After Garrison’s last broadcast. High cost show with declining listeners. I’m pretty lukewarm on his successor. I have a lot of respect for his (blanking on the name) musical skills but have not liked the shows he has hosted. I am a long time listener of the show and this is quite a disruption to my Saturday night routine. They are replacing it with Moth Radio and Invisibilia which I do enjoy, so we will see…
(Chris Thiele, remembered the successor’s name.)
I’m honestly surprised NPR hasn’t just gone back to the beginning and run the original all over again, a la Car Talk.
I know it’s not just a guy in front of a mic but how expensive can the show be?
Expensive for the local station to buy, not necessarily expensive to produce. The cost to the local station is based largely on what the market will bear, i.e. the show’s popularity.
I haven’t been paying a lot of attention this season, but I have heard a couple of shows that still had Keillor on them. Without him, does that mean no more Guy Noir, no more struggling novelist whose mother calls him, no more struggling artist who lives with his sister and their father, and of course no more Lake Wobegon stories? Those are the heart of the show, the music is just entertainment. And a little bluegrass goes a long way, as far as I’m concerned.
So on the whole I can’t say I blame your station for cancelling, although if it were me I would have waited until the end of the season, maybe.
I saw the new host interviewed on a local PBS show called Chicago Tonight. He played a song live, which I thought was pretty cool. The video is about halfway down this page:
How long of a run has it going? 30+ years adding the first and second St. Paul version (20+ now nonstop) and what was it, 4? of the NYC-based American Radio Company, that’s a pretty good clip and it would always be hard to replace the founding father after all that time. I would not be surprised if some stations did the math and saw not enough of the old fans were sticking around to pledge under the new guy - even in public media the business has turned less forgiving. Plus some whipstersnapper young PDs probably could not wait to let go for something newer.
This show is actually an APM (formerly PRI) production/distribution, not NPR.
But as I see it the thing is that PHC is set up as much as a live performance show for the Twin Cities market, anchoring the World/Fitzgerald, as a network radio production (Keillor was supposedly inspired by the Grand Ole Opry); so Minn. Public Radio wants to keep it going – as opposed to the strictly two guys and a phone format of Car Talk which they perpetuated when Tommy’s advancing infirmity led to the end of production (and didn’t I hear some of Car Talk is being re-produced by combining segments (the “three halves”) as well as by remastering old shows).
Car Talk supposedly has several years worth of unaired calls.
There was a good article on Keillor the other day in the New York Times. The guy is really an odd duck when not in his stage persona.
If they replace Keillor with someone who’s not a humorist it’s not even the same show.
My first instinct was to say that it won’t be the same show regardless, but that’s only trivially true: As you say, it’s theoretically possible to keep the show in the same genre, the “old-time radio revivalist variety show with a humorist host” genre which doesn’t seem to have any shorter of a name, and if they can’t then the least they can do is change the name to give the new host a fresh start to build their own thing.
A Prairie Home Companion is old but it only dates to 1974. By then, old-time radio was firmly in the realm of nostalgia and it was rubbing shoulders with CBS Radio Mystery Theater (1,399 episodes from 1974 to 1982, all in the Suspense mold) in catering to people who were getting on in years even then. It’s somewhat of a miracle it’s lasted this long, but it isn’t old enough to be an original concept. Maybe the new show will be, or will at least take the existing framework in a new direction.
Garrison Keillor said that he always envisioned PHC as a variety show with varying hosts and casts. I’m not sure why he’s just now putting another host in the driver’s seat, unless NPR or whoever demanded he stay this long for fear of losing fans.
Relax. Have some ketchup.
Here’s the hometown’s Star Tribune article. I like the quote:
I can imagine station managers looking back when they tried to replace Paul Harvey, or perhaps Roger Ebert on PBS, and saw how they couldn’t be replaced. Frankly I hope they give the new guy a try, although as a native Minnesotan we have our doubts…
I honestly don’t know how PHC lasted so long. To me, it’s a less countrified (but more folksy) version of Hee Haw.
I’m very interested in hearing the new version with Thile as host. He’s a great mandolin play, a nice guy, and has a more youthful and varied ear. He’s not a humorist in the way Keillor is/was (I mean, who COULD be?), but if they bring in a good variety of guests to the show, it could work.
I love PHC and it’s been a big part of my life, but I would be the first to admit that it could get pretty repetitive. The music was mostly drawn from a pretty small pool and Keilor’s could run together quite a bit.
I’ll miss him, greatly, but I’m very curious to hear a fresh take on the genre.
I assume that it’s available to stream over the Internet, right?
I know the radio “purists” hate that. But that’s the way to make sure as many people can get it as possible.
In this case, local station’s choices make little difference.
Chris Thile is a MacArthur grant-winning mandolinist, of both Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers. He’s buddies with Yo Yo Ma, Mark O’Connor and, basically, any top talent in acoustic music today. I’m open to giving him a shot. He’s a charming frontman with a lot of personality.
I used to have it on as soothing background every weekend. But my wife hates Keillor’s voice and especially his singing and his frequent use of folk/bluegrass/country music.