Ira Glass recently wrote a lengthy piece about innovation in public radio vis a vis Car Talk; here’s the gist of it:
[W]ith all respect to [producer] Doug Berman and my colleagues at Car Talk Plaza — I think when they stop making new episodes in October, they should be pulled from Saturday mornings. A show that’s 100 percent reruns doesn’t fit with our mission as public broadcasters. I don’t think it’s justifiable.
Especially not in a timeslot that’s essentially primetime on weekends. Run Car Talk late nights maybe. Or Sunday night. But not on Saturday mornings. If we’re going to have a program that continues on our air forever like I Love Lucy reruns, it should be in the timeslots Lucy migrated to.
For all of public radio’s successes, the part of our mission we’ve always neglected the most is innovation. Our biggest shows — All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace, Fresh Air, A Prairie Home Companion — are decades old. The average age of our listeners keeps creeping upward. At 53, I am one of the younger public radio stars. My show has been on the air 17 years.
We need to make space for new shows, new talent, new ideas. That’s our mission, and ultimately, it’ll be good business, too, to have exciting new shows bring in new audiences.
I get the Car Talk thing. I do. I think just about anyone who (a) was a kid, and (b) has a dad probably gets the Car Talk thing. But nostalgia’s got limited appeal, and with all due respect to the Tappet brothers, I’m just not going to listen to old dudes cackle about cars now that I’m in charge of my own radio destiny. My fuse for OPB shows I don’t care about has grown very short; anytime I turn it on and hear Car Talk (we don’t even need to talk about PHC), I plug in one of the many podcasts I like better instead—increasingly forgetting to return to my radio dial, I might add, which speaks to Glass’ larger point about public radio’s need to innovate if they want to attract and keep younger listeners. Or they could just… keep churning out those Car Talk reruns, hawking those tote bags, and hoping that when their audience base inevitably dies out, they’ve at least remembered to “make OPB their legacy.”
Disagree. Car Talk is timeless. How could you even tell it was a re-run unless you remembered the specific episode?
I’ll take re-runs of Click and Clack over the constant navel-gazing that is This American Life.
Alison,
I think your radio destiny is as a drive-time FM DJ called A-Hole (Tagline: “Turn up the A-Hole!”) where you do car dealer remotes, Guitar Center giveaways, play blocs of Zep and Seger, heavily armed with BOIOING! noises and barf sound effects.
Hmm, I can see moving it to a different slot. But in my opinion, if there isn’t enough space for everyone mid-day, we should start by cutting out some of the approximately 17 hours of Garrison Keilor droning that we hear every weekend.
I want to agree, but I also think that timeslots are sort of meaningless now. Anymore I think of NPR as an entity that puts out lots of podcasts I like. I guess giving the Saturday morning spot to someone else is a good thing, but I can’t remember the last time I listened to public radio through an actual radio.
Blabby +1.
OPB turns into Reader’s Digest on the weekend.
I would rather have repeats of Radiolab or the Pop Culture Happy Hour or any one of a number of interesting syndicated shows from public radio stations around the country.
Sharpening the pitchforks and lighting torches for Keillor already… maybe one day.
Public radio listeners are the people who booed Dylan when he went electric. They can’t handle change or new things. I fully expect Car Talk to be on the air until the next millennium. I suggest you stick to the podcasts.
NPR can syndicate reruns if they like, but that doesn’t mean affiliate stations need to pick it up. Let’s encourage OPB to drop it, then join the rest of the country’s public radio stations and give Michael Feldman’s Whad’ya Know its second hour. God forbid they do this for Garrison Keilor when he retires, assuming he is not some kind of immortal demon of boredom made flesh.
Also, someone should hip Ira Glass to the fact that This American Life is about half reruns.
“Well, sir, it has been an uneventful week in Badger Falls…where the women are robust, the men are pink-cheeked, and the children are pink-cheeked and robust.”
@Chuck
“Hello, welcome to Car Talk.”
“Hi, my AM/FM radio keeps shorting out in my 1965 Buick Skylark.”
I don’t think the age of a show is an indicator of expired shelf life necessarily…if you keep relevance, you keep and attract an audience. The Diane Rehm Show is a perfect example of an experienced radio personality who STAYS relevant and challenges her listeners. WHY doesn’t OPB bring this show into the fold and get rid of almost anything else? (Think Out Loud TWICE a day every day?!)
@C&B Pop Culture Happy Hour?
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Hey, it’s better than the Thistle & Shamrock.
Barely
Wait, what’s so awful about PCHH, Chundy?
I like Car Talk and Prairie Home. Radiolab is good, too. Not sure I really listen to the other programs. But I’m an old person in a young’s body.
I LIKE PCHH. IT’S ON MY PODCAST FEED. AT THIS POINT, THE IDEA OF LISTENING TO ANYTHING ON THE RADIO SEEMS SILLY. SO PEOPLE, WE’RE ALL IN AGREEMENT THAT NPR IS KIND OF USELESS IN THIS AGE OF PODCATCHERS AND SHIT. SO INSTEAD, LET US DISCUSS THE PODCASTS THAT WE THINK ARE AWESOME. I’LL START WITH SOME OF MY FAVES:
HOW DID THIS GET MADE?
JODGE JOHN HODGMAN
SLATE MAGAZINE DAILY
FILMSPOTTING
DAN CARLIN’S HARDCORE HISTORY
WTF WITH MARC MARON (SKIP THE FIRST 5-10 MINUTES OF EVERY EPISODE)
BOY HOWDY
WHAT ARE OTHER PEOPLE LISTENING TO?
I like how they laugh REALLY HARD and ALL THE TIME about everything. That’s good radio!