Posted on 03/07/2016 6:02:21 AM PST by raccoonradio
Whad ya know cancelled.Tom Taylor:" Michael Feldman’s “Whad’Ya Know?” weekend quiz show is canceled after 31 years.
Feldman tells hometown Madison TV station WISC it wasn’t his choice and he’d prefer to keep on hosting the two-hour weekly show for public radio. But Wisconsin Public Radio cites the drop-off in the number of affiliates (which at one time numbered more than 300). And they’re giving Feldman plenty of time to say goodbye, with a final live show scheduled for June 25 in Madison. Feldman’s act has always been interactive, with audience participation, and it’s been Midwestern to its core, gently making fun of Midwestern foibles (and small towns everywhere).
You could also see this cancellation as part of a larger trend where fewer Americans live in small towns, for various reasons. Michael would like to do something else with Wisconsin Public Radio, again something “with an audience involvement sort of thing.” Feldman’s current crew includes musical entertainers John Thulin and Jeff Hamann and announcer Stephanie Lee. She got the gig last year, after being an audience member who volunteered to read the usual “Four Disclaimers.” Here’s #1 – “All questions used on Whad'ya Know? have been painstakingly researched, although the answers have not. Ambiguous, misleading, or poorly worded questions are par for the course. Listeners who are sticklers for the truth should get their own shows.” Whad’Ya Know is distributed nationally by PRI
The show could be entertaining but admittedly ran left when politics came up; a mention of a conservative politician would draw a hiss from the audience.
It was funny but not memorable.
Never heard of it. Couldn’t care less about it.
It often ran VERY left of center. Good riddance!
Public radio has become synonymous with left wing drivel anyway, so “normal” (the new N word) people don’t bother with it except for music.
The show ran years ago on Boston’s WGBH or WBUR. One time they had a fundraising drive on WGBH and they said it was one of their most popular programs...then it was abruply cancelled; cost cited aa a factor.
WGBH would only run one hour, at one point, tape delayed (to Sun 6 pm I think) and they ran out of time during the quiz —
“we’ll finish this in the next hour”. The jazz DJ on WGBH
came on and quipped, “I guess we’ll never know (if contestant won)...”
Hadn’t heard show in awhile; Boston NPR stations dropped it years ago, and if there was any place a lefty show would succeed...
pleasant, clean entertainment of no social value ... just fun stuff.
Caught some of it when driving the spouse somewhere. I thought it was so-so at best
The alternative was sports talk radio which I despise even more than nLpr. Between nobody people trying to be entertaining or constant loud drivel by wacko sports imams, I will have to go with nobody.
It was, along with Car Talk, the one NPR show I still enjoyed. As long as Prairie Home Companion stuck to skits, music, and Minnesota send up it was entertaining too. But Garrison Keillor is too much of an a$$hole even for me. The first two are gone now so there’s no reason to keep public radio on my dial.
Amen. I liked listening to the program but their blatant right-bashing especially during election cycles really teed me off.
I don’t think the modern Leftist is as enamored by PBS/NPR as their Hippy-dippy parents were.
Thirty years ago, PBS and NPR offered the casual socialist a daily dose of affirmation, dressed up in a haughty pretentiousness that made them feel morally superior. However, the availability of BBC programming on cable has robbed PBS of much of their high-brow through association act, and NPR’s Leftist-edginess has fallen behind the Left’s actual “marry a goat if you want to” edginess.
Of course, people living in their parents’ basement and demanding free stuff probably aren’t inclined to donate money either.
Another left wing radio show bites the dust due to lack of audience. Good riddance.
http://www.wpr.org/wpr-michael-feldman-will-end-production-michael-feldmans-whadya-know-june-30-2016
<<of course, people living in their parents’ basement and demanding free stuff probably aren’t inclined to donate money either.
Exactly. People point out that CPB only gets a very small percentage of taxpayer dollars (doled out to NPR and PBS)
but it still shouldn’t be using tax dollars at all.
Air America failed because those on the left preferred their drivel to come from powerful FM NPR stations, not weaker AMs who considered Al Franken to be the equal of Rush Limbaugh. AAR failed in Boston...and at one point some guy named Jeff Santos paid to have the lib shows aired on AM 1510 (which these days is conservative/libertarian talk).
Didn’t last.
My fave quote came from Jon Sinton of Air America who said in 2004 “in five years, we’ll be on 500 stations”. They were never that big, and in a couple of years went bankrupt.
I used to listen to Prairie Home Companion, roughly once a year, on our annual trip to visit relatives at Christmas. While driving through Nebraska and Wyoming, it was on about the only radio station on the dial. It didn't hurt that I grew up just a few miles from what is now called "Woebegone Trail".
What struck me most on this annual pilgrimage was the LACK of originality in the program. Often, many of the skits were repetitions from the previous year. A notable one was the song "We're all Republicans, now". You can contrast this with Rush, who puts on a daily three hour show (compared with PHC's one hour weekly one), and rarely repeats anything once it drops from the news.
Call me contrarian, but the continuity of skits and the running memes is what I found comforting about the shows. Kind of a like a favorite old book you have read a hundred times or that worn out twenty year old robe you just cannot throw away. Contentment and originality do not always mix.
http://raccoonradio.freehostia.com/Air/whadyaknow.mp3 ‘
I was on public radio’s Whad Ya Know in early 90s and was asked qualifying question, “Who treats his employees well even after they’ve been fired?” My guess was someone in the news then who is in the news now: Donald Trump. Wrong; correct answer was George Steinbrenner, so I didn’t get to take part in the quiz.
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