A few months ago, my public radio station (West Virginia Public Broadcasting) received a wonderful opportunity in the form of a grant from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (the non-profit corporation created by Congress in 1967 that has now become the largest single source of funding for public media) and PRX (a leading creator and distributor of public media content, talent and technology including This American Life, The Moth Radio Hour and Reveal).
As the year winds down and everyone starts rushing towards the shiny, nebulous possibilities of 2017, I find myself looking back at 2016 and the moments that made me proud to be a woman in public media… as well as the moments that left me thinking, “Huh, we still have a ways to go, don’t we?”
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Walking to the stage. Walking between guest artist rooms. Walking to get paperwork signed. Show days are busy days for NPR’s Mountain Stage with Larry Groce, a program that turns a series of four or five live performances into a single two-hour radio broadcast for over 175 stations across the nation. As assistant producer, my job is to introduce and announce the program, and just generally make sure the show runs smoothly. In other words, I get my 10,000 steps in long before show day is done. And it was during a recent Mountain Stage walk-around (I would wager the 6,343 step mark) that I found myself getting tapped on the shoulder by a 30-something-old man attending the show taping. Let’s call him Bob.
