NPR’s ‘Best of Car Talk’ will end in September 2017, Current

NPR’s ‘Best of Car Talk’ will end in September 2017

Tom and Ray Magliozzi, hosts of Car Talk. (Photo: Richard Howard)

Public radio’s Car Talk will go through another transformation next year as its producer pulls back from suggesting repackaged “best of” editions of the longtime weekend staple.

NPR announced Wednesday that Best of Car Talk, which airs on six hundred fifty four stations, will end production as of Sept. 30, 2017. Some stations may proceed to air a version of the demonstrate, however, and it will proceed as a podcast as well.

Car Talk ended production of brand-new gigs in two thousand twelve with the retirement of iconic hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the chatty, cackling car-mechanic brothers who commenced the display at WBUR in Boston in 1977. They stepped away from their mics as Tom Magliozzi’s health was declining; he died in two thousand fourteen of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

Best of Car Talk is NPR’s third most–listened-to demonstrate, with a weekly audience of Two.6 million. It is the network’s most widely carried weekend display behind its newsmagazines and Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!

Even as it proceeds to reach large audiences, however, some stations and listeners have suggested that Car Talk should head for the junkyard. In a two thousand twelve commentary for Current, This American Life host and executive producer Ira Glass urged stations to stop carrying the repeats, at least on Saturday mornings. “A demonstrate that’s one hundred percent reruns doesn’t fit with our mission as public broadcasters,” he wrote.

WNYC in Fresh York dropped Best of Car Talk last year, and Chicago’s WBEZ followed suit several months later. Listeners and public media insiders alike complain about the persistence of “Zombie Car Talk.”

As NPR and Car Talk production company Dewey, Cheatem & Howe considered ending the repackaged scenes, “the responses we got from stations and listeners were all over the board,” said longtime executive producer Doug Berman in an email to Current. “Some were ready to stir on, some were indeed upset at the prospect of losing Car Talk.”

“We think this plan will sate the greatest number of people,” he added. “Those stations that want to stir on are given a graceful way to do it without looking like the bad stud, and those that still want the presence on their air will have a natural inflection point at which they can budge it to another day part and refresh their Saturday mornings.”

Since going into repeats, Car Talk’s audience has remained “pretty solid” but demonstrated “a little slippage,” said Israel Smith, NPR’s senior director of promotion and audience development. But stations and listeners have been telling NPR that they feel ready for fresh programs, Smith said, “and we want to create the space for that to happen.”

NPR told stations in December two thousand fifteen that it was researching listeners’ response to Car Talk’s repackaged gigs. That research “confirmed for us that while a chunk of the audience still loves the showcase and finds it a gateway for public radio and a gateway for weekend listening, a portion of audience felt like it was time for something fresh,” Smith told Current. “It corroborated what we’d heard in other places.”

Some listeners said the display was less relevant because it referred to older cars, however more than twice as many said that didn’t bother them.

The switch comes as NPR prepares to welcome fresh director of programming Steve Nelson next month. With Car Talk winding down, Nelson and Anya Grundmann, NPR’s v.p. of programming and audience development, will “be in a place … to hit the ground running and make the best fresh thing for weekend schedules,” Smith said.

The end of Car Talk is a “melancholy moment” for WBUR, said Charlie Kravetz, general manager at the Boston station.

“It’s a bit of serendipity that is going to be very hard to replicate, to find these two brilliant, funny, endearing guys who helped us to understand life by talking about cars,” Kravetz said. “No one ever would sit around a table and come up with a program like that. It just emerged.”

The show’s transition brings another switch to public radio’s weekends not long after Garrison Keillor left the stage of A Prairie Home Companion for the last time. “It’s a passage for WBUR and all of public radio,” Kravetz said. “And I think we all have a bit of a wake-up call to invest in fresh programming and make sure that public radio has good fresh content in the pipeline in the coming years.”

The show’s departure is “a little sad,” said Sam Fleming, managing director of news and programming at WBUR. Tho’ in repeats, “still to this day, you turn it on, and it makes you laugh and keeps you company while you’re doing your Saturday chores. It’s still a wonderful program in that regard,” Fleming said.

“Most people don’t have any idea how much care and editing is involved” in creating the archive scenes, Berman said. The level of production work on any future Car Talk shows for radio and podcast will depend on station and audience interest, but Berman said he expects that “we will certainly have to resize the production company after September of next year. … [T]here’s no doubt, we will be smaller.”

Dewey, Cheatem & Howe will proceed to run Car Talk’s website and vehicle-donation program and put out its syndicated newspaper column. But what of Marge Innovera, Zbigniew Chrysler and Car Talk’s extensive imaginary staff thanked every week in closing credits?

“They’ll be going to work in the coal mine,” Berman said. “Along with Erasmus B. Draggon.”

Clarification: This article has been updated to reflect that the demonstrate will undoubtedly proceed as a podcast after Sept. 30, 2o17.

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I discovered NPR about twenty years ago while living in Laguna Beach, California, and couldn’t have been more delighted. The very first demonstrate I listened to was All Things Considered; the 2nd was Car Talk, and I loved it instantly. It IS time to budge on, but I will always cherish both the memory of the program and the fact that sometimes, when left alone, odd ingredients can come together and defy programmers, demographers and common sense to make magic. Well done, Tom & Ray.

Like Garrison Keillor, maybe Ray and Doug can find a youthful and fresh replacement for the display? Unlike Garrison, they should find somebody with the depth of personality and humor necessary for a successful transition.

