Title: Meet the NY1 'Morning People'

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We'll end today with a little media fun. I think it'll be fun with Pat Kiernan and Jamie Stelter who you know as the morning anchors if you watch Spectrum News NY1. Now, in addition to their mornings on one cable show, they've just launched a 15 minute morning podcast called Morning People which you can see on YouTube or Spotify or other platforms without having cable. They'll talk about New York news headlines every day, but also more lifestyle oriented things, like yesterday about retirees not originally from the area who choose to retire to New York City, of all places. We're going to invite some phone calls on that. If that sounds like you or someone you know, that was based on a New York Times article today how much people need to get by or live comfortably in the city according to, I think that was an MIT study, and other things like that, including to what's in the papers, and other New York news. Pat Kiernan and Jamie Stelter have been doing mornings on 1 together for 15 years now. Pat has been the morning anchor since 1997 if I have my history right. Let's talk media and life in New York with Pat Kiernan and Jamie Stelter. Hi, Pat and Jamie. Congratulations on the podcast. Thanks for coming on.

Pat Kiernan: Hey, Brian, good morning. My tenure sounds long until we put it up next to your tenure at WNYC, and [laughs] then I got nothing on you.

Brian Lehrer: Just a little longer. Listeners, you can chime in here too in a few ways on their chat yesterday about retirees. Anyone listening now not from New York who chose to retire in New York because you have grown kids who are living here now, or just to live the New York lifestyle, you want to wake up in the morning and be able to go to the Thursday morning New York Philharmonic rehearsals or whatever. Museums, concerts, life without a car, whatever. 212-433-WNYC who has a story? 212-433-9692, and what about the amount of income a single person or family needs to live in the city? Or one more invite. You can talk about the media, which we're going to do, the decline of cable, other ways for a good news service like NY1, which editorial opinion here is a major cut above the regular commercial local news channels for it even to exist, or related media trends cord cutters never quarters. Where do you get local news on TV, if at all? 212-433-WNYC call or text 212-433-9692. Pat, how much change have you seen in the media landscape, and how it affected your place in it at NY1 over these almost 30 years?

Pat Kiernan: Brian, how much time do we have? When I started as morning anchor in 1997, it really was the main way to get the news in the morning, and the reason that we racked it up every half hour with a repeat of the headlines was because you had to tune in on our schedule, and you move ahead to today, and you get the news when you want, how you want, and that means that our role is different.

Brian Lehrer: Jamie, when did you join exactly, and same question about the changing media? I will add, since you're so open about it on your show, that you're married to CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, so you must talk about this stuff over dinner.

Jamie Stelter: [laughs] Yes, breakfast, lunch and dinner, we're always talking about media. We just were dialing Pat in on the phone before we were with you, Brian, talking about, if you were remaking morning news for 2026, because we do think it's so important for people to be in touch with the local news. What does that look like right now when everyone is on their phones? It's got to be on all platforms. It's got to be optimized for those platforms. It's got to be available everywhere, and it's got to be delivered in a more casual, conversational way.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. It goes for us, too, working in what's called terrestrial radio, meaning AM and FM radio. People can get the Brian Lehrer show on YouTube now. Listeners, if you didn't know that, that's an option for you or people you know around the country, around the world who don't get AM and FM. What's the larger goal there about NY1 without cable or putting your podcast as a NY1 product on YouTube, and other platforms where people don't need cable?

Pat Kiernan: It's really about getting it to wherever the audience is. We know, and thank you for the shout out, that we do good journalism, but Jamie will attest to this. Every viewer has a different media diet, and we want to find those people and come to them on their terms.

Jamie Stelter: Yes, and a lot of the people that have said that we love NY1, but it's the thing that we miss because we moved, or we cut the cord, and so can we still be in touch with the thing that you're doing best, and how you go about getting the news and delivering the news, and like Pat said, meeting them where they are. We're only two days into this grand experiment, but so far, the reaction seems to be positive. People are happy to be able to get that bit of NY1 the way that they want to digest it.

Brian Lehrer: I see even just to stay on this media thing, I don't mind saying that I think NY1 is a cut above, it's one of the reasons that I keep cable. Of course, we partner with NY1. Full disclosure, NY1 has never hired me for anything. I don't get paid by NY1, but we have partnered with NY1 for the mayoral and other debates over many years because we find you guys the most substantive thing going that matches our ethic as we like to see ourselves. It's free now to have NY1 all day, not just your podcast, but streaming with Spectrum internet, which a lot more people these days have, obviously, than cable TV. Is there an effort to try to detach NY1 all together from the larger cable ecosystem or at least have it out there as an option if people get their internet service from Spectrum?

Pat Kiernan: Yes. There are people above us in the corporate hierarchy who make the detailed decisions on that, but I will say that what we heard from a lot of people was that, "I use Spectrum for my internet provider, but for whatever reason, we've decided that we're not going to have a cable box in our house anymore. We're not going to have the video subscription." One of the messages that we've tried to get out there over the past couple of years is if you have Spectrum internet that NY1 is included in that, whether you have a Roku box, an Apple TV, whether you want to put the Spectrum News app on the iPhone. That is, Brian, a message that we've been trying to get out there, and it's not as strict a relationship as it was 20 years ago, where the only way to get NY1 was to have the old Time Warner Cable subscription.

