Todd Gleason, extension farm broadcaster for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, assisted with the creation of the Closing Market Report in 1985.
Gleason attended Lincoln Land Community College and the University of Illinois to pursue his bachelor’s degree in agricultural communications.
“I came to the University of Illinois in 1984, and I was hired on at WILL in the agriculture programming,” Gleason said. “Charlie Lindy was developing the Closet Market Report. He was a St. Louis boy and didn’t know much about it, and he referred to me a lot about what should be in the programming for those first episodes.”
Lindy often asked Gleason for his opinion about what the content should consist of, given Gleason’s agricultural background.
“Charlie was a very good reporter, and he would talk to me often because I was a farm boy,” Gleason said. “We would do markets, weather, and news from various agriculture professionals.”
The first episode aired in January 1985.
“That was the first time I was on air, and it was the start of my farm broadcasting career,” Gleason said. “The Closing Market Report and my career are tied closely together.”
Gleason has been on air with WILL in one form or another since that first episode of Closing Market Report. He has served as a farm reporter for five years, but he transitioned to extension farm broadcaster in 1994. In 2001, Lindy passed away, and Gleason took over hosting the show in 2003.
“The report was designed to be a complimentary service to what local farm broadcasters were doing,” Gleason said. “So it was set to air in the two o’clock hour purposely to not interfere with the noon shows. It was a testament to the brokers that they decided to have a program about commodity markets after the close of the day.”
The team at the Closing Market Report were ahead of their time and started targeting technology that was not utilized by most radio shows in the early 2000s.
“We were thinking really deeply about where the future of agriculture programming might be headed, and it was not clear that an AM signal was going to have longevity,” Gleason said. “We decided we needed to develop a listenership online. It was a deliberate decision to target smartphones rather than desktops, because that’s where we thought farmers would be listening from in the future.”
Over the years, the show has developed and grown to include an agricultural energy segment. It also added a rotating lineup of agricultural economists from various states including Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Missouri, to provide content from outside of the state.
Gleason says his favorite part of being the host is the team he works with.
“It’s not just about me asking questions from a microphone,” Gleason said. “It’s about the meteorologists, the economists, the brokers, the volunteers, and others that give their time and effort to make the Closing Market Report what it is.”
