Public Radio’s Big Dig Podcast Expands Nationwide with Live Event Model
Introduction
When GBH launched The Big Dig podcast in 2023, it sparked an unexpected conversation about infrastructure, urban planning, and the power of public media storytelling. Hosted by Ian Coss, the original series examined Boston’s massively expensive, decades-long project to relocate an elevated highway underground. What started as a hyperlocal deep-dive has now evolved into something far broader: a nationwide tour that reimagines how public radio stations collaborate, generate revenue, and tell stories that matter.
The Big Dig is expanding across eleven cities–Seattle, Portland, Austin, Louisville, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Rochester, Syracuse, Providence, Boston, and New York City–not as a traditional new season, but as a live-event tour featuring local public radio stations as hosts. This shift from documentary-style episodes to live recordings represents a significant innovation in public media distribution and partnership models. For media executives watching audience fragmentation and revenue challenges mount, The Big Dig’s expansion offers a case study in how stations can collaborate while maintaining economic independence.
Key Takeaways
| Local Revenue Opportunity | Host stations retain ticket sales revenue whilst GBH keeps podcast revenue–host stations can also monetise event recordings on their own feeds and social channels before episodes drop on the Big Dig feed, creating dual sponsorship opportunities. |
| Network Strengthens Identity | The collaborative model reinforces that public radio stations are “part of a network” (NPR), building connection and shared identity at a time when public radio particularly needs it. |
| Infrastructure as Universal Topic | Every US city faces similar highway and infrastructure challenges, but each city’s context–political, geographical, economic–creates a completely different conversation, proving the topic transcends regional boundaries. |
| Live Events Drive Engagement | Moving from studio recordings to live events hosted by local stations creates community connection, allows for local expert guests, and generates multiple revenue streams simultaneously. |
| Diverse Challenges, Shared Problem | Cities like Austin (state vs. city antagonism), Portland (progressive infighting), Rochester (over-built highways in declining cities), and Seattle (dense geography constraints) all face highway decisions, but with entirely different nuances and solutions. |
| Archives as Editorial Asset | Coss’s use of archival material and historical context has become central to The Big Dig’s storytelling power, showing how media institutions can leverage existing collections for contemporary journalism. |
How a Boston Podcast Became a Model for Public Radio Collaboration
The Big Dig podcast emerged from a hyperlocal Boston story and organically expanded nationwide. Ian Coss, the host, didn’t set out to launch a touring model–instead, the audience itself signalled demand. After the original season aired, Coss received multiple emails from people in other cities describing their own highway crises. These reader enquiries, combined with an invitation to moderate a panel on highway removal in Portland last autumn, sparked an idea: why not visit other cities and produce live events with local public radio stations?
The model snowballed because the response was immediate and enthusiastic. When Coss reached out to Oregon Public Broadcasting about Portland, they agreed without hesitation. The same happened in Seattle with KUOW. Some cities were chosen strategically because they had active infrastructure projects; others were selected through personal connections within the public radio network. The beauty of the public broadcasting ecosystem is that relationships and mutual benefit make collaboration feel natural rather than transactional.
What Coss discovered during the tour surprised him in one crucial way: the temptation to report the same story repeatedly was strong, but the reality proved far more nuanced. Yes, every city grapples with highways built in the mid-20th century by federal policy. Yes, every city has activists demanding change. But the political, economic, and geographical contexts that shape those conversations are remarkably different. This diversity strengthens The Big Dig’s value proposition for audiences and makes the tour genuinely compelling journalism rather than a repeat formula.
Urban Politics and Infrastructure Journalism: Why Context Transforms the Story
Austin, Texas exemplifies how political geography shapes infrastructure debates. As a liberal, progressive state capital within a deeply conservative state, Austin experiences intense antagonism between city leaders and state officials over highway futures. The city’s vision for urban transformation collides with the state transportation department’s priorities, creating a high-stakes debate that extends beyond engineering.
Portland, Oregon demonstrates that political alignment alone doesn’t guarantee agreement. One might expect a progressive city to embrace highway removal unanimously, but the city’s infrastructure debate is genuinely heated. The Oregon Department of Transportation prioritises congestion relief and highway expansion, whilst neighbourhood activists focus on mitigating road impacts and climate activists push for removal. Coss found the real story wasn’t between city and state, but between different types of activists with incompatible goals. Neighbourhood activists fighting highway noise differ fundamentally from anti-car ideologues pursuing cultural transformation.
Rochester, New York represents a different scenario entirely. The city’s population peaked around 1960–precisely when highways were being built–meaning Rochester’s road infrastructure is grotesquely oversized for current needs. Stretches of urban highway carry merely ten to fifteen thousand cars daily, compared to Brooklyn’s BQE handling 150,000. This context creates an entirely different solution set: Rochester can actually remove highways without replacement and redevelop the land for housing, something impossible in denser markets.
Seattle, sitting on the Pacific coast with constrained geography, faces a fundamentally different constraint. Removing highways in a booming, densely populated city carries real risks and opportunity costs that don’t exist elsewhere. The conversation isn’t whether the highway is needed–it’s whether removal is feasible given Seattle’s geography and growth pressures.
