Angie Miles (Photo courtesy VPM)
When the Community Idea Stations, now VPM, Virginia’s home for public media, sold two Washington, D.C.-area broadcast channels for $182 million in 2017, the nonprofit media company said it would use a portion of the proceeds to focus on more local content and building its newsgathering operations.
“VPM News Focal Point,” a weekly prime-time newsmagazine debuting in February 2022, fulfills that goal.
“Currently we have local news, but nobody is covering all of Virginia,” says Roberta Oster, the show’s senior news producer. “Most stories will not be narrated by a reporter, but you will hear the voices of the subjects of the story — the people who are living it.”
An Emmy Award-winning journalist, Oster is a former producer for NBC, CBS and ABC network news. Veteran television anchor Angie Miles will host the show, which will cover stories across the commonwealth.
“For me to have somebody with [Angie’s] breadth and experience and deep knowledge of Virginia has been great,” Oster says. “She has a sense of the community and relationships across all sectors. I think Angie is going to elevate the discourse and bring many new voices into our stories.”
“VPM News Focal Point” will air on Thursdays at 8 p.m. and will be available to stream on the show’s website.
“We are trying to create multimedia programming so that digital, television and radio are all working together covering stories,” Oster says. “And we will be covering stories in depth. Local news does not have the time to dig into issues and get to know people. Our feature pieces will be 10 minutes long.”
One of the goals of the show will be to cover communities that have been underrepresented.
“Virginia is at this critical point,” Oster says. “We have this history of the Confederacy and our fight for racial justice that has impacted everyone in Virginia and across the country. We feel like this is an opportunity to bring new voices to the table.”