Marketplace Announces Three Major New Hires
Contact: Brad Robideau
(651) 290-1113
brobideau@americanpublicmedia.org
www.americanpublicmedia.org
Marketplace Announces Three Major New Hires
(Los Angeles, Calif.) March 13, 2009—Marketplace® today announced that veteran public radio journalists Bill Radke, Rod Abid and Deborah Clark will join its portfolio of award-winning business and economics news programs produced and distributed by American Public Media.™
"This is the moment for Marketplace," said JJ Yore, executive producer of Marketplace. "Never since we went on the air more than 20 years ago has the need been greater for informed and accessible reporting on the economy. Bill, Deb and Rod are each pros at creating programming that resonates with stations and their listeners. Adding them to the Marketplace team will make our coverage stronger than ever in the months and years ahead."
Bill Radke is the new host of Marketplace Morning Report,® the popular business newscast that airs each weekday morning on public radio stations nationwide offering listeners a fresh look at business news from a global perspective. Radke will join Steve Chiotakis as one of Marketplace Morning Report's two hosts on April 13. The new host position was created when former Marketplace Morning Report host Scott Jagow became Marketplace's new online host.
Radke brings a distinguished career to Marketplace Morning Report. He joined American Public Media as co-host of Weekend America in 2004. In this role, Radke also developed stories and served as a senior editor for the program. For the past few months, he has worked as a fill-in host for Marketplace Morning Report.
Before coming to American Public Media, Radke was the creator, writer and host of Rewind, a weekly news satire program produced at KUOW 94.9 FM in Seattle, Wash., and distributed by NPR to nearly 140 public radio stations nationwide. At KUOW, Radke was a reporter and Morning Edition host and became the station's news director. While in Seattle, he wrote a weekly news and humor column for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In 2003, Radke published his first book, "Seattle," from Sasquatch Books.
"I wasn't a big Wall Street Journal reader until the last few months," said Radke. "But now, I am hip-deep in business news...and it is gripping. Bad as this economic fallout is, it is also spellbinding and I love translating the story of the century to morning radio listeners."
Rod Abid is the new senior producer of Marketplace Morning Report.
Abid has more than 25 years of experience in public radio. He began his career at KWMU in St Louis as a punk rock DJ and later as a jazz and classical music announcer. Abid later moved to Washington to join the production team at NPR's Morning Edition. Over the next 11 years, he worked on every single NPR News program. In 1995, he joined the NPR Foreign Desk as a roving producer spending time in Bosnia and Kosovo with NPR's team of reporters. Since 2000, Abid has been senior producer of NPR's weekly quiz program, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
"After nine years in comedy, I am excited to join the Marketplace team and return to my first love: the excitement and deadline pressures of daily news coverage," said Abid.
Deborah Clark is the new senior producer of Marketplace Money,® the weekly program hosted by Tess Vigeland that looks at the week's major national and international stories impacting the average listener's wallet.
An award-winning journalist, Clark returns to Marketplace after serving as executive producer of NPR's Day to Day. Clark was on the staff of Marketplace for five years, producing both Marketplace and Marketplace Morning Report. For three seasons, she was senior producer for the public television program, California Connected. Clark also worked as an independent producer for many years, during which time she worked for, among others, the Savvy Traveler,® Sound Money,® Public Radio Weekend (pilot for Weekend America®), and Marketplace. Her biggest project for Marketplace was the two-week, three-show broadcast from China: "The Wild, Wild East: Marketplace goes to China."
"I'm thrilled to be working with Tess Vigeland, who I think is a terrific host," said Clark. "Plus, there is no better time to be growing a show about personal finance than in the middle of the toughest economy most of us have ever seen. There's little else a producer can ask for."