When the creators of “Marketplace” sat down to design a business radio program, they wanted a show that would appeal to the masses.

Corporate executives already had plenty of media options for news, they figured. What was needed was a program dealing with weighty business issues in a fun way, so a general audience wouldn’t get turned off and tune out.

The concept has been phenomenally successful.

Since 1989 “Marketplace” which is produced in a nondescript USC research annex in the shadow of the Harbor Freeway has quadrupled its weekly audience, growing to an estimated 3 million listeners. That makes it one of the fastest growing public radio shows in the nation. Currently, 288 stations carry the show.

“There is no one else trying to do what we’re doing,” said J.J. Yore, the program’s executive producer. “We’re taking a subject that for many people has been very heavy and obscure and boring and we’re making it interesting and accessible and fun.”

Take, for example, David Johnson, the Dallas-based stockbroker, who is featured on “The View From Off Wall Street.” Every Friday, Johnson, who speaks with a Texas drawl, reviews the markets in down-to-earth, everyday language.

“He has a different take on (the stock markets),” said Will Lewis, a management consultant with KCRW, a Santa Monica public radio station that carries the show. “He’s willing to say it’s irrational or it’s stupid, instead of trying to make it very serious.”

“Marketplace” host, David Brancaccio, a former rock deejay and reporter at San Francisco public-radio station KQED, says the show’s style of business reporting “isn’t so deadly earnest and dreary.”

A recent segment on the sales of dolls, modeled after the members of the ’70s rock band Kiss, featured the Kiss song “Rock & Roll All Nite” playing in the background throughout the segment.

“We enjoy the beat,” said Brancaccio, “We’re not aspiring political reporters. We’re pretty content covering business.”

“Marketplace” starts with several minutes of breaking news, followed by a lengthier feature presented in the show’s irreverent style, and then a commentary or two.

Timing, says Jim Russell, the show’s creator and general manager, has played an important role in the success of “Marketplace.”

“We were born in a really perfect time,” said Russell, “at the end of the whole ’80s, ‘greed-is-good’ thing, and the beginning of the global economy. If someone were to say, pick a time when this show should be born, they’d pick this exact time.”

Russell came up with the idea for “Marketplace” while working as a public-station manager at KTCA-TV in St. Paul, Minn. He discussed his concept with Yore, who was working as editor of Current, a public broadcasting newspaper in Washington, D.C.

The concept of bringing an off-beat approach to business reporting did not initially sit well with network executives at American Public Radio (now Public Radio International), which funds and distributes “Marketplace.”

Russell tells of the time when he and his colleagues were thinking of a name for the program.

“When we started the show the network said, ‘You have to have business in the title,’ and we said, ‘You know, it’s unfortunate that we’re having a fight so quickly, but we’re going to take a hard stand. Business is not going in the title.'”

PRI executives backed off and Russell and Yore forged ahead.

Then came the dispute over Russell’s idea to produce his business show on the West Coast.

“I just felt that if we were trying to do anything new in business and having new thoughts about business, the last place on earth you’d want to do that would be on the East Coast. Everything has been decided there,” Russell said. “Bottom line is it’s very rigid, and this place here, there’s a lot of stuff that hasn’t been decided.”

Eight years after its launch, “Marketplace” is growing beyond its original half-hour daily program.

It recently began producing a separate 10-minute newscast, which is fed to subscriber stations five times a day. Then last month, “Marketplace” began producing a 100-second news segment.

Beginning next month, the producers of “Marketplace” will launch “The Savvy Traveler,” an hour-long weekly program about travel and recreation. The show is a spin-off from commentator and travel writer Rudy Maxa’s popular “Marketplace” segments, which focus on quirky out-of-the-mainstream destinations and on ways travelers can save money.

Five full-time staffers were recently hired to help produce the new show. “Marketplace” now has a staff of 18 at its USC-area facility and about 75 commentators who call in from around the country. “Marketplace” has bureaus in seven U.S. cities as well as in London and Tokyo.

Funding for the non-profit production comes from grant money and corporate underwriters. The show’s two biggest supporters are General Electric and securities firm AG Edwards. Another source of funding are the carriage fees radio stations pay, which account for about one-third of the funding.

“Marketplace,” which is affiliated with USC radio, can be heard weekdays at 2 p.m. on KCRW (89.9) and at 6 p.m. on KUSC -FM (91.5).