As KFI AM-640 announced a new weekend show to be hosted by critically acclaimed reporter Steve Gregory, the program was a long time coming if you’d ask him.
Studio 640 — which will debut Sunday at 2 PM — will feature Gregory and a panel made up of current college students from around Southern California. The two-hour program will highlight the thoughts, feelings, and analysis of the week’s news from a younger perspective than typically featured on talk radio outlets.
According to Gregory, the show will be a mix of Meet the Press, Real Time with Bill Maher, and The McLaughlin Group, but with university students.
The idea, however, is not a new one from Steve Gregory. In fact, it’s been more than a decade in the making.
“I came up with this about 12 years ago. I wanted to create a show where we can get the next journalist, a future journalist, that future communicator to talk about the news of the day and see it through their lens,” Gregory said. “We didn’t have room for it at the time. And then a few months ago, my program director, Robin Bertolucci, she started talking to me she said, ‘Listen, I need a new show for Sundays. I need something that we can do on Sundays.’ And she said, ‘I remember you pitched me something a while back. Refresh my memory.’ And I did and she goes, ‘Oh, I love that. How fast can you get it on?'”
Los Angeles and Southern California is a hotbed for colleges and universities. Between community colleges, private, and public four-year institutions, the station has dozens of options to pull potential panelists from.
But creating the candidate pool from scratch was no small undertaking.
“We had to really create an infrastructure for the show that never existed. We had to reach out to all these universities and colleges in advance and say, ‘Hey, we’re doing this. Do you think you can spread the word among your students?’ And we didn’t know if we were going to get any bites,” Gregory said before noting that the station has been “overwhelmed” by the response, with nearly two dozen potential panelists already being identified and vetted.
Things started to come together for the show earlier this year. However, that doesn’t exactly fit the academic calendar, with many students leaving campus in early May. But, surprisingly, many have remained interested in participating in the program throughout the summer months as its debut show approaches.
“We finally got it all worked out. We were pleasantly surprised at the response we got from the kids,” said Gregory.
The station is doing its due diligence on potential panelists. The requirements to appear on the show include that the students must be enrolled in an accredited college/university with a primary focus on journalism, broadcast, and/or communications. The student must also be a contributor to a college/university newspaper, radio station, television station, digital news outlet, or podcast. Independent journalists enrolled in school may also be considered.
There are additional requirements, too.
“They have to submit their resume. Then they have to give us professor references. Then they have to produce a 60-second audio or visual pitch to us on why they would be a good fit for a panel,” Gregory detailed. “And then we narrowed it down. We’ve had a live Zoom interview with them, my program director, and my news director sitting in the room.”
So far, 11 students have passed the extensive checks to be locked-in contributors for the show. The students hail from universities like Los Angeles Valley College, Cal Lutheran, Arizona State, and Chapman University, among others.
Not only will a show featuring the opinions of college students be a breath of fresh air for the iHeartMedia-owned station, but KFI AM-640 stands to benefit from an early identification of talent who are interested in future media careers.
“That was my motive 12 years ago. Because we recognized a while back — let’s face it. Radio News as we know it is dying. It’s a dying industry. We don’t have reporters like myself, I’ve been, you know, hitting the streets as a radio reporter for more than 40 years. And they don’t teach what we do in school anymore,” Steve Gregory said. “They don’t teach it. Everyone wants to be a podcaster, they want to be an entertainment reporter, or a sportscaster. And so 12 years ago, I wanted to create a show that not only was fun for the kids and gives experience to them, but to help us form a feeder team or farm team, or at least scout talent.”
And while Studio 640 will be an invaluable opportunity for many Southern California college students, the station benefits, as well.
“It’s a good opportunity for our audience to hear how the younger demographic feels about today’s news, and how they’re approaching it as student journalists. The idea is, for instance, a topic about immigration or abortion or other topics that we’re covering in our talk shows during the week are going to be covered completely different on college campuses. So we wanted to give those college journalists an opportunity to weigh in on how they’re covering those issues, how they see their campus handling it, and what are their students telling them about the same issues,” he shared.
“We really want to make this a really cool opportunity for these students to be here at a big station like KFI, get the experience, and they can walk away with a recording for their reel if they want and we get the benefit of hearing young voices.”
Steve Gregory will serve as the host of Studio 640 in a weekly capacity, with the debut episode slated to air Sunday at 2 PM on KFI AM-640. The show will be two hours each Sunday.
Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
