Podcast: Interview with Robert MacNeil (1986)

Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil (right) in 1973.

From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show On the Arts, at CJRT-FM (today Jazz 91.1) in Toronto. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to artists from all fields.

Montreal-born Robert MacNeil is probably still most well known for the two decades he spent alongside Jim Lehrer as co-anchor of PBS's The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. When I sat down with him in 1986, however, he was also co-writer of the soon-to-be Emmy awarding-winning documentary series The Story of English, then airing on PBS and BBC. He, with co-authors Robert McCrum and William Cran, had also co-written an accompanying book of the same name.

– Kevin Courrier.

Here is the full interview with  Robert MacNeil as it aired on CJRT-FM in 1986.

Tom Fulton was the host and producer of On the Arts for CJRT-FM in Toronto for 23 years, beginning in 1975. 

Kevin Courrier is a freelance writer/broadcaster, film critic and author (Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa, Randy Newman's American Dreams, 33 1/3 Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Artificial Paradise: The Dark Side of The Beatles Utopian Dream). Courrier teaches part-time film courses to seniors through the LIFE Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto and other venues. His forthcoming book is Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism.