Car Talk is Out, Wait Wait is In!
Tuning In: Big New Program Changes on Montana Public Radio
Montana Public Radio is changing its lineup for the first time in years. And that's worth broadcasting.
By Amy Linn, 10-22-09
This just in: Montana Public Radio is switching its schedule to offer extra news in the morning and provide new shows—while booting some old ones.
Starting November 2, the morning news on Montana Public Radio (MTPR) will run until 9 a.m., complete with NPR’s “Morning Edition” and two new additions, “Marketplace Morning Report” and an expanded “Montana Morning News.” The latter will feature segments from Missoula anchor Edward O’Brien and reporters Emilie Ritter in Helena, Katrin Frye in the Flathead Valley, and Kevin Maki in the Bitterroot Valley, according to a press release from the University of Montana.
The changes were made after two years of building the regional news team and gathering feedback about what listeners wanted most, the announcement said. MTPR officials specifically tried to satisfy two key camps—classical music lovers and newshounds—by offering more news in the morning and three to six hours of classical music programming each day, according to the press release. “Morning Classics” will now start later in the morning, airing from 9 to 11 a.m.
Laugh hounds, meanwhile, will be able to tune in at 11:30 a.m. on Sundays to “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,” an NPR news quiz show featuring comic-wits and humorists like Paula Poundstone, Roy Blount Jr., and Charlie Pierce, hosted by award-winning playwright and funny-man Peter Sagal, with NPR’s Carl Kasell acting as judge and scorekeeper.
“Car Talk” fans won’t be hearing maniacal laughter from Tom and Ray, however. “Fueled by the need to economize and to direct resources to local initiatives,” MTPR is dropping the show from its schedule, a second UM press release explains. “Car Talk,” a one-hour-per-week show, costs (who knew?) $21,500 per year, or “eight times the average of other national shows the station buys,” the UM announcement said. (The evening news program “All Things Considered” provides 12 hours of news each week and costs only $35,000 per year, it noted.)
Here’s more info straight from the announcement:
-- “Car Talk” fans can still get their weekly fix by listening on-demand at the show’s Web site, or by listening to a podcast.
-- Other added MTPR shows are: “Talk of the Nation: Science Friday” –- science news and discussion, at 1 p.m. Friday; “Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival” -– at 8 a.m. Sunday (replacing “Saint Paul Sunday”); and “Echoes” -– a modern soundscape of music, at 11 p.m. Sunday.
-- Along with “Car Talk” and “Saint Paul Sunday,” deleted shows include “Bookworm,” “Listener’s Bookstall” and “StarDate.”
-- Local producer Marguerite Munsche’s “Sunday Musicale” will move to 7 a.m., and her “Saturday Music Hall” will gain half an hour. The national show “Performance Today” returns to Tuesday nights and will be heard every weekday.
-- A news-and-information block will take place at midday following the “Freeforms” show, including public affairs and information programs such as NPR’s “Talk of the Nation – Science Friday,” “Homeground,” “Living on Earth” and “Musician’s Spotlight.”
For the complete schedule, click here. But here’s a look at the new weekday lineup, straight from the announcement:
2 to 5 a.m. – BBC World Service
5 to 7 a.m. – “Morning Edition” from NPR
5:51 a.m. – “Marketplace Morning Report”
7 to 9 a.m. – “Morning Edition” from NPR
7:04, 7:33, 8:04 and 8:33 a.m. – “Montana Morning News”
7:51 a.m. – “Marketplace Morning Report”
9 to 11 a.m. – “Morning Classics”
11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. – “Freeforms”
12:30 p.m. – BBC World Service
1 to 2 p.m. – Public affairs and information shows
2 to 4 p.m. – “Performance Today,” “The Folk Show” and “Jazz Sessions”
4 p.m. – “The Pea Green Boat”
5 to 5:30 p.m. – “All Things Considered”
5:30 to 6 p.m. – “Montana Evening Edition”
6 to 7:30 p.m. – “All Things Considered”
[End of article]
These are changes that the listening public has been hounding Montana Public Radio about for years. Having been involved with public radio entities for the last thirty years in a variety of ways and locations, I have never met a management team as recalcitrant as MTPR to consider public feedback in programing decisions. But that sword has two edges, the iconic children's programming probably wouldn't survive any test of "market" strength, or would opera, for that matter. They are all important to have available; it is one of the functions of public radio to deliver programming independent of popular appeal. That notwithstanding, I am sure the new schedule will increase listenership in both time and numbers. I sure will miss Listener's Bookstall - thanks to Zed and Richard Brown and all the great readers over the years.
