Paul Guggenheimer launches a new venture
Paul Guggenheimer needs to talk.
Six months after the longtime 90.5 WESA talk show host and reporter left the station, he has launched a new platform. “Primal Interviews With Paul Guggenheimer” is live at PrimalInterviews.com.
It’s a weekly mix of a focus interview and news, long-form interviews with a visual element.
The show is an evolution of “Essential Pittsburgh,” Mr. Guggenheimer’s mainstay noon talk program on WESA. The show was canceled last summer, when station personnel announced he and others would be “re-deployed” to other areas of broadcast.
The new venture, he said, is a chance to explore issues and personalities without the more anxiety-producing elements of live radio.
“I loved doing ‘ Essential Pittsburgh’ and I love live radio, live anything. It’s sort of this tightrope act, or downhill skiing.
“You’re trying to stay on the skis: all this great information is coming at you but the clock is always ticking. You’re worried about running out of time, worried you’ll cut someone off to get to the next question.
“I just thought it would really be liberating for the next chapter of interviewing to sit down with people and not worry about the clock.”
And the chance to produce an edited interview, cut out “all the boring parts”? That, he said, was an especially attractive prospect.
To that end, he has partnered with New Stanton filmmaker/visual artist Andres Tapia-Urzua.
“He shoots the interviews and just brings a real filmmaker’s eye, a sense of how to enhance a conversation,” said Mr. Guggenheimer, who added they are still experimenting with various visual elements.
They settled on “Primal Interviews” because “I thought ‘primal’ sounded like a really compelling title that really speaks to getting to the essence, the raw ingredients of
the issues,” he said. The words “vital” and “elemental” jumped out at him when he looked up the textbook definition of “primal.”
The burgeoning podcast/ blogger/media site industry means myriad of choices for discerning listeners, he said. “So in this day and age, it has to be compelling ... people have too many choices.”
“It’s not limited to Pittsburgh issues,” he said, adding that some of the segments will be as short as 15 minutes, others much longer. It’s possible “Primal Interviews” will evolve into a video podcast, although for now, the website and other social media platforms such as Facebook are the show’s home.
They are looking for a corporate sponsor; advertising is, naturally, also essential.
The first interview, currently up on the site, is with former U.S. District Attorney David Hickton. The subject is cyberattack, which Mr. Guggenheimer said was particularly timely, given recent global events.
Another, with Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (a frequent guest on Mr. Guggenheimer’s former radio show) should be up any day. He’s also talked with Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”) when the filmmaker was in town for Carnegie Mellon University’s film festival.
Mr. James’ latest, “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” had its theatrical release May 19. It is the story of the lone bank to be indicted for mortgage fraud in the 2008 banking crisis, tiny Abacus Federal Savings Bank in New York’s Chinatown.
Another yet-to-be posted interview is with Mahir Zeynalov, a Turkish journalist documenting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on protesters.
The element of video is something Mr. Guggenheimer considered years ago on WESA. One time, he said, he and Mayor Peduto were talking about personal immigration stories.
“He talked about his grandfather, who came over from Italy but was delayed getting here .... I just remember the look on his face, the hurt in his eyes.
“I remember thinking, ‘God, I wish people could see this.’ ”