As public radio faces the fact that they haven't had a new hit gateway drug
series to bring in the neophytes since "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!"
started 18 years ago--and with Michael Feldman forced off and Garrison
Kellior choosing to hang up the mike in the last few weeks ("Prairie Home
Companion" will continue as a predominately folk music show, catering to an
aging audience that thinks NPR is a corporate sellout, "Whad'ya Know?" will
continue as a podcast)--NPR and WBUR in Boston have announced that "The
Best of Car Talk" repackagings will go off the air in Sept. 2017, five
years after Tom Magliozzi's retirement (he died in 2014 of Alzheimer's) and
the beginning of the repackaging, which caused some controversy because of
the idea of a public show in all reruns--although WNYC in NY and WBEZ in
Chicago moved the show out of its traditional Saturday morning time slot
and/or dropped it, most NPR stations are still airing it on Saturday
mornings as if nothing has changed, due to the scaredy cat nature of most
public radio program directors, who are cowed by the fact that ANY kind of
programming change will meet with loud complaints and threats of no more
donations, especially from the Boomers who think that because they have a
tote bag with the station's name on it, they are more entitled to program
the station than professionals:
http://current.org/2016/07/nprs-best-of-car-talk-will-end-in-september-2017/
The repackagings will continue as podcasts and NPR will offer reruns of the
original episodes, but stations supposedly can't air them on Saturday
mornings (good luck with that).
Meanwhile, as I said, public radio needs to find a new gateway drug show
and fast. "This American Life" surprisingly doesn't attract new listeners
that much--on-air, at least (podcasts are a different story--see
"Serial")--and the same can be said for the other storytelling shows like
"Snap Judgment" and "The Moth Story Hour" (and "The TED Radio Hour") that
have popped up in its success. "Radiolab" is mostly a confirmed listener
show. "Anthem," the pop culture show that started the same day as "Wait,
Wait..." on NPR, was gone after a year and American Public Media lost a lot
of money on "Weekend America," an attempt at a lighter newsmag show that
ran under five years to no great interest. APM's attempt at a Gen-X
millennial comedy-variety show called "Wits" went off last year after lousy
station clearances. The comedy game show "Ask Me Another" is making some
headway, but is not on a lot of major markets and has the opposition of the
Boomer diehards who either want classical music or Noam Chomsky lectures
because of its genre.
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