Comment By problembear, 10-22-09did mavis mckelvey finally release her grip on someone's _____ over there? jeez. about time.
Comment By Jay Greene, 10-22-09The move to the right which has been gathering strength at NPR appears to have finally moved into Montana. Public Radio began with classical music; so what could be more conservative than to swing back to that cheapest of programming possible?
And do you suppose they'll come abegging for two weeks now--or will it be four times a year?
What could be more conservative than adding more NPR news? Well, a lot of things, really. It'd take me about 30 seconds to find someone who would tell you this is a government-sponsored, Marxist takeover of the airwaves.
And it's not the cheapest of programming options; that would be paid programming, like infomercials. In fact, it's probably a lot cheaper to let a board-op you are already paying spin some Mahler LPs than it is to hire extra reporters to give MTPR listeners more local news IN ADDITION to licensing fees for more NPR programming.
Were the decision purely driven by economic concerns, a more "conservative" decision would have been to cut Morning Edition as well and program more classical.
Having worked the phones during pledge week for years, I can't tell you how many donors, myself included, wanted MTPR to extend Morning Edition to 9am. Sure, there's a small but devoted group of people who like their classical music first thing in the a.m., but I'm glad the station finally listened to the rest of us.
I'm sad to see Car Talk go, and happy to welcome Wait, Wait; Bookworm, however...Michael Silverblatt should consider a second career as a professional sleep aid.
Hiring newspeople?--are you suggesting the newspersons they have now are not recording their schmoozing for rebroadcast at 0704 and 0804?
What a charade!--and I'll not cry when Michael's analyses are silenced, either; but it was the increased volume of recordings of classical music I suggested was the cheapest form of programming.
Hot dog! I can't tell you how many times I've run to turn the station before the little intro to morning classics chimes in. I can't stand that durn thing. They got my donation.
Comment By Dewey, 10-24-09The situation was different in the state just south of you a few years back. Wyoming Public Radio, emanating from our ONLY 4-year school , way down there in Laramie, was renowned nationwide for its progressive music format. Don Woods, the Music Director and Head DJ , put together programming and playlists that featured 8 hours a day of adult contemporary music..rock, eclectic, folk, alternative, with its prime focus on Singer-Songwriter / New Music. Evenings were filled with World Cafe . more progressive syndicated shows, and even some space music ( the excellent Echoes). You would've had to tune in to a station in Boston or the West Coast to hear modern music better than Woody programmed it.
Well. It was SO good that the commercial FM stations in Wyoming formed a cabal behind the Wyoming Broadcaster's Assocation banner and marched straight to Laramie and threatened the UW board with yanking/boycotting advertising for Wyoming Cowboy football ( gasp! ) and basketball games! They demanded that Wyoming Pubic Radio quit competing with their Trucker Tunes, Top 40, satellite DJ schlockfests and drivel, and the ever popular overproduced 3-chord country songs that pass for music in much of lower IQ America. And they won.
UW relented . The threat of losing sports advertising was blackmail at its best. Wyoming Public Radio charged and found guilty of the heresy of actually giving the state's residents unique DJ produced music they enjoyed and learned from , and used some taxpayer money to do t. WPR reduced the full day of progressive singer songwriter music to 3 hours, and added back nothing but talk shows all afternoon and nothing but classical ( Performance Today ) in the evening. The net result is the state of Wyoming s now fully a radio wasteland and semi-arid desert of crap commercial music... the same exact music you hear coast to coast on the homogenized dumbed down Clear Channels and payola palaces. It just hasn't been the same.
Don Woods had been at Wyoming Public Radio since its inception in 1963 ( ???? ) and had developed a world class public radio format. He left a couple years back under a cloud. It was Wyoming's profound loss, and a pyhrric victory for those $#@!ing commercial stations and radio franchises who market sonic slumgullion .
