Carolina Alumni Review - January/February 2010

MEDIA
NPR Newscaster Signs Off

STEVE EXUM ’ 92

The good news is that you still have a chance to get his voice on your home answering machine. The other news is that Carl Kasell ’ 56 has retired that authoritative voice from duties as anchor of the hourly news update on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.

He also had shown
promise as an actor, getting
encouragement in that
direction from his high
school drama teacher, Andy
NPR announced in November that Kasell
would leave that job at the end of 2009 after
more than 30 years.

Griffith ’ 49. In the job he will be keeping, as judge and scorekeeper on the NPR quiz show Wait Wait

Kasell worked in radio in his native Goldsboro before heading to Washington in the 1960s. He began part time with NPR in 1975 and joined Morning Edition when it began in 1979, his listening audience eventually growing larger than NBC’s Today Show viewing audience. Along the way he reported on the Iranian students taking over the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979, the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989 and the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

… Don’t Tell Me!, he uses his drama skills to recite limericks based on the news and quotes in the voices of news-makers. The weekly show features media celebrities and callers answering questions about the news, including headline stories and obscure oddi-ties. Winners are rewarded with a recording of

Carl Kasell ’ 56 had been doing double duty with NPR’s Morning Edition news show and Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me! game show. He is sticking with the game show after retiring from news.

Kasell’s voice for their answering machine.

Kasell started in radio as a teenager, and at UNC he spent most of his time in the Swain Hall studios of WUNC, then run by students, including fellow future broadcasting star Charles Kuralt ’ 55.

Giving up the newscast and sticking with the game show means a big schedule change for Kasell, who rose at 1:05 a.m. weekdays to head to the studio and prepare for the first newscast at 5 a.m.

“Folks always asked why I didn’t just get up at
1 a.m.,” Kasell joked on an NPR blog announc-
ing his retirement. “I said I wanted to sleep in.”
— Keith King ’ 82
ONLINE: A profile of Kasell from the
November/December 2001 Carolina Alumni
Review is available to GAA members at
alumni.unc.edu/cararchive.

One way to break into theatrical production is to work slowly through the backstage world. Another is to put your ear to the grapevine.

“You find out what projects are circulating,” says Brian Fenty ’08. He should know. Just a year out of Carolina, he signed on as a producer for the Broadway debut of David Mamet’s Oleanna.

“Mamet is hot,” Fenty says. Oleanna was the
third Mamet play to open on Broadway this
season. That put Fenty center-stage backstage.
“I wanted to tackle my first foray into produc-
ing as if I was applying to grad school,” he
says. “I wanted a team of great people to teach
me. Jeffrey Finn and the team with Oleanna
have a long track record of shows that make
money and have integrity.”
Fenty says Finn’s production company had
already put together a strong package before
he came on board. Friends raved about walking
home after the 1992 Off-Broadway production

STAGE
Broadway Debut
Mixes Moxie, Money
and Mamet
locked in discussion. Oleanna is an intense
drama in which a female student and her male
professor face off in a power struggle. Julia
Fenty was a child actor with more than 60

professional roles behind him when he discovered his knack for promotion, raising $5,000 as student producer and director of Cabaret while in high school. He brought in Broadway musicians and a professional designer. Fenty chose UNC over Yale and Brown universities because of his interest in entrepreneurship. “I majored in marketing and journalism at UNC. I met [economics professor Burton] ‘Buck’ Goldstein ’ 70, and I realized I truly was an entrepreneur.”

Stiles and Bill Pullman were set as the stars.

Fenty’s job was to formulate a strategy for filling the house and keeping the project solvent.

COURTESY OF BRIAN FENT Y ’08

At UNC, Fenty undertook a production of Uncle Morty’s Funeral, written by Joanna Zelman ’08. “It was the first time I used what I had been learning in entrepreneurship class to weigh risks and rewards. We made money even though the goal was just to break even. ... I knew early on that I had that gut for having a little more control of the creative process, for understanding why audience members come in, and why they enjoy the show.”

Oleanna previewed in Los Angeles over the summer and ran on Broadway from October through the New Year. Even with that experience to his list of credits, Fenty says that producing is a chancy business. He won’t be quit-ting his day job at Hamilton Investment Partners just yet.