WESA host to retire; introduces “Artist-in-Residence” program

August 16, 2022 Off By Eric O'Brien

WESA (90.5) announced Tuesday the pending retirement of Morning Edition host Maria Gabriel Scapellato. Scapellato has been the local host of Morning Edition for the last 5 years. A native of West Mifflin, she began her career in both commercial and non-commercial radio, most notably as the local All Things Considered host at WITF in Harrisburg. She has worked as a general assignment reporter in both radio and TV. Immediately prior to WESA, she worked at KDKA-AM (1020) where she went by Maria Gabriel.

Scapellato will continue to host Morning Edition through the general election in November.

Meanwhile both WESA and WYEP (91.3) are starting an innovative “Artists-in-Residence” program where a selected group of local musicians will create compositions to be featured in on-air and online content for both stations in the form of program themes and transitional music beds. This concept is being funded by a grant from The Hillman Foundation and is another way to help make station programming “distinctively Pittsburgh” while showing listeners the musical community can create.

Interested musicians must be 18 years or older and more information can be found here or here.

CategoryPittsburgh

2 Comments

  • Boomer The Dog says:
    August 17, 2022 at 4:16 am

    There are so many great artists around here, Pittsburgh’s hills are alive with bands in all formats playing every night. I wish more stations would be proactive about getting them on the air, rather than the boat loads of commercially produced music that every station seems to play.

    There’s a station from the west coast that I watch on YouTube, KEXP, that shows videos of the well-produced concerts that they air on the FM station in Seattle, and it shows how it could be done. Bands come in from the whole globe to play on their airwaves, but we could do that with local bands and be a greater music city.

    Is Pittsburgh radio so poverty stricken that we can’t do that sort of thing here, or does nobody care?

    Boomer

  • Rich Krampe says:
    August 17, 2022 at 7:02 am

    Maria Gabriel brought a very professional voice to news at WNNK (Wink 104) and WITF-FM in Harrisburg. She can also be credited with being the first anchor of the first 10pm newscast launched by WITF-TV, and I’m sure wrote and edited many special reports for WITF TV/FM.

    Happy that her career took her “back home”, and enjoyed hearing her voice again on WESA when visiting our son while he was at Pitt.

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