Watch the final regular season Kalb Report Saturday at 7 pm on MPT

The last scheduled “Kalb Report” airs on Maryland Public Television Saturday at 7 p.m.

After 28 years and 103 programs, moderator Marvin Kalb will be joined by his longtime friend and fellow network correspondent Ted Koppel to look back on their long careers while also looking forward to where journalism and democracy are heading.

The program, recorded in November, will have an encore presentation on MPT April 23, at 4 p.m. It will also be available online via MPT and the Club, and a spring reception is planned at the Club to conclude the series. 

In the series finale, the 92-year-old Kalb reflects on his broadcast news career that stretches back to 1957 as Koppel turns the tables on him and becomes the interviewer. They explore the symbiotic state of American democracy and the press from the Cold War to the War on Truth. Interwoven into the program are video excerpts and photographs from past Kalb Reports, as well as of Kalb as he reported for CBS News in the eras of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

The Kalb Report was created in 1994 when Kalb, on a one-year sabbatical from Harvard University, returned to Washington to teach at George Washington University (GW). Kalb was the last correspondent personally hired by Edward R. Murrow, and his career had taken him around the world as the CBS News chief diplomatic correspondent. He later moderated NBC’s Meet the Press before leaving the networks after more than 30 years to become the founding director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

At GW, Kalb found a partner in former CBS Radio Network General Manager Michael Freedman, who went on to become Club president in 2020. Freedman brought Kalb to the Club, which quickly embraced the idea. The first of nine programs for the first season was produced on Sept. 29, 1994, and Freedman remained executive producer for the entire 28-year run.

The Kalb Report is a joint project of the Club, the Journalism Institute, University of Maryland Global Campus, the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center, and the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.

Maryland Public Television serves as presenting station for the series, which is distributed nationally by American Public Television. It also will be heard on Sirius-XM Satellite Radio and Federal News Radio in Washington. The series is funded by a grant from Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, a subsidiary of Oklahoma based Inasmuch Foundation.