Brian Lehrer: All right, so your chat yesterday on episode one about people retiring to New York City was, I thought, very provocative. We're going to take a phone call from somebody with a story. Theresa, at the moment on Fire Island. Teresa, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Teresa: Hello. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. Tell us your story.

Teresa: We've been living off or were living on Fire Island for the past over 20 years. Then my husband and I recently retired and did a, "You know what? It's really boring on Fire Island." We had to find something a little bit more exciting to do in the wintertime, and as fate would have it, one of our kids was living out on the west coast, living in Seattle for the past, I don't know, over a decade. He decided to move to Manhattan. We said, "You know what? We'll join you." [chuckles] I have to tell you, it has been the best experience that you could possibly imagine for us. There's so much to do every day. My husband and I wake up and like, "What do you want to do today?" It's been just such a game changing experience for us.

Brian Lehrer: What do you like to do in Manhattan? What's one or two of the things?

Teresa: Name it. Okay, so around the holidays, let's see, I did the Cirque du Soleil. It was the night before Christmas. I did the Rockettes. I did the Rockefeller Center tree lighting and the Wall Street tree lighting. We did a Christmas carol down at the park. Tomorrow I'm doing a mansion tour walking around Fifth Avenue. I'm a naturalist, and so yesterday I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and landed myself in Brooklyn and just looked to see what plants were growing because it's springtime. It was just such a beautiful day. I saw crocuses and witch-hazel, all the things that were just blooming. You can see nature in the city as well as all of the other activities that are going on.

Brian Lehrer: Teresa, thank you so much.

Teresa: It's a game-changer.

Brian Lehrer: So well said. Jamie, what a different choice than, I don't know, a condo in the suburbs of Miami.

Jamie Stelter: Yes, but you know what, did you hear the energy in her voice, and how excited she was about all the activities that she's been doing, and the vast spectrum of things and hobbies that you can get involved with in the city that will keep you young. The amount of walking that you can do on a day-to-day basis, that alone will do wonders for your health and longevity, and keeping you like in a younger spirit, being surrounded by all these young different kinds of people in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Let me move on. Well, actually, here's a text on the same theme. My parents retired to Queens from Syracuse. They wanted to engage more with the arts and culture, stop driving, escape the snow, and live closer to two of their children and a new grandchild. The move was complicated, and although both had lived in New York City as young adults, a shock. They gave up Emeritus Faculty perks, a large house, friends and familiarity. Ultimately, it was the right decision for them, but it should not be done impulsively. Interesting text, Pat. It's one of the things you brought up on the podcast yesterday. Inevitably, if people are making this lifestyle decision in retirement, they're going to live in a smaller space.

Pat Kiernan: Absolutely. The one woman who we talked about who was profiled in The New York Times article ended up getting in touch with us on Instagram yesterday and said, "That's me. That's the Susie you guys were talking about." She scaled down from a four bedroom house, and a second home in Texas, I think, and is now in an apartment in New York City. I have to guess that some of her old neighbors in Texas think she's crazy.

Brian Lehrer: Ha. You want to touch Jamie on the thing you were chatting about this morning? How much income really depends, your age, your child status, whether you have roommates. This is an MIT study. It was in New York Magazine about how much you need to live in New York. What did you learn from that?

Jamie Stelter: Well, the New York Magazine cover story was tremendous. Surveying 60 New Yorkers who they got to be really honest about what they do, how much they make. What really stood out to me about the cover story was how many people are piecing together income with a number of jobs in order to survive in New York, and how much of that income is growing in uncertainty. They're trying to make ends meet by picking up all kinds of odd jobs, which we're lucky that there's a thriving gig economy in New York, but just how anxiety-ridden so many people are, because the thing that they really would love to do is not the thing that's paying them the most amount of money right now.

Brian Lehrer: Pat, pile on.

Pat Kiernan: I thought it was notable, and we talked about this this morning on the podcast, was that the doorman always sees the dog walkers go by, and according, at least, to this calculation, the dog walker was making almost $100,000 a year, and the doorman was making $75, so the doorman had all these questions about, "Should I just become the dog walker?"

Brian Lehrer: You know you're in New York when-

Jamie Stelter: [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: -the dog walker makes more than somebody with a union job, which the doorman probably had in 32BJ, right?

Pat Kiernan: For sure.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Well, this was fun. We could keep talking about things, serious and whimsical about New York City. I'll give you a chance just to promote the new podcast again. Where can people see it and when?

Pat Kiernan: Jamie?

Jamie Stelter: You can watch Morning People every morning on NY1 at 6:00 AM, or you can watch it on YouTube anytime, or wherever you get your podcast, Apple, Spotify, it's there all day, every day. You can find us on social media, Morning People NY1, and then look up Pat and I, we are in the comments. We're talking to people all day about what they think is important.

Pat Kiernan: Brian, in the same way that you gave us a compliment, we are always listening to what you guys are doing and reading what you guys are doing because you are in touch with the same sort of stories that we're following. It's really important that people are engaged like that.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks, Pat. Morning People, after, listeners, you finished listening to morning edition.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Good luck with it. Thanks for joining us.

Jamie Stelter: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Stay tuned for Alison.

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