The News from Lake Wobegon

I saw that Garrison Keillor posted an old News from Lake Wobegon segment online for today. It is from October 3, 1981, but I suspect life there is pretty much the same on like October 3, 2022. 

People are taking down window screens and putting on storm windows. 

People get ready in their own ways for winter even though it's just the start of autumn. It's a transitional time of year.

At the Sons of Knute lodge, they start their work session with some beers and that leads to nothing getting done.

For the Feast Day of St. Francis, Father Emil will bless all types of animals.

I can't believe that I probably listened to this news 41 years ago and that its till sounds right today.

The News segment of the radio show - which now exists in a very different format and without Keillor - was one of my favorite parts going back to a time when I had to listen to it live or miss it. I actually bought a radio with a cassette recorder combination unit so I could record his show and Terry Gross' Fresh Air since I wasn't always around at the broadcast time. It was my VCR for the radio.

Of course, now radio programs are usually podcasted too (or maybe only podcasted) and the VCR has been replaced by a DVR or on-demand streaming. Listen and watch whenever it pleases you.

I like Keillor's writing method for these News segments.

I always wrote the monologue on Friday evening, four or five pages, and looked at it Saturday morning, and then not again. I never read it. I never memorized it. I felt that I’d naturally remember the memorable parts.

I tried that method with my poetry a few times inspired by a writing prompt given by a poet in a workshop. Write the first draft. Read it through a few times. Destroy it. Then try to write it again - a few hours later or perhaps the next morning. The "memorable parts" should remain. Sometimes they do remain. Sometimes most of it is gone. Tough lesson.

Modern Radio Comes to America

When did modern radio come to America?

Back in 1906, the American inventor Lee de Forest created an amplifier that made broadcasting possible.

But I will nominate November 1920 when KDKA radio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania sent out the first-ever regular radio broadcast in the United States. The Harding-Cox presidential election results were sent out “over the ether" - a radio jargon of the time.

Of course, only 5,000 Americans owned radios.

Like many technologies, it didn't seem clear how any money could be made from radio.  But once advertising entered the picture, it was a race to grab a piece of the bandwidth.

Like TV, some people thought radio should be for the public good, used for education and enrichment, and funded by the government. But it took until 1967, when Lyndon B. Johnson signed a law that created National Public Radio.

It only took 2 years for commercial radio to launch. In 1922, the New York station WEAF (later known as WNBC) began selling on-air advertising.

Radio changed our culture. Instantaneous news connected regions and eventually the country. Politicians realized it was a way to connect with people, particularly those that couldn't or didn't read newspapers.

World War II was the first major "radio war" (As Vietnam was the "TV war.")

The advertising model for free listening would be used in TV and then on the Internet.

The National Lampoon Radio Hour

I was recently listening again to some tracks from The National Lampoon Radio Hour programs which ran from November 17, 1973 to December 28, 1974 and have been collected on some CDs.

It was a weekly broadcast carried on a few hundred stations (especially college stations) throughout the U.S.

It was a great radio comedy show. It introduced a bunch of people who would gain much bigger fame later. Among the performers that appeared regularly or irregularly were Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Christopher Guest, Michael O'Donoghue, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, Gilda Radner, Harry Shearer, Harold Ramis, Joe Flaherty, Richard Belzer, and the musicians Flo and Eddie.


The show was hatched in the brains of folks from The National Lampoon magazine. Lampoon editor Michael O'Donoghue was the main man.


They had put out a comedy album called Radio Dinner and used that as the pilot for pitching a radio show.

The recording studio was actually built in the same building as the magazine's editorial offices in New York.

They moved a lot of the spirit of the satire and humor of the magazine to audio. It was a really slick radio show and included original musical bits.

Unfortunately, the radio show needed a lot of material each week and became too much for the magazine staff. They cut the show to a half hour after only 13 episodes.

They also had some trouble getting sponsors because the material was really out there.

When O'Donoghue had enough of all of it, he left in spring 1974 and John Belushi took over as creative director. That must have been interesting.

By the end of the year, it was over.

A bunch of the performers and writers ended up being the nucleus of the original Saturday Night Live (O'Donoghue was the head writer in its first two seasons).

Other Radio Hour alums were on Second City Television (SCTV).

The magazine National Lampoon was itself pretty innovative a few years earlier when it launched in 1970 as a spinoff of the Harvard Lampoon.

It had parody of every kind and frequently crossed the line making Mad magazine seemed old and tame.

There was fiction, crazy actual news items ("True Facts"), cartoons, comic strips and "Foto Funnies" which often featured nudity.

The humor was intelligent and showed it college humor - which is also, of course, crass and obscene too.

The magazine peaked in the late 1970s. Though the magazine devolved around the same time as the radio show's end, it also spawned films (most popularly Animal House and the Vacation series with Chevy Chase), live theater, and books.

SNL, Second City and a few other copycat TV shows probably hurt sales too.

There are some used Lampoon books and recordings available online, and some have been reprinted. There are also fan sites devoted to the Lampoon output like Mark's Very Large National Lampoon site which has a nice classifieds section too.

• Buy This Box or We'll Shoot This Dog: The Best of the National Lampoon Radio Hour
• Gold Turkey: National Lampoon Radio Hour/Greatest Hits
• Greatest Hits Of The National Lampoon
• 28 of the actual National Lampoon Radio Hour radio broadcasts n a DVD
• National Lampoon Radio Hour: Funniest Laughs

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know (SYSK) is just that - a podcast about all kinds of stuff that you should at least know something about.

Since I first wrote about them in 2008, they have added a TV show

If you want to know what made Peter the Great so great, or what made Henry VIII so bad, or Ivan so terrible, then this show is for you.

If you don't think you need to know, you are wrong. Tune in anyway and find out how hypnosis works or about the Witness Protection Program.

There is a lot you don't know and admitting that is the first step in recovery. The next step is to listen to the podcast to learn the stories behind both things you missed in school and, more often, the things you wished they had covered in school.

The hosts are senior staff writers at howstuffworks.com. Josh Clark and Charles "Chuck" Bryant host and do the "research" but come off as regular folks with a healthy curiosity.

There are a bunch of other articles and podcasts on the main site including Things Mom Never Told You, Stuff You Missed in History Class and my second favorite, the video podcast of Stuff They Don't Want You To Know which is full of conspiracies and UFOs, psychic powers and government plots to take over the world or our brains.

Go to the free SYSK podcasts or more conveniently, subscribe through the iTunes store).

Of course, they are on Facebook, Twitter and most other social things.  And there is also the SYSK Blog.

Come on, admit it - not only can't you speak intelligently about maglev trains, you didn't even know they existed. 

Garrison Keillor Announces Retirement

Radio host Garrison Keillor, 68, told the AARP Bulletin (!) that he's planning to retire in the spring of 2013.

The host of A Prairie Home Companion says that he must find his replacement first.

Keillor created his show in 1974 in Minnesota. It is now broadcast on 590 public radio stations across the country and is heard by over 4 million people each week.

The show was made into a movie with Meryl Streep.

Keillor is also author of numerous books about the imaginary town and other topics.  He also hosts the public radio Writer's Almanac show that features a poem each day.
















Radio Host Garrison Keillor Retiring