Robert Siegel Reflects On (Briefly) Coming Out Of Retirement

I don’t think there’s any other station I would have done it for.

When my old friend Sam Fleming, WBUR’s longtime Director of News and Programming, suggested that – since I was coming to Boston for the Gala on June 8th anyway – why not host On Point for a few days, too? I admit I was reluctant, having found my five months of retirement very pleasant: life without deadlines, reading books even if there’s no interview with the author, evenings without packets of background articles for homework.

But I have been coming to WBUR in one capacity or another for about thirty-five years. Eons ago, when I was running NPR News, and busy launching Weekend Edition Sunday, WBUR pitched me two guys to do a weekly segment on the program. It was about car repair. After listening to one show, and picking myself up off the floor where’d I fallen, laughing, they were signed up by NPR and you probably know the rest.

Hosting Tuesday through Friday was well worth it. What I have missed most in retirement is certainly not the deadlines, nor the opportunity to broadcast; I’ve done as much of that as any radio journalist could hope for. It’s the company of smart, curious people who are engaged in current events and are trying to make fresh radio day after day. Like my old colleagues at All Things Considered in Washington, the crew at On Point are smart, young, good at what they do and great to work with.

To produce hours on Canada, suicide, Vladimir Putin, Miss America, and the state of the advertising industry requires some nimble thinking, good digging and smart booking. It was great fun to be a part of it, if only for four days. In fact, four days every five or six months strikes me as a healthy hosting burden these days. Back to retirement.

-- Robert Siegel

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