Leonard Lopate

Leonard Lopate
Lopate in 2013
Born (1940-09-23) September 23, 1940[1]
Brooklyn, New York
Show Leonard Lopate at Large
Station(s) WHDD WBAI
Show The Leonard Lopate Show
Station(s) WNYC
Style Talk show host
Country United States
Website https://leonardlopateatlarge.com/

Leonard Lopate (born September 23, 1940) is an American radio personality. He is the former host of the public radio talk show The Leonard Lopate Show, broadcast on WNYC.[2] He first broadcast on WKCR, the college radio station of Columbia University—where his brother Phillip was a student—then later at WBAI, before ultimately moving to WNYC.. On May 24, 2018, Lopate came back to the radio waves as the host of the Leonard Lopate at Large show.[3] Starting on July 16, 2018, Leonard Lopate at Large will be broadcast on WBAI from 1-2 pm and will continue to be heard on Robin Hood Radio via podcast. The news was announced July 2, 2018 on the Facebook page: WNYC: Bring Back Leonard Lopate.[4]

Career

Lopate came to radio relatively late in life. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Williamsburg, he attended Brooklyn College and later Hunter College, where he trained as a painter (he studied with Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko), and worked in advertising for fifteen years.[5] But when he was given a chance to host his first talk show on WBAI in 1977, he was hooked, and what began as a whim has become his life's work. Arguably, Lopate's background in art and literature (as well as in the commercial world) has been a major factor in his success.

Lopate's longest-running program on WBAI was Round Midnight, a weekly late-night show, which featured interviews and free-form discussion on a variety of topics with listeners who called in to the station. The show ran through the mid-1980s, ending when Lopate moved to WNYC-FM to host a midday talk show with radio veteran Pegeen Fitzgerald, which evolved into his present-day show, The Leonard Lopate Show.

Lopate also appears regularly at the 92nd Street Y, where he interviews celebrities and moderates his ongoing panel series "Comparing Notes", and has appeared in a similar capacity at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Queens College, Brooklyn College, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Alliance Française, and The New School. He has also created a series of discussions on literature for the writers’ organization, PEN International.[6]

The Leonard Lopate Show

Gore Vidal with Lopate recording his show in 2009

Lopate's talk show aired on WNYC from noon to 2 pm every weekday. Segments of the show are available as podcasts found on iTunes and on the station's website.

The show's Peabody Award-winning format typically consisted of four interviews ranging from twenty to forty minutes in length and covered a broad range of topics including current events, history, literature, the arts, including jazz and gospel music, food and wine (he has won three James Beard Awards), and science. Guests were often interviewed to accompany a book release. Lopate has interviewed politicians, poets, painters, novelists, filmmakers, actors, dancers, and more than a few Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. He frequently interviewed actors, playwrights and producers to talk about current NYC theatre productions.

Lopate introduced two ongoing features to the program. One is called "Please Explain", in which he talked with experts on a wide variety of topics that were not tied to book or movie releases and could be described as general interest. In 2006, some of the "Please Explain" topics he delved into included sainthood, nanotechnology, insomnia, infertility, and meditation.[7] The other feature is called "Underreported", in which Lopate delved deeply into political and social issues deemed not to have received sufficient media coverage.[8]

For the show's twentieth anniversary, in 2005, Tom Brokaw interviewed Lopate about the history of the show, Lopate's goals, and Lopate's interviewing style.[9]

The show was previously called New York & Company.[10]

Firing

On December 21, 2017, WNYC fired both Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz, stating that investigations found that each individual had violated WNYC's standards "for providing an inclusive, appropriate, and respectful work environment";[11] they had been placed on leave 15 days earlier pending investigations.[12] For example, as one producer was preparing for a segment about a cookbook, Lopate told her that the name "avocado" came from the Aztec word for "testicle." Another producer said that in 2009, when she wore a new dress, Lopate said, "I didn't know you were so 'bosomy'." Some female producers defended him, saying that the firing was "unfair", while others said that the show was produced in a highly-charged atmosphere in which Lopate had abusive outbursts. In February 2017, a producer discussed multiple comments Lopate made to her that she considered sexually provocative with human resources at WNYC. While she didn't consider any single comment to be "fireable", she said the comments made her feel uncomfortable. The February incident led to an investigation that "resulted in one-on-one anti-harassment training for him and a warning to Lopate that he was creating an uncomfortable work environment." In March 2017, "a second producer filed a complaint against Lopate... describing comments she felt were inappropriate. In one incident, she said Lopate was conducting an interview about undocumented immigrant women brought to the U.S...forced to perform sexual acts. At one point, she said he muted his microphone and said to the producers in the studio, 'Sounds like how I treat my staff'."[13]

