Oregon Media Insiders

My choice would be to move Kristian Foden-Vencil to Colin's position and leave April at Morning Edition.

Meanwhile, OPB is deliberately wiping out as much NPR content as possible.

You won't hear the theme music for Morning Edition unless you wake at 5am and you won't hear the All Things Considered theme except at 4pm.

Otherwise, OPB announcers talk right over the top of the hour, clobbering the entire identity of the newscast. OPB is so arrogant they have their local readers announcing NPR's teases instead of letting the NPR hosts actually host their own show.

I agree with a poster I read here a month or so ago: It's like having Jeff Gianola and Kelly Day read in the intro to 60 Minutes while never hearing the clock tick.

Isn't the theme music there for a reason? Doesn't it help set the tone and the identity of the program? C'mon OPB. Get over yourselves. Let the local hosts read local stuff and let the national hosts do their jobs.

Will Baer still host the QuickTake Northwest pdocast (http://www.opb.org/programs/podcasts/index.php) after she changes jobs?

Does that mean we will hear Little Britain style radio comedy in the near future?

I didn't know you could be in the closet when you had a "britccent".

I mean the ladies melt ... and for that matter, so do the men. There's little cuter than a British lady. That's my position on the matter, and I'm stickin' to it!

Since the two in question are gents, then I'll leave it to the ladies. I do, however, find Matt Davis's delicate sense of humor just as singular as his alleged charm.

Samuel John Klein, a/k/a ZehnKatzen
samuel.klein@gmail.com or zehnkatzen@gmail.com
graphically involved at http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com

I feel an odd loss here.
April was as much of my morning as my coffee and shaving cream.
I enjoyed her gentle voice.
I will miss that.

Here's hoping there's fewer odd pauses, mispronunciations and general discombobulation, now that KFV is on board.

It's totally corporate. It's supported by suckers who have no idea what goes on there. It's dedicated to mediocrity. It has a history of union-busting. It programs for 70 year olds who write checks. The new CEO is there long enough to pad his resume and move on. Try supporting TRULY local public broadcasting like KBOO or KMHD or KPSU. You don't have to live in Lake Oswego to like them.

Cut the staff at OPB Radio some slack! They are dedicated beyond words to providing an extensive news service. They take their roles of radio journalists and as radio hosts very seriously, but like everyone they have to work within a business model. LIke it or not...radio is a business,folks!
Yeah, OPB isn't some thousand watt free-wheeling college radio station, programmed for a few hundred people on some liberal arts campus.
OPB is a pretty huge non-profit media source that isn't allowed to air commercials,(yeah, yeah, don't bother arguing with me about that!) but does have to maintain tranmitters, repeaters,all kinds of equipment, a physical plant, pay huge fees to NPR and other content providers...oh and pay a staff of over a hundred people.
Remember OPB reaches most of the state and a large part of Washington. That's a lot of broadcast hardware to keep running and a pretty diverse listening audience to keep at least somewhat happy! Helloooo...Pendleton isn't Portland!
I'm not saying that those other stations don't have their place, but I do beleive that OPB-radio is on a bit of a shakedown cruise. It seems like they are trying to find the right combination of local and national news programming while trying to maintain that NPR connection. I DO know that public radio stations across the country are doing the same thing, since streaming and podcasts are making it more and more difficult for the individual stations to have a unique voice and presence.
As for OPB, I miss Oregon Considered. I liked listening to Allison Frost and Beth Hyams on that show. And, I'll agree with some of the comments above. I don't really enjoy Think Out Loud, but I do love the concept and I think (OK, HOPE) that it will rise to it's potential.
Cut them some slack. They are doing the best they can and are trying to provide us with some new services. On their WORST day, they are still better than 99% of commercial radio!

I DETEST listening to that awful grinding, whining Foden-Vencil on my morning commute. He sounds like he needs a throat lozenge and a massage. It's like having a pencil stabbed in my eye. I'm going to books on tape. I just can't bear it without Baer.

One more "use caution" in reference to a crash on a two-lane highway on a barely-used mountain pass and I'm throwing my radio in the trash! KFV (not to be confused with KFC, which actually has some flavor) is terrible. He stumbles way more than April ever did, he can't speak conversationally, he appears to have no sense of local geography, he's BORING...I'm just so sad at the demise of my morning news broadcast! I will no doubt be less informed than I used to be now that I can't stand to listen to OPB -- but since I'll be avoiding KFV, at least I will be less cranky in the morning!

