After 30 years of delivering the morning news to National Public Radio listeners, native North Carolinian Carl Kassell will step away from the newscast today to take on other duties for NPR. His last delivery is this morning at 11 AM, and WDAV will carry it live over the air at 89.9FM and online at wdav.org.
Read more about Kassell’s radio career and his new gig (don’t call it retirement!)…
Did you grow up with Carl in Goldsboro, NC? Were you his classmate at UNC-CH? Do you have vivid memories of his delivering the news of an important event? Has he recorded the message on your home answering machine? If you have a personal connection to Kassell, share your story below, and we’ll make sure he sees it!
GM BKR here…noting that Carl has been one of the classiest and most respected people I’ve ever known. I first met Carl before I came to NPR, back when I was just beginning my public radio career at WBUR in Boston. Carl and Bob Edwards came up for a fundraising event (this was in the very early days of Morning Edition) and impressed everyone with his graciousness and smarts. Bob Edwards often remarked that it was because Carl was so good and ultra-reliable at his job that it made HIS job as host of the program so much easier.
After I got to NPR I got to work with Carl a little bit, first in his capacity as the Chief News Guy in the mornings, when I was filing reports from Moscow, and later when he became the “scorekeeper” on the at-the-time-experimental-and-risky new quiz show “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” and I was one of the nominal producers trying to figure out how to make it work.
True to form, it was Carl’s steady presence in the rocky early months of the quiz show that helped the program find its sea legs – and in the process introduce Carl’s dry wit to a whole new generation of fans. Bravo Carl!