Fresh Air

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Fresh Air

Other names	Fresh Air Weekend
Genre	Talk radio
Running time	ca. 50 min.
Country	United States
Language(s)	English
Home station	WHYY-FM
Syndicates	NPR
Host(s)	Terry Gross David Bianculli (Friday)
Director(s)	Roberta Shorrock
Producer(s)	Amy Salit Phyllis Myers
Executive producer(s)	Terry Gross Danny Miller
Recording studio	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Air dates	1975 – present
Audio format	Stereophonic
Opening theme	"Fresh Air"
Website	freshair.npr.org
Podcast feed	Podcast

For the Scottish student radio station, see Fresh Air (Edinburgh).

Fresh Air is a radio show broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States each weekday. In 2004, the show was syndicated to 445 stations and claimed 4.4 million listeners. In addition, some stations carry Fresh Air Weekend, a "best-of" highlight show of the past week's interviews.

1 Beginnings
2 Background
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Beginnings

The show began in 1975 at NPR affiliate WHYY-FM in Philadelphia with Judy Blank as host; in September of that year Terry Gross took over as presenter and producer; over thirty years later she remains its chief presenter. The main segment of the show is characterized by an interview, usually of persons in the arts and entertainment field, although other newsmakers, cultural figures, and journalists have also been featured. Shorter segments follow the main segment and carry reviews of various cultural and entertainment diversions on a rotating basis. These include such venues as movies, books, stage plays, television programs, as well as recordings of popular music, jazz, and classical music. The program also features commentary from a range of regular contributors.

[edit] Background

Most of the program's interviews are recorded on tape and later edited down. As in the case of many such radio programs, guests are often not in the studio during recording. While nearly all other radio programming now use digital recording, Fresh Air is still recorded, edited, and played on analog reel-to-reel tape. However, the program's website announced in 2006 that the aging tapes were now deteriorating and that they would soon begin transferring the thousands of interviews "to a digital format and indexing them." The show usually uses fiber-optic lines to conduct its interviews leading to a superior sound quality. When pressing news requires, it has gone live as during the Soviet coup attempt of 1991.

In 1993 NPR, Fresh Air, and Gross were presented with the George Foster Peabody Award with praise for her "probing questions, revelatory interviews, and unusual insights."^[1]

In February of 2002 Gross interviewed Gene Simmons of KISS in an infamous clash of NPR propriety and rock star flamboyance. Simmons discussed his sexual experimentation with women of all age groups and propositioned Gross in demonstration. According to NPR's web site, Simmons withheld permission to supply transcripts or audio of the interview on their website.^[2]

Fresh Air interviews are generally first aired on the Monday through Thursday shows. The Friday shows are rebroadcasts of past interviews.

The show's theme, "Fresh Air", was composed for the program by Joel Forrester of The Microscopic Septet.

In 2004 Gross published a book of her favorite interviews from the show the title All I Did Was Ask.^[3]

[edit] References

^ The Peabody Award Winners Archive. The Peabody Award. Retrieved on March 13, 2007.
^ Gross, Terry; Simmons, Gene. Leader and Bassist of the Band Kiss, Gene Simmons (.MP3) [Audio]. Fresh Air, WHYY; NPR. Retrieved on 2007-03-13.
^ Gross, Terry (2004). All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 1401300103.