''Inside Washington'', formerly ''Agronsky & Co.'', was a political roundtable show hosted by the WJLA news presenter and chief political reporter
Gordon Peterson
Gordon Peterson (born 1938) is an American broadcast journalist and Washington, D.C.-based television news anchor. He was most recently the 6 p.m. co-anchor for ABC affiliate WJLA-TV and from 1988 to 2013 was also moderator and producer of ' ...
that aired from 1988 to 2013. It was produced by Allbritton, then-owner of WJLA, and distributed to public television stations nationwide by American Public Television. In each broadcast, Peterson had four panelists discussing their opinions on political topics that were in the news during the week, and occasionally brought in a fifth panelist or guest journalist via a satellite television feed.
History
''Inside Washington'' was the descendant of '' Agronsky & Co.'', a show hosted by Martin Agronsky and produced by Post-Newsweek, the owners of WUSA 9, from 1969 to 1988, and broadcast on WUSA in the Washington, D.C. area. On Agronsky's retirement in 1988, Peterson took over as host, and the show was renamed ''Inside Washington''.
Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.NewsChannel 8, a Washington D.C. area local news
cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
channel briefly known as TBD TV, at the same time the show switched to WJLA. The show also began to be shown on the Washington, D.C.-area PBS station WETA on September 2, 2005.
When it debuted in 1969, ''Agronsky & Co.'' was a pioneer of the "talking head" format of television
journalism
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (p ...
in which journalists discussed the news of the day with one another in a roundtable format instead of interviewing the newsmakers themselves. The format was inexpensive to produce and appealed to a niche market of affluent viewers. Many shows have since adopted the format, and it has become a staple of television opinion programming.Farhi, Paul, "After more than 40 years, ‘Inside Washington’ will go off the air," washingtonpost.com, September 8, 2013. /ref>
In early September 2013, Gordon Peterson announced that ''Inside Washington'' would cease production in late December 2013, ending a continuous run of 25 years for ''Inside Washington'' and a combined 44 years for ''Agronsky & Co.'' and ''Inside Washington''. The last new episode of ''Inside Washington'' aired on WETA on December 20, 2013, on Newschannel 8 on December 21, 2013, and on WJLA on December 22, 2013.
Broadcast
In the Washington, D.C., area, ''Inside Washington'' was broadcast on WETA on Friday nights at 8:30 PM (this broadcast was simulcast on the WETA World PBS cable television channel), on TBD TV on Saturday nights at 7:00 PM, and on Sunday mornings at 9:00 AM on WJLA. Although the Saturday evening broadcast time was consistent, WETA and WJLA sometimes changed the broadcast times on Fridays and Sundays respectively for brief periods, and over the years the regular Sunday time slot for the show on WJLA also varied. ''Inside Washington'' was syndicated to PBS stations around the United States.
''Agronsky & Co.'' always had a more staid tone than most of its later imitators. The tone of ''Inside Washington'', although somewhat more opinionated than under Agronskys stewardship, nonetheless was very different from that of many "talking head" shows that followed, including '' The McLaughlin Group'', one of its major competitors. Where ''The McLaughlin Group'' panelists and host John McLaughlin himself are prone to loud voices and direct arguments, the '' Inside Washington'' panelists tended to remain at a normal speaking voice and were rarely combative. In addition, Peterson was much less likely to provide his personal opinion on the topic than McLaughlin.
The show's regular panelists in its later years were Colbert I. King,
Charles Krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer (; March 13, 1950 – June 21, 2018) was an American political columnist. A moderate liberal who turned independent conservative as a political pundit, Krauthammer won the Pulitzer Prize for his columns in '' The Washingt ...
, Mark Shields, Evan Thomas, and Nina Totenberg, four of whom appeared on each show. Although it was not common, the fifth would occasionally participate in person or in all or part of a show via a satellite television feed. When two or more of the regulars were unavailable during the same week, other
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
s would participate to keep the number of panelists at four and to substitute for Peterson when he was unavailable.
The theme song for ''Inside Washington'' was "Procession of the Nobles" from the
ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form ...
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
n composer
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov . At the time, his name was spelled Николай Андреевичъ Римскій-Корсаковъ. la, Nicolaus Andreae filius Rimskij-Korsakov. The composer romanized his name as ''Nicolas Rimsk ...
. This also was the theme song of ''Agronsky & Co.''
Gordon Peterson
Gordon Peterson (born 1938) is an American broadcast journalist and Washington, D.C.-based television news anchor. He was most recently the 6 p.m. co-anchor for ABC affiliate WJLA-TV and from 1988 to 2013 was also moderator and producer of ' ...