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During the opening of "Talk of the City" on KPCC at 2 pm, Kitty Felde urged listeners to stick around to the end: "As promised, we will have a very special announcement." As many of her shows have before, the last one focused on international human rights issues. With a bit more than five minutes left, she announced that "KPCC's management has decided to shake things up a bit."
She avoided directly exposing any of the internal roiling at KPCC, but she did make clear that it wasn't her choice to leave and that, in her view, the station's audience will be worse off for the move. She described starting as a part-time host in 1997 when "Talk of the City" aired in the morning, and recited the awards the show has won while pioneering remote broadcasts, theme programs such as The Book Club of the Air [now on Channel 36] and having student journalists grill the candidates for mayor.
"It's been an amazing ride...I have enjoyed every minute of it. This hour is the best hour of my day," Felde said before thanking by name her producers and engineer. "I am very, very proud of the work that we have done here on Talk of the City." She assumed a bit of a lecturing tone when she said that her show covered communities "that don't get written up very often in the Los Angeles Times," and when she warned that public radio has become middle-aged and needs to take risks.
"We've been pushing the public radio envelope...Thanks for joining me on this wonderful ride. I'm really going to miss this hour, and I'm really going to miss you.
"Marketplace is next."
Yesterday:
Kitty Felde out at KPCC