Hostiness to beat out Truthiness?

Public Radio Talent Quest is live and taking submissions and your vote. Public Radio Exchange (PRX) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have teamed up and are giving away $70,000 and a shot at creating your very own radio show. The contest opened on Monday and is taking entries from radio wannabes. They host the entries and feed them to the team of judges. Oh, wait, did we say team? We meant everyone who visits the site. Judging will happen American Idol style, with less text messaging and more mouse clicking and, as far as we can tell, no Simon or Sanjaya. The public radio listening public will vote to narrow the field down, public radio brass and celebrities will narrow the round 1 pool down to ten, all of whom will win a $500 prize. The pool is refined again to three finalists who all nab $10,000. produce their own pilot episode that will be presented to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for a chance at full fledged show status, funding, and national distribution. The contest is an initiative to move beyond the image of "your fathers Oldsmobile" public radio might be slipping into and find a new, hip voice to be the next big star.

Scott Simon, Bob Edwards, John Hodgeman, Ira Glass, Terry Gross and local boys Tom and Ray are among the many offering their voice to radio spots you may be hearing soon on air. The public radio elite are calling for

what we’re calling "hostiness," and it includes people who are:
Engaging, smart, curious, surprising, honest, intriguing, have sense of humor, clever, authentic, human, real, trustworthy, knowledgeable, maybe even someone you'd have dinner with.

Contestants can submit a two-minute audio clip of their best hostiness in one of three categories (Talk, Entertainment, and Music) to the Public Radio Talent Quest site before May 14 and be judged by the public radio listeners who log on and listen. Of course we don't all have a podcast studio at home. UMass Boston is helping out by providing the studio for you. On April 29 from noon - 5 pm and May 1 from 6 pm - 9 pm you can hit up the WUMB studios for your fifteen two minutes of fame. Now can someone help us win that ever elusive prize: Carl Kassel's voice on our home answering machine.

Image of the interactive map of contestants and judges, roughly mapping out the greater Boston area available from the publicradioquest.com website