If public radio were an All-Star baseball game, Mary Beth Kirchner, Julie Burstein and Marge Ostroushko would be among the power hitters on any team’s lineup. These three producers have accumulated a trophy case full of radio’s top honors by participating in the creation of many of the public radio system’s favorite programs including PRI’s Studio 360, American Routes, Speaking of Faith, A Prairie Home Companion, This American Life, Carnegie Hall Tonight, The Satellite Sisters, Jazz Profiles, Gray Matters and More By Corwin, to name a few. As close professional colleagues who have collaborated on and off since 1990, Kirchner, Burstein and Ostroushko have now joined forces to seek out and cultivate new on-air talent for the public radio system.

Mary Beth Kirchner has been developing national programming for the last twenty years, with an impressive history of developing creating new projects and series and working with an extensive list of talent. Starting as Executive Producer at the Smithsonian’s Office of Telecommunication in 1987, she shaped novice on-air voices, working daily among world-renowned scholars in art, history, science and music. While at the Smithsonian, Kirchner was Executive Producer of Folk Masters at Carnegie Hall, a 13-week series for Carnegie Hall’s Centennial, featuring dozens of performers never before heard on national radio and hosted by folklorist Nick Spitzer (winner of the CPB Gold award). Folk Masters led to American Routes, a weekly music show hosted by Spitzer, now in its eighth year and airing on over 200 stations, for which Kirchner serves as Executive Producer (winner of the 2005 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award). After the Smithsonian, Kirchner served as National Programming Director for radio at WETA in Washington, DC (1990-1993) and for the last dozen years, she has been an independent producer and national programming consultant in New York (1994-1999) and now in Los Angeles. Kirchner has launched multiple national productions including Jazz Profiles, a Peabody-award winning series of documentaries from NPR, Gray Matters, a decade-running documentary series on brain science from PRI, winner of fifteen Gold medals from the International Radio Festival of New York; Seasonings, a limited series of food specials hosted by Vertamae Grosvenor from NPR, winner of the James Beard Award; and More by Corwin, contemporary radio dramas from the legendary dramatist of radio’s Golden Age, Norman Corwin, for which Kirchner was a recipient of the Columbia duPont Silver Baton. Kirchner was also the Executive Producer for the launch of The Satellite Sisters from WNYC, folklorist Hal Cannon’s series of features from the Western Folklife Center, and the Casual Concerts series from conductor David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She has been honored with over fifty national and international awards.

Julie Burstein is well known for her ability to create entertaining and dynamic new programming and for her skill at helping talent from other media become effective radio personalities. She began her radio career 25 years ago at WNYC, and early in her career worked at NPR and as the first arts reporter for WHYY in Philadelphia. Julie has gone on to develop, produce, and direct many nationally broadcast series such as PRI's Studio 360, AT&T Presents Carnegie Hall Tonight, Time Warner Presents The New York Philharmonic, LIVE!, and Riverwalk: Live from the Landing. As a coach of new radio talent, Burstein has worked with actors, including Joel Grey (Mostly Meshugah! The Music and Comedy of Mickey Katz for NPR) and John Rubinstein (Carnegie Hall Tonight), conductors such as Dennis Russell Davies (Music in the Present Tense: The American Composers Orchestra series) and Simon Rattle (Revolution of Expression), and writers Jamie Bernstein Thomas (The New York Philharmonic, LIVE) and Jessica Hagedorn (Out of Asia). Most recently, as Executive Producer in charge of creating and launching PRI’s Studio 360, she prepared novelist and critic Kurt Andersen, who had never before hosted a radio show, to serve as the program’s on-air host. Under her leadership, Studio 360 is now in its sixth year and airs on 150 stations. Burstein’s radio productions have received numerous awards including two Peabodys, the most recent for Studio 360’s hour-long exploration of Herman Melville’s "Moby-Dick" in 2004.

Marge Ostroushko has worked with notable producers, producing organizations, and programs for the past 25 years, earning the high praise of being described as “the producer’s producer.” She was Associate Producer for A Prairie Home Companion, worked five years as an independent consultant for This American Life, and served as the Managing Producer for Speaking of Faith; she also worked at PRI for ten years overseeing new program development, including on The Miles Davis Radio Project; Rabbit Ears Radio; Radio Kronos; The Writer’s Almanac; Ben & Jerry’s Newport Folk Festival; and Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth. In addition, Ostroushko has served as the marketing manager for ongoing programs such as A Prairie Home Companion and Whad’Ya Know with Michael Feldman, for which she developed focused marketing plans and station support. As an independent consultant, marketing specialist, and producer Ostroushko has forged close working relationships with many stations and program directors around the country as well as all of the national distribution/marketing organizations. Most recently, in 2000 Minnesota Public Radio hired Ostroushko to develop an innovative program idea with a compelling new host: the result was Speaking of Faith, now a highly regarded weekly program which has attracted a wide range of funders and won numerous national awards. Ostroushko herself has won many awards including two Peabodys (for Mississippi: River of Song and A Prairie Home Companion).

Launch will solicit input regarding new potential hosts from a number of other well-connected professionals. Among them are Judi Moore Latta, Professor at Howard University in Washington, DC and a long-time public radio producer (Wade in the Water: African-American Sacred Music Traditions and The Sunday Show). Other people we will call upon to help us identify talent include Jocelyn Gonzales at New York University, who will be able to provide overall guidance on college and ethnic radio talent; and Rachael Cooper from the Asia Society in New York City.