ABC News Radio is set to debut a new weekend program in national syndication called Start Here Weekend, a companion to the daily podcast hosted by Brad Mielke.
Launched in March 2018, Start Here is a daily news podcast devoted to delivering the most pertinent stories within roughly 30 minutes. And while the show has seen digital success, it will now expand to a one-hour offering to ABC News Radio affiliates. And that expansion to radio is a natural one for Brad Mielke, who previously worked at New York Public Radio before joining the heritage brand.
“I’m from radio,” Mielke said. “I’m a radio reporter is how I think of myself. The only reason that they handed me a podcast was because they were like ‘Hey, Brad, you got a few extra hours and you know some of these journalists. You can talk to these guys.’ Little did we know how much work and how much it would take to make this sort of daily beast. But radio is still the way that a lot of Americans get their news in the most urgent and clarifying way, because it’s so intimate and because it’s there with you in your car as things are continuing to develop.
“So it’s still my favorite format and I’m so excited that we not only have a huge potential network of radio stations that will hopefully want to hear this. But we already have a lot of interest in a lot of stations within our network now that have already committed to airing this. Station programmers are excited about this because they’ve heard the show and they think it will translate well to this format.”
The daily news podcast format can be a fickle one, as topics in the 24/7 news cycle are constantly shifting. But Mielke admitted that while the crew stays as flexible as possible, there are time when it’s important to slow down and focus on an individual story when warranted.
“It’s bizarre because it’s a product that feels like a live product every day because everything seems to be changing throughout the course of the day. At the moment we end recording, the moment we put one podcast to bed, we are already working on the next one,” he admitted. “We’re constantly evolving what our stories are. We’re constantly updating.
“I’ve killed so many segments about that are outdated the moment the correspondent hangs up, and we’re like ‘Well, now we are going this way. The president just said this.’ So it does feel like it’s a very fast-paced product and I think we take a lot of pride and making everything super relevant, super current but still not making everything feel overly urgent. Here is the 20 minutes — or in this case the hour — of your day that you are going to feel best served by. It helps you zoom out just a little bit, take a breath, block out some noise, and just focus on the most important stories.”
Start Here often relies on reporting, insights, and analysis from ABC News correspondents. Brad Mielke had high praise for his colleagues that are more than willing to collaborate on the podcast.
“I think that’s almost the secret sauce of the show’s success is that we actually created something that correspondents and producers at ABC want to be a part of. Because this machine that is ABC News is so expansive, it’s so large, it moves so quickly, but it would be very easy I think for all these people to be like ‘No, I don’t have time. I gotta prepare for David Muir. I gotta prepare for George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts.’ It would totally be within their right to do that and yet somehow we have created a format that I think they like participating in,” Mielke said.
“I think these correspondents feel like they get a good chance to expand on some of their reporting in a way that we don’t always get to hear from them everywhere else. We have time. And we have bandwidth and we have a different format to really hear about the reporting process that they might not have gotten to describe to people, about what they think is going to happen next. We even preview what questions are you going to be asking moving forward. These are the conversations that I enjoy having in the hallways of ABC and that is sort of what has allowed this show to continue to be a really good service for listeners.”
He continued by noting that Start Here is essentially allowing an all access look at what the process of reporting a story can look like for news podcast consumers.
“You’re almost getting a behind-the-scenes peek at what these conversations between journalists are like. Somebody was just reminding me that these correspondents aren’t just taking part in the show, they’re also consuming the show,” Mielke said. “It’s a huge badge of honor within news to know that other journalists think that you are worth spending time on because these are very busy, very plugged in people.
“People across ABC listen to the show because this is how they learn from each other sometimes. And that’s like the biggest compliment you can get, right? To hear like ‘Oh, I was listening to the show today and I hadn’t thought about that before.’ If we can give that value to a correspondent on the front line, then I think we have a great value to listeners.”
Start Here Weekend is being made available to ABC News Radio affiliates as a one-hour radio show. It will make its debut this weekend. Additionally, the daily version of Start Here is available as a podcast and also airs on ABC News Live, the television streaming home of the venerable news brand.
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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.
