The following is a transcript of Part 1 of our podcast with executive producer Rome Hartman. Click here for Part 2.

Rome Hartman: My name's Rome Hartman. I'm the executive producer of BBC World News America, which is the title of a new program launching on October 1st on BBC AMERICA and BBC WORLD. And "executive producer" means that I'm the person in charge of the production team, working alongside Matt Frei, who's anchoring the new program. And we have this terrific team assembled here in Washington to put on a new program.

BBCA: Could you tell everyone a little bit about your background?

Rome Hartman: I'm a grizzled veteran of two months at the BBC, as I speak or as I record this. I have been a television journalist my whole professional life, and I spent 24 years at CBS News, always as a producer, in a variety of different roles. I started as a field producer for CBS News back in 1983, working out of the Atlanta bureau, and had a bunch of jobs since then. I was White House producer for CBS, I was senior producer for the CBS Evening News at CBS in Washington, and ironically, at my current office at the BBC, I can look out the window - which I'm going to do right now - at the building where I came to work in 1986. The CBS bureau is just outside my window. I was a White House producer and senior producer there. And then I worked for a long time as a producer at 60 Minutes. And my last job at CBS was as executive producer at the CBS Evening News.

BBCA: Given that you've worked at CBS News for over 20 years, how does the atmosphere at the BBC differ?

Rome Hartman: Well, obviously, the BBC is much more of a global news organization. And one of the things that attracted me to the BBC first was this great ambition that BBC News has to cover the world and be the best news organization in the world. Now I don't mean to suggest that CBS doesn't have similar aspirations. CBS News is a very proud and ambitious organization with a very proud history both of domestic and international coverage. But when you look at the BBC, and all of its many parts, you just realize that there is no news organization anywhere that can compare in terms of scale and reach. I mean, again, I look one way and I see the CBS News Bureau. If I look out my office window to the other side, there are about ten people sitting out here who work for BBC News Language Services, doing daily news broadcasts in Russian and in Persian and in Arabic and in Spanish. And I look at the other side of the bureau and I see these great correspondents for BBC World Service English Language Radio for BBC Radio. I look across the world and see correspondents and journalists and bureaus in places like Nairobi and Johannesburg and Tehran and Sao Paolo and Mexico City and Singapore - and it's just an amazingly muscular and far-flung organization. And, as I said before, ambitious.

BBCA: What can viewers expect to see in the BBC World News America broadcast, the new broadcast that will be airing at 7 pm eastern each night?

Rome Hartman: I think that they can expect to see an effort each night to bring smart and sophisticated coverage of the world home to an American audience. You can't boil an hour broadcast into one sentence, but if you could, I would say that that's our main goal and ambition. It's to bring the world home to America using the global resources of the BBC and BBC journalists' ability to cover events and issues and trends around the world in such a smart way. That's what I think people are going to see night in and night out. We also intend to cover stories in the States, cover American stories, particularly those where the BBC's skill and sensibility will be an important contribution to the conversation. I think that in our first year and more that means that we'll make an effort to cover the presidential campaign from the perspective of the BBC.

And so, you're gonna see taped packages from Islamabad and you're gonna see roundtable discussions from our studio in Washington, and everything in between ahead.

BBCA: What sort of guests should viewers look out for in your roundtable discussions?

Rome Hartman: I think, both in interviews and in roundtable discussions, we want to get real players as opposed to pundits - people who are intimately involved in the issues that we're covering. And we want to have lively roundtable discussions that incorporate BBC correspondents; either from the U.S. or who are covering stories around the world, and other analysts and reporters who can really bring an interesting and distinctive take to the stories that we're covering. I don't think I want to name names, but people should be on the lookout for really A-list people. What we want is both star power and brain power in those roundtables. I should mention that one of the key members of the team, who's going to be making a huge contribution, and already is, to that effort, is a woman named Iva Zoric. And Iva came to us from the Charlie Rose program. That broadcast, where she worked and was a key person for years, is, I think, the best nightly interview program on American television right now. And I think Iva's ability to both just find the right people and get them in the door is going to be hugely important.

 Listen to Part 2...