Host, 'To the Point' and 'Olney in L.A.'
Warren Olney is the host and executive producer of To the Point and Olney in L.A. To the Point is a one-hour daily national and international news program distributed by Public Radio International, currently airing in Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego and several other public radio markets nationwide. Olney in L.A. is a weekly interview segment which airs in KCRW during All Things Considered. From 1992 to 2016, Olney also hosted Which Way LA?, the signature daily local news program on 89.9 KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com.
Olney and his programs have been honored with nearly 40 national, regional and local awards for broadcast excellence since its inception. In 2012, Olney received the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California for his broad achievements in television news, as well as his storied career over 20 years on public radio, both locally and nationally. He has been awarded the Golden Mike Award for "Best Public Affairs Program," and WWLA was honored with the Los Angeles Press Club's Southern California Journalism Award for Best Talk/Public Affairs Show. Olney was named Best Radio Journalist of the Year at the 2001 Los Angeles Press Club's Southern California Journalism Awards. WWLA was also named as Best Talk/Public Affairs Show during the same awards ceremony.
He is the only person to have been twice named "Broadcast Journalist of the Year" — for his work in both radio and television — by the Society of Professional Journalists, Los Angeles. He is the recipient of Emmy Awards for reporting and anchoring, and Golden Mikes for investigative reporting.
Olney is a veteran broadcast journalist. Concurrent with his hosting duties on Which Way, LA?, from June 1999 to September 2000, he served as co-anchor of KCET-TV's Life & Times Tonight, a nightly public affairs show.
Olney was a television news reporter and anchor from 1966 to 1991, working in Washington, DC, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. Throughout his career, he covered local, state, and national politics, including presidential primaries, nominating conventions and inaugurals, and superpower summit meetings in Washington and Geneva. His special projects and investigations have focused on crime, science, the environment, among other subjects. Overseas assignments took him to Europe, Asia, and Central America.
He also served as a print reporter for the Sacramento Bee (California) and the Newport News Daily Press (Virginia). Olney's interviews, book reviews, articles, and columns have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, Los Angeles magazine, and California Journal, among other publications. He frequently speaks on politics, the media, the evolving character of Southern California, and other subjects, and is often called on to moderate public panels on numerous topics.
At the University of Southern California, Olney developed and taught "Broadcast Journalism," a laboratory course for graduate and undergraduate students, from 1976-1982.
As an actor, Olney has appeared in numerous feature films, including Crimson Tide, The Fisher King, and Higher Learning, as well as other feature and television productions.
Olney received his BA in English, magna cum laude, from Amherst College (Massachusetts) and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has four children and five grandchildren. He is married to Marsha Temple, a former attorney at law, now Executive Director of the Integrated Recovery Network, a nonprofit helping the homeless mentally ill to find housing, treatment and jobs.