Source from PRI is a lively, hour-long, on-air conversation designed to capture "the sound of the Web" with the popular Christopher Lydon engaging callers, e-mailers, and bloggers from around the world in a range of fascinating topics. Open Source will launch Monday, May 30, in Boston on WGBH Radio 89.7, airing Monday - Thursday at 7 p.m. Starting July 4, PRI will feed the program live nationwide, making it available to its 727 affiliate stations for broadcast and simulcast streaming, and offering additional feeds for stations in other time zones.

Open Source aims to begin conversations on the Web each day and invite a worldwide audience to contribute topics, guests, and information that advances understanding of issues and ideas. Lydon says, "My ambition, with producer Mary McGrath, is to thread the seeming chaos of the Web into a coherent skein of ideas and argument. We want to launch the smartest, most various, wide-open, irresistible, and democratic conversation anyone's ever been invited to join, in any format. The Internet transition we're living through is a boundless opportunity. It extends the rim of the roundtable and the range of the give-and-take to the whole planet."

Public Radio International, which in recent years has helped develop and syndicate some of public radio's most innovative programs -- including PRI's The World, This American Life, Marketplace(R), PRI's Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, and From the Top(R) -- will also assist Lydon's production company, Open Source Media Inc., in developing the online elements of the venture. Public Interactive LLC, a Boston-based Web services company owned by PRI, is designing the means to manage the ongoing Web dialog.

In addition to airing nationwide on public radio stations, Open Source will be available for streaming via station websites. "Stations carrying the program will become entry points for a worldwide community of participants," says Debra May Hughes, chief operating officer of Public Interactive and the person overseeing design of the Web components. "People log onto the Web at night the way they used to turn on the television set. We want to connect them to radio, and radio to them, while they are online."

Open Source from PRI also represents a unique production partnership between Open Source Media Inc. and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Executive Vice Chancellor Frederick Sperounis says, "This university wants to stay on the cutting edge of technology and the use of media to further an informed, inclusive community. We are thrilled to be joining with Chris and PRI to make this bold concept possible." The university's public radio station, WUML, will air Open Source at 7 p.m., Monday - Thursday, providing a second tune-in opportunity for Boston area listeners.

The new show will be concertedly international in its voices and its breadth of interest and angles, Lydon says. "A big part of our ambition is to get off the island, so to speak. We want to break out of the feedback loop of American media. The peril of war, disease, hunger, and climate change -- but also the pleasure of cultural connections and the promise of science and medicine, for example -- all have global dimensions. And so does the Internet, a brilliant device for conversation that has the whole world in its Web."

A Boston native and Yale alumnus, host Christopher Lydon is, as artist/scholar John Perry Barlow says, "a wizard at getting the brilliant to speak brilliantly." With producer Mary McGrath, formerly the science producer at the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and The Christian Science Monitor, Lydon co-created The Connection, widely cited as the smartest, most original public radio talk show in America. He has been a distinctive voice in print, television, radio, and the blogosphere for more than 30 years. He covered city politics in the 1960s and presidential politics for The New York Times, from the Washington Bureau, in the 1970s. For nearly 15 years, he was the anchor of The Ten O'Clock News, a memorable mix of culture, politics, and interviews on WGBH-TV, public television in Boston.

Lydon is currently a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Center for Economic and Civic Opinion at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. A pioneer audio blogger credited with the first pod-cast, he has posted a long series of original interviews on his website, Christopher Lydon Interviews. His Blogging of the President, 2004 website was praised in Vanity Fair as being "... to political blogdom what Samuel Johnson and his fellow members of the Club were to London, only without the port and cold mutton."

About Public Radio International(R)

PRI is public radio's leading source for innovative programming and audio content. The Minneapolis-based network provides over 400 hours of programming each week, content that is broadcast and streamed online by its 727 public radio station affiliates nationwide, who reach 31 million listeners each week. PRI is the managing partner of the satellite radio company American Public Radio LLC, established with Chicago Public Radio(R) and WGBH Radio Boston. PRI's cultural programming is available via XM Public Radio. Its news and information programming is available via Sirius Satellite Radio.

Source: Public Radio International

CONTACT: Dan Jensen of PRI, +1-612-330-9212, or djensen@pri.org

Web site: http://www.pri.org/

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