Farewell Garrison Keillor
18/06/16 05:25
In terms of media, I sort of skipped a generation. I used to love the radio and listen a lot. I got used to having the radio on in the car and I drive quite a few miles every year, so that constitutes quite a bit of listening. Early in my career as a pastor, I pulled a three hour shift every day as a radio disc jockey: “Good morning ladies and gentlemen, you’re listening to KNDC broadcasting from Hettinger, North Dakota on a frequency of 1490 at a daytime power of 1,000 watts. . .” The station was not on the air at night and I opened up the broadcast day at 6 am each morning and was free to go about my pastoral duties by a little after 9 am.
Back in those days, we couldn’t get NPR in our town. I could begin to pick it up about 35 miles from town heading toward Bismarck and would listen to NPR for the next 115 miles and for the same distance on the way home. Conference meetings tended to be on Saturdays, so I would try to listen to “Car Talk” as I was driving into the city. Then I would listen to “A Prairie Home Companion” with Garrison Keillor on my way home. I found his particular style of storytelling to be very appealing and began to study his style. Since I couldn’t always listen to the show, I purchased a number of cassette tapes of his “The News from Lake Woebegone” segment from the show. I was living in a small town in the upper midwest and he seemed to understand the culture and the nature of our lives pretty well. And he was a good storyteller.
As the North Dakota Public Broadcasting network developed and more towers were built, I was able to listen to A Prairie Home Companion most weeks. I began to include the program in my regular schedule of activities. By the time we moved to Boise, Idaho in 1985, I was a pledging member of Public Radio and have been ever since. The year we moved was the year that Garrison Keillor appeared on the cover of Time magazine. In Boise, we had access to NPR all the time and there were a few other shows for which I became a regular audience. I even had the opportunity to be an audience member for a live broadcast of a Garrison Keillor program during those years.
Most of my peers were upping their television screen time and keeping up with all of the sitcoms at the time, but I never really became a big fan of television. Paying for cable television when I rarely found time to watch seemed like a waste, so I didn’t do it. A few times over the years I have been interviewed by various television programs and since I don’t watch much television, I had little clue what they were interested in showing. It seemed to me that sitting in a chair on a set that slightly resembled about half of a living room wasn’t very visually interesting, and I soon learned to make excuses and find others to suggest when asked to appear.
I still was a regular radio listener when we moved back to the Dakotas and was delighted to find South Dakota has such a well organized public radio system.
Over the years, however, I have gotten to the point where I rarely listen to the radio any more. My current listening media is the world of podcasts. I still listen mostly to radio programs, but podcasts allow me to listen to what I like when I like. I no longer have to adhere to the schedule of the radio. It was at the time I began to listen to podcasts that I quit listening to “A Prairie Home Companion.” The show began to seem a bit repetitious. Having studied Keillor’s storytelling style very carefully, I felt like I understood it and I lost much of the sense of excitement and surprise in his tales. I’m not alone in my change of tastes. “A Prairie Home Companion” has lost nearly a quarter of its audience in the last decade from it’s peak of 4.1 million.
Still, the retirement of Keillor to pursue non-radio interests is a bit of an event. I’ve been listening to him for a long time, so I know that he retired before. One of my favorite quotes from Roy Blount, Jr. came from that show: “It is better by far to have been good and over than rotten and gone on too long.”
Keillor’s craft is the use of his imagination. Whether writing, telling stories or orchestrating a variety show radio program, he has created a world out of his own imagination. Listeners probably understand that “Guy Noir” and “Lives of the Cowboys” and “Powdermilk Biscuits” and “The Ketchup Advisory Board” are fiction. They may even understand that “Lake Woebegone” is not a real town in Minnesota. More difficult, however, is understanding that Keillor’s radio personality is also a product of his imagination. He created the character of the shy radio host as a part of his show. I’ve read a lot of reports that he has quite a different personality when he is off air.
I wish Garrison well in his retirement. I may even subscribe to the podcast of his radio short, “The Writer’s Almanac” just to hear the familiar voice and catch a bit of the dry humor. And I wish Chris Thile, who will take over as host of “A Prairie Home Companion” in October, well. I realize, however, that the days of me arranging my schedule around the radio are over. And I realize that at 35, Thile’s audience will need to be closer to his age just as my age is closer to Keillor’s. The show will have to change to continue its success. It’s rare for a radio dynasty to be passed to a second generation.