I spend these days listening to far flung stations on iTunes broadband streams. Wyoming's commercial stations get almost none of my ear time. I do occasionally stir the pot and take great joy in infuriating the right wing on a certain little presumptuous 1-hour talk radio call-in show in Cody that warms up the vaccuum tubes for the three hours of Rush Limbaugh that follows it.
Wyoming radio is terrible. But it wasn't always that way , not when Don Woods ran Wyoming Public Radio programming for over 30 years and cared about the quality of the product and his mission statement of giving the people their money's worth. I hope Montana does not go down the same road. IMHO, the public radio outlet from MSU Billings ( KEMC) has already compromised its programming too severely in recent years, and Marvin Granger is sorely missed there, too.
I no longer pledge to Wyoming Public Radio . My own boycott , so to speak, in response to the University of Wyoming regents caving into the commercial radio mafia and its sports sponsorship . And I tell UW that , too. Twice a year at fund raising time...
The right wing took over public radio with the advent of the decider and has slowly corrupted the entire process. There has not been such a successful putsch since the thirties in Europe.
Comment By Helena, 10-24-09Good changes all, though I will miss Listener's Bookstall.
Comment By gooddogs, 10-24-09Back in the late seventies and early eighties I was involved in Wyoming Public Radio in Laramie. I don't recall Don Woods being around at the time. The music fare was more in the classical mode that you describe it being now. It is a real shame that the University backed down to the commercial broadcasters. But that is Wyoming in so many ways, like Idaho it is life in a one-party state.
I have to correct my earlier post. I meant Richard Dunn instead of Richard Brown and neglected to mention old Den Morrison, a great yarn spinner, now deceased. Anyone who has heard Richard Dunn read "Stubby Pringle's Christmas" every year will never forget it and it brings a tear to this old crusty bastard's eye every time I hear it.
Gooddogs---yer probably right. Woody was at Wyoming Public Radio in the beginning back in the 60's , and for a longer stint in more recent years ... just not in the middle years.
My point is Public Radio and it's cousin Community Radio exist to serve and to provide a genuine nonsuperificial alternative to commercial broadcasting. To my mind at the end of the day it's all about the content. Content. And more content. How many viable commercial stations out there are built around classical or folk music programming , anyway ? Or any programming not derived from Pop music of various genre flavors; talk ; or sports ? 15,000 new music CD's are issued by artists every year, and much more new music goes exclusively online, yet the commercial stations keep rehashing the same limited number of songs and artists , ad absurdum. If it weren't for public/community channels, you'd be very hard pressed to encounter any new or different music at all. And the music industry wonders why it's suffering a decline in mainstream sales ? Look in the mirror, Mr. Music Exec , and turn on that local public station or college channel across the room.
Wyoming Public Radio was financially punished for daring to offer what the commercial stations would not : fresh new music. What's wrong with this picture? And will Montana take the hint?
Well it's about time. I said I wouldn't contribute again until they changed, so I'll be pledging again this year.
Having said that, the programming, esp freeforms is so one dimensional and 'typical Missoulian of a certain age'. Ah.. in the background now, here it comes... yesss The Beetles! And did I hear Moon Dance earlier? And the Indigo Girls? Come on, don't they listen to anything else? "Well sure we do, we also enjoy Greg Brown". AGHHHH! I swear, there are about 5 artists that make up 80% of what is played down there, esp during the day. So cliche. Do they suffer from SAD? Depression? Stop taking it out on our ears with the terrible emo grass/emo folk! Ah, it's fall.. oh no is he *really* playing California Dreaming? Gawd.
Zed is the only bright light there.. Dancing w. tradition with Zed is the best hour. Susan, Joan, and Howard (please make him a regular) are good too. Joe Corona's show is stunning.
They need some new blood, or at least some new music. There's so much. Opera is the same over and over.. a static medium. Meanwhile in the rest of the world.... there's NEW stunning music every day. Lets hear some of it please. I can hear Moon Dance and it's ilk on a number of commercial stations in Msla. The theme shows are bit too much also, as every dj feels they need to do one. They should pull straws for who gets to do ONE theme show per season/holiday?
Need some ideas? http://www.kcrw.com/
Thanks for the change. Keep it coming.
-CAMT-