Lopate's former show is now titled Midday on WNYC,[14] and it has a rotating array of hosts and follows a format similar to that of The Leonard Lopate Show.[15]

Leonard Lopate at Large

On May 24, 2018, Lopate came back to the radio waves as the host of the Leonard Lopate at Large show. The program is broadcast on WBAI and the station's decision was met with protest,[16] including the resignation of Jay Smooth, a host on the station.[17] The show is a collaboration between WHDD Robin Hood Radio (the smallest NPR station in the nation) in Sharon, CT, and WPWL (Pawling Public Radio) in Dutchess County, New York.

The show broadcasts live on WPWL on Thursday afternoons at 4:30-5:30 p.m. and on Robin Hood Radio WHDD on Tuesdays from 12-1 p.m and Saturdays from 4-5 p.m. Leonard Lopate at Large is also available as a podcast at Robin Hood Radio’s On Demand page.

Personal life

His younger brother is the writer Phillip Lopate.[18]

Leonard Lopate lives with his wife, painter and artist Melanie Baker.[19] [20]

Notes

  1. ↑ "U.S. Public Records Index, Volume 2", Ancestry.com, Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010, (Subscription required (help))
  2. ↑ "WNYC – Lopate – Staff Bios". WNYC. Archived from the original on 2006-04-30. Retrieved 2006-04-07.
  3. ↑ "Home". Leonard Lopate at Large. Retrieved 2018-06-26.
  4. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1747182728690193/?multi_permalinks=2030408123700984&notif_id=1530546571049915&notif_t=group_activity
  5. ↑ "Leonard Lopate, Conversational Acrobat", by Warren St. John. The New York Times, March 20, 2005.
  6. ↑ "Leonard Lopate – Biography" Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine., The Connecticut Forum.
  7. ↑ "Please Explain", Please Explain
  8. ↑ "Underreported", Underreported.
  9. ↑ "Role-Reversal: Leonard Looks Back." Archived 2007-09-30 at the Wayback Machine. WNYC – Leonard Lopate Show, March 11, 2005. Retrieved on 2007-04-15.
  10. ↑ WNYC home page, as archived December 2, 1998, 9:09:51 p.m., as accessed December 7, 2017.
  11. ↑ "New York Public Radio Fires Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz", CBS News (December 21, 2017, last updated 6:15 p.m. E.S.T.).
  12. ↑ WNYC Newsroom (6 December 2017). "Longtime WNYC Hosts Leonard Lopate, Jonathan Schwartz Placed On Leave". WNYC. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
  13. ↑ "New York Public Radio Fires Hosts Lopate and Schwartz". WNYC. Retrieved 2017-12-21.
  14. ↑ Midday on WNYC (About) (New York Public Radio), as accessed December 23, 2017.
  15. ↑ Marritz, Ilya and Jessica Gould. "New York Public Radio Fires Hosts Lopate and Schwartz," WNYC website (December 21, 2017).
  16. ↑ Ho, Karen K., & Alexandria Neason, After WNYC, Leonard Lopate's Return to WBAI is Met with Protest, in Columbia Journalism Review (July 17, 2018, updated July 19, 2018), as accessed July 22, 2018.
  17. ↑ Cush, Andy, The Host of NYC's Longest-Running Hip-Hop Radio Show Just Quit in Protest, in Spin (July 19, 2018), as accessed July 22, 2018.
  18. ↑ Lopate, Phillip. "My Brother, My Life (with apologies to Pasternak)". Smith Magazine. Retrieved 4 March 2015.
  19. ↑ ""The Brooklyn Fridge"". Archived from the original on April 1, 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-15. , Edible Brooklyn, Spring 2010 (archived 2010)
  20. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/realestate/leonard-lopate-wnyc-radio-host-at-home.html
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