There have always been stories that Frontline wants to tell that, for one reason or another, didn’t work for film. In some cases, these stories are particularly sensitive, or involve people under 18. There is, for instance, Heather, who was 14 when her father took her from their home in Idaho to Missouri to marry the 24-year-old who’d raped and impregnated her. After some time had passed, Heather wanted to tell her story. It was a uniquely intimate and personal topic for Frontline to cover, and a film didn’t seem like the right fit.
“We’d been thinking about longform audio documentary for years before the podcast form emerged,” said Raney Aronson-Rath, Frontline’s executive producer. “Since podcasts took off, it’s been one of our biggest priorities: What types of stories could we tell that would resonate a lot more in sound?”
Tuesday marks the launch of Frontline’s first podcast, The Frontline Dispatch. In its first season, the biweekly podcast will focus…