Aw, c'mon... he's really not bad. As I have said before, take a listen sometime to KLCC's local hosts, and soon Baer and Foden-Vencil will look like Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep. How I wish that was an exaggeration, but alas, it gets far, far worse than OPB's hosts.

Foden-Vencil was great as an infrequently heard voice on OPB. I enjoyed occasionally hearing his quirky accent.

As a morning host, he's not nearly quick enough on his feet (or mouth, as the case may be), and his voice is grating on my nerves. I agree with UGH that he sounds like he's whining.

I miss April. So soft and pleasant.

I'm pro Christian. I think April has a nice tone of voice and lovely personality, but she just wasn't fluid when she spoke live, with lots of pauses, mispronunciations, and sentences that derailed at the end. She will do better in prerecorded settings, assuming she has the skills to be a field reporter. I'm a sucker for a British accent, and I think Christian should be pretty fluid while speaking live, so this ought to be a good move. Also, he has a great personality, and he is by far the funniest person ad libbing during pledge drive. My beef is with Beth Hyams, the afternoon host. She is technically proficient, but her voice is the opposite of April's: very tense and almost scolding in tone.

Regarding the "OPB is corporate" commenter, that's an inane criticism. Have you listened to KBOO? First, it's format is so all over the place that it's a total crap shoot as to what you'll hear (e.g., it broadcasts in Spanish on weekends, drone music one hour, a show dedicated to abolishing prisons the next, etc.). Second, as far as KBOO public affairs programming goes, it's mostly a bunch of vaguely informed (possibly high) lefties riffing on this theme or that. Who needs original reporting, when we can talk about the military industrial complex or how great bikes are? My politics are left/liberal, but nearly all of KBOO's content is too "rah, rah" and detached from the reality based community for me. The little original reporting it does do during its newscast is pretty bush league.

Ditching the Performance Today (the classical music show that used to air mid-mornings) was a great move, but I wish OPB would ditch all of its music programming and do all public affairs. Every time that Celtic music program comes on I want to shoot myself. OPB and NPR excel at public affairs and spoken word programming, and it's the only radio source in Portland for high quality news programming (right-wing or left-wing ranting on the AM doesn't count).

I think OPB keeps the music as a part of their mission to provide rural parts of the state with diverse programming, but it's time to recognize that it's the Portland metro media market that pays the bills and makes up the vast majority of listeners. In an internet era, folks in La Grande can get their Afropop fix in places other than the radio, and then the rest of us can hear something interesting if we happen to be driving on a Saturday evening. The flagship NPR stations in LA and SF have both ditched music and focused on more locally produced public affairs programming, with great success. I wish OPB would do the same; there's a lot of great public radio news content out there that they're not airing.

This concludes my OPB radio rant.

I found my way to this thread Googeling "Kristian Foden-Vencil."

OPB has their exhausting pledge drive going on once again, and they had dead air again! Last week they were off air for half an hour in the wee hours.

Back to KFV... he has the worst radio voice Ive ever heard. It's a joke. Unlistenable to me. I turn him off, becuase he turns me off. There was April Bear... and now we have his voice sqeaking at us in the early hours?

About the music breaks... I actually wrote to Morning Edition wondering what the heck had happened. The first "music" break is mind boggleing. They wrote me back saying it wasnt them and to get in touch with the local NPR station. OPB doesn't listen to itself.

I've always enjoyed April Baer's voice--it's pleasant. But about two years ago something changed. All of the sudden there was a steady flow of pauses, fumbles, and overdone/forced inflection (everyone else seems to focus on *what* they are reading, while April Baer seems to focus too much on *how* she is reading). I find it endlessly distracting, and had to stop listening. This isn't meant to be insulting to her; I just don't think live radio suits her well.

To be honest, I don't really care who reads the news. All I ask for is competent delivery, and Kristian can do that.

He's been MIA in the mornings. What's the deal?

April is filling in while Kristian is on vacation.

John Bell
Associate Director of Membership
On-air, on-line and Event
Oregon Public Broadcasting

I enjoy KFV here and there, but I love listening to April in the morning. It's been refreshing to hear her while KFV has been out. OPB, please keep April in the mornings!

I think Kristian is a good reporter, but much prefer April in the mornings. I second the vote to keep April on Morning Edition.