Behind the Scenes @ St. Louis Public Radio During Morning Edition

Here’s a little BTS (Behind The Scenes, not the South Korean pop group) of what it looks like behind the mic at a major market public radio station during the NPR flagship program “Morning Edition” during a random Friday.

Here I am sitting in at St. Louis Public Radio as the morning drive time, local host in the early the morning hours of April 1, 2022 (no joke). When I work that shift, I get to the station at some point between 4am and 4:30am so that I can prep for my portion of the local work that needs to be done off air, so that when we start running the syndicated NPR program, we’ll have everything set up.

I decided that I’d finally try to get some video footage of what goes on at the station since most people only hear what we do. Plus most people don’t even know how many different people and elements are involved in how a radio station sounds.

These clips are from the 7 o’clock hour and have snippets from the top-of-the hour newscast with Wayne Pratt in the booth beside me doing the local news…then clips from about 7:44 to 7:51:30 where I’m reading announcements, doing the lead-in to a local news feature, and making sure that I’m timing out everything that we’re covering up from the national NPR feed and finishing on time.