These variations matter enormously to publishing executives and media strategists. The publishing industry recognises that whilst the problem is universal, each audience experiences it differently. Producers who can adapt a core narrative to local context–partnering with local reporters and guests–create journalism that resonates beyond generic national coverage.
Building Sustainable Revenue Models in Public Media
The Big Dig’s economic model is deliberately collaborative. GBH retains podcast revenue from Big Dig episodes, whilst host stations keep all ticket sales revenue. Additionally, host stations receive permission to record and distribute the live event on their own feeds and social channels before episodes appear on the Big Dig podcast feed. This allows host stations to secure sponsorship revenue from the same content, effectively creating three separate revenue streams from one event: ticket sales (host), podcast distribution (GBH), and local sponsorship (host).
This structure acknowledges economic reality: public radio stations face genuine financial pressure. Funding is fragmented, listener donations are volatile, and competition for audience attention is relentless. By structuring the tour so that host stations benefit immediately and directly, GBH demonstrates that collaboration doesn’t mean one institution benefiting whilst others bear costs.
For media executives and publishers watching these dynamics, the lesson is clear. Sustainable revenue comes from recognising that different institutions within a network have different economic needs. A national podcast producer has different financial incentives than local stations. By building a model where both benefit, the tour creates genuine partnership rather than extractive relationships. This approach strengthens public radio’s network identity at a moment when that identity feels threatened.
The Future of Public Media Storytelling: Archives, Community, and Distributed Production
Coss emphasises the importance of archives in The Big Dig’s storytelling. Historical recordings, documents, and photographs provide texture and context that contemporary interviews alone cannot. This signals something crucial: media institutions with deep archives possess an enormous asset that newer digital outlets cannot replicate. Publishing organisations, news archives, and broadcast institutions sitting on decades of recorded material have a competitive advantage if they know how to deploy it.
The expansion also hints at evolving audience preferences. Whilst podcast consumption remains strong, live events create a different engagement. Audiences who might scroll past an episode title in a podcast app will attend a live event with local reporters and expert guests. The tour model suggests that future media success involves hybrid distribution–combining traditional podcast formats with live community events, allowing stations to reach people through their preferred medium. Publishers exploring these models are discovering new paths to sustainable growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did GBH decide to expand The Big Dig to other cities?
After the original Boston-focused season aired, host Ian Coss received numerous emails from people in other cities describing their own highway crises and infrastructure challenges. An invitation to moderate a highway removal conference in Portland provided the initial catalyst. When Coss reached out to local stations, they responded enthusiastically, and the model expanded organically from there.
How does the revenue-sharing model work for host stations?
Host stations retain all ticket sales revenue from live events. GBH keeps revenue from the podcast episodes themselves. Crucially, host stations can also record and distribute the live event on their own feeds and social channels before the Big Dig podcast episode airs, allowing them to sell sponsorships on the same content independently. This creates multiple revenue opportunities from one event.
Is the Highway Teardown Tour a separate season from the original Big Dig podcast?
Technically, the new episodes appear under Season 1 on Apple Podcasts, so it’s an extension rather than a distinct season. However, the format is completely different–instead of documentary-style deep-dives, each episode is a recording of a live event. This distinction reflects the structural difference between studio production and event recording.
What makes the highway issue relevant across so many different cities?
Every American city built or expanded highway infrastructure around the same era (mid-20th century), and most face similar challenges today–deteriorating roads, congestion, neighbourhood impacts, and questions about whether removal or repair makes sense. The commonality of the problem across cities, combined with the uniqueness of each city’s political and geographical context, creates consistent relevance.
How do local reporters and guests contribute to the live events?
Each city event pairs Ian Coss with a local reporter who has been covering that city’s highway issues. Together they discuss that city’s specific challenges and invite local experts–planners, activists, officials, or affected residents–to illustrate different perspectives and possible paths forward. This local expertise grounds the conversation in each place’s unique context.
Why is this model important for public radio stations right now?
Public radio faces ongoing financial pressure and listener fragmentation. Collaborative models like The Big Dig’s tour remind stations they are “part of a network” and can create mutual benefit rather than competing. The tour generates revenue and community connection simultaneously, showing a sustainable path forward during a vulnerable period for public broadcasting.
How does archival material strengthen The Big Dig’s storytelling?
Historical recordings, documents, and photographs provide context and texture that contemporary interviews alone cannot. For media institutions with deep archives, this represents a competitive advantage–existing material can be repurposed and combined with fresh reporting to create richer narratives than newcomers can produce.
Conclusion
The Big Dig’s expansion represents something larger than a single podcast tour. It’s a case study in how public media can evolve beyond traditional distribution models whilst maintaining financial sustainability and community connection. By partnering with local stations, building collaborative revenue-sharing, and adapting a core narrative to local contexts, GBH has created a model that works during a period when public radio particularly needs innovation.
For publishers and media executives, the lesson is straightforward: sustainable media thrives when institutions recognise they are part of a network, not competitors. The Big Dig demonstrates that collaboration–structured so every participant benefits–strengthens the ecosystem and reaches audiences through multiple channels simultaneously. As traditional media business models continue to shift, this approach to partnership, revenue generation, and storytelling offers a compelling template for future growth.
