Saint Paul Sunday - Inception and History

Inception and History

During the late 1970s, Pennsylvania native Bill McGlaughlin, a trombonist and conductor, was engaged as Associate Conductor of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Before conducting a performance he often spoke to the audience, informally explaining the program and what to listen for. Garrison Keillor heard him, and invited McGlaughlin to fill in occasionally as host of his daily morning radio show on Minnesota Public Radio (MPR).

Around this same time, U.S. public radio gained access to a communications satellite, which meant that production was no longer limited to New York, Los Angeles, or Washington, D.C. Cities with uplinks, like Saint Paul, could finally produce their own national shows. Consequently, in 1979 the Mellon Foundation provided MPR with seed money to make several pilot programs.

In early 1980, via local benefactors, Minnesota Public Radio also built a new studio — the Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Studio ("Studio M") — a beautiful space with 20-foot windows overlooking Saint Paul’s cathedral district. This inspired producer Tom Voegeli, then working in national programming for MPR, to create a new show that would play to the studio’s strengths. Voegeli came up with the idea for Saint Paul Sunday Morning, with McGlaughlin as host — a distinctive, intimate program which would present world-class musicians, live, to a national audience. Voegeli also wanted McGlaughlin to sound like a musician rather than like a broadcaster, and to share his own spontaneous, animated enthusiasm with listeners.

The show debuted locally in 1980, and went national via syndication in 1981, eventually shortening its name to Saint Paul Sunday to allow stations to broadcast it at any time of the day on Sunday. The series' unique approach and sense of exuberance and curiosity has won it hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic listeners, and the 1995 Peabody Award.