Meanwhile, I seemed to have skipped the television generation and don’t feel like I missed a thing. These days when the list of un-listened-to podcasts gets too long, I simply delete a few and go on with my life. Maybe I should have one of those old “News from Lake Woebegone” cassettes digitized so I can listen to it in my old age.
Back in those days, we couldn’t get NPR in our town. I could begin to pick it up about 35 miles from town heading toward Bismarck and would listen to NPR for the next 115 miles and for the same distance on the way home. Conference meetings tended to be on Saturdays, so I would try to listen to “Car Talk” as I was driving into the city. Then I would listen to “A Prairie Home Companion” with Garrison Keillor on my way home. I found his particular style of storytelling to be very appealing and began to study his style. Since I couldn’t always listen to the show, I purchased a number of cassette tapes of his “The News from Lake Woebegone” segment from the show. I was living in a small town in the upper midwest and he seemed to understand the culture and the nature of our lives pretty well. And he was a good storyteller.
As the North Dakota Public Broadcasting network developed and more towers were built, I was able to listen to A Prairie Home Companion most weeks. I began to include the program in my regular schedule of activities. By the time we moved to Boise, Idaho in 1985, I was a pledging member of Public Radio and have been ever since. The year we moved was the year that Garrison Keillor appeared on the cover of Time magazine. In Boise, we had access to NPR all the time and there were a few other shows for which I became a regular audience. I even had the opportunity to be an audience member for a live broadcast of a Garrison Keillor program during those years.
Most of my peers were upping their television screen time and keeping up with all of the sitcoms at the time, but I never really became a big fan of television. Paying for cable television when I rarely found time to watch seemed like a waste, so I didn’t do it. A few times over the years I have been interviewed by various television programs and since I don’t watch much television, I had little clue what they were interested in showing. It seemed to me that sitting in a chair on a set that slightly resembled about half of a living room wasn’t very visually interesting, and I soon learned to make excuses and find others to suggest when asked to appear.
I still was a regular radio listener when we moved back to the Dakotas and was delighted to find South Dakota has such a well organized public radio system.
Over the years, however, I have gotten to the point where I rarely listen to the radio any more. My current listening media is the world of podcasts. I still listen mostly to radio programs, but podcasts allow me to listen to what I like when I like. I no longer have to adhere to the schedule of the radio. It was at the time I began to listen to podcasts that I quit listening to “A Prairie Home Companion.” The show began to seem a bit repetitious. Having studied Keillor’s storytelling style very carefully, I felt like I understood it and I lost much of the sense of excitement and surprise in his tales. I’m not alone in my change of tastes. “A Prairie Home Companion” has lost nearly a quarter of its audience in the last decade from it’s peak of 4.1 million.
Still, the retirement of Keillor to pursue non-radio interests is a bit of an event. I’ve been listening to him for a long time, so I know that he retired before. One of my favorite quotes from Roy Blount, Jr. came from that show: “It is better by far to have been good and over than rotten and gone on too long.”
Keillor’s craft is the use of his imagination. Whether writing, telling stories or orchestrating a variety show radio program, he has created a world out of his own imagination. Listeners probably understand that “Guy Noir” and “Lives of the Cowboys” and “Powdermilk Biscuits” and “The Ketchup Advisory Board” are fiction. They may even understand that “Lake Woebegone” is not a real town in Minnesota. More difficult, however, is understanding that Keillor’s radio personality is also a product of his imagination. He created the character of the shy radio host as a part of his show. I’ve read a lot of reports that he has quite a different personality when he is off air.
I wish Garrison well in his retirement. I may even subscribe to the podcast of his radio short, “The Writer’s Almanac” just to hear the familiar voice and catch a bit of the dry humor. And I wish Chris Thile, who will take over as host of “A Prairie Home Companion” in October, well. I realize, however, that the days of me arranging my schedule around the radio are over. And I realize that at 35, Thile’s audience will need to be closer to his age just as my age is closer to Keillor’s. The show will have to change to continue its success. It’s rare for a radio dynasty to be passed to a second generation.
Meanwhile, I seemed to have skipped the television generation and don’t feel like I missed a thing. These days when the list of un-listened-to podcasts gets too long, I simply delete a few and go on with my life. Maybe I should have one of those old “News from Lake Woebegone” cassettes digitized so I can listen to it in my old age.