If they were going to do it, they should’ve done it years ago and not go into perpetual reruns.

Fine demonstrate, and I would be very blessed if another car repair demonstrate would take its place. Ray could be one of the speakers. But I realize that the non car related banter is more appealing to most of today’s Americans than the actual auto repair related advice, so it would be unlikely to ever be considered.

The fact that Prairie Home Companion is attempting to proceed with a fresh host says the NPR bigwigs could consider doing the same. But i detect a downsizing of number of fresh scenes of running programs, in general, at NPR. These past several years witness more repeat and clip demonstrate than I reminisce.

What we do not need is more chit-chat (like Bulls Eye) or ersatz game shows (Tell Me Another)which cater to pop culture and pander to millennials.

Guess you want public radio to die the same day you do, huh Boomer? And Jesse Thorn *is* a millennial, so how can you call what he does “pandering?” Couldn’t it be what he is genuinely interested in and that he is is suggesting a more in-depth treatment of interviewing his guests than the three-funny-stories-and-plug-your-project treatment of most TV talk shows? What do you want on public radio? Nothing but Beethoven and Noam Chomsky speeches?

I think its the large number of people he gets on his showcase who cannot finish a sentence with out peppering it with words “like” “you know” “I mean”

Which one of my questions is this supposed to be a response to? And if you claim to be a superb intellectual, where’s the apostrophe inbetween “t” and “s” in “it’s” and the period at the end of the sentence?

I sat down today, drinking my coffee, and turned Car Talk on by accident. It had been years since I listened to it. Guess I got too busy with all the social media. What a fine practice. I truly laughed with these two beloved brothers. I will turn them on again, but not by accident next week. I will look forward to a world gone by, there was no conflict apperant on this demonstrate. No bullying, no hate, and non-judgemental Just superb humor. I think we should laugh more, it is very likely more healthier then too much social media. I am looking forward to next time I catch them on.

If they indeed think that reruns don’t fit in public broadcasting, maybe they should get rid of The Lawrence Welk demonstrate very first. Once they manage that they can think about ripping off Car Talk

Public radio and television are two separate organizations and systems-and the Lawrence Welk reruns are not PBS, but distributed by the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority separate from PBS. I’ve never been blessed about the Welk reruns, but I also realize that they provide entertainment for an audience that commercial television doesn’t care about (and that the fans of Welk will be leaving this earthly vale soon enough and there will be no further reason to air the demonstrate). “Car Talk” came on the air as an information program that used comedy as a means of getting to the information and making it palatable to the listener. When a lot of the cars the Magliozzis are heard talking about aren’t on the road for the most part and the technology has switched, the argument for the showcase staying on purely as comedy is not a strong one.

Tell me why not?? As mentioned in numerous posts there are very few humorous shows left on public radio. And DON’T give that stuff about wait wait and other shows. They have no genuine personalities like the tappet brothers and even less comic content no matter how they attempt.

I echo others who say modernize the car talk ( call it car care or some other name that reminds one of car talk) find hosts that have a similar talent to entertain.

The Magliozzi brothers as good as they were are not the only duo

that could have that rapport with their listeners. Car Talk by any name is a useful and popular idea still. which is why you’re getting sooo much flack.. Pub Rads. indifference to the value and importance of a auto advice type suggesting, is sadly indicative of the lazy attitude of current

independent radio ( that’s public radio in case you missed that). Just dispose of Car Talk and put something else, whatever, on. Is your Sat.AM time so significant?

If it is then whatever you substitute Car Talk with had better be VERY

good! I’m not interested and it may be unwise and shortsighted

to assume that other dedicated listeners don’t share my conviction.

Perhaps you never read the complaints from listeners about the Magliozzis’ voices and “coerced laughter” and that they were not suitable for the high standards of public radio. I think I eyed once something telling that public radio should not even do anything about cars because it would be supporting pollution and congestion, not to mention evil corporate capitalist AmeriKKKa and the oligarchs at the Clinton Foundation. And the Radio Survivor people who love Pacifica and fledgling night “community” and college radio have never hidden their distaste for the Magliozzis and were blessed to see “Car Talk” go (they don’t like Kellior either).

Now I should say that I don’t agree with the above, but there are the large pockets of listenership who eyed “Car Talk” as the beginning of the precious hours being taken away from the public radio schedules for “culture” (as in Bach, Beethoven and Brahms) in favor of what they call “yammering.” These people didn’t win because the people who listen to the drive time news shows and Scott Simon on Saturday mornings stuck around for “Car Talk” and in many cases stick around for “Wait, Wait…” and Ira Glass, despite what you think. And oh yes-they’re the ones who always make those annual donations and in some cases don’t need pledge drives to tell them to send them in. If your public radio listening was only to the Tappets on Saturday morning, well, too bad. It’s over. Deal with it.

The real “problem” here is that NPR has actively eschewed developing personality-based shows for many years now. I’m not 100% sure where the line was on that, but I’d wager it had a lot to with Bob Edwards’ acrimonious departure from Morning Edition.

And NPR’s not alone here, either. PRI, PRX and APM are all just as guilty.

Instead, outside of the news stuff, they’ve focused exclusively on panel-esque shows (Wait Wait, Ask Me Another), interview shows (Bullseye, TED Radio Hour, Fresh Air, Freakonomics) and strenuously on storytelling (The Moth, Snap Judgment, This American Life, RadioLab, etc). Even the fresh APHC puts less emphasis on host Chris Thile and more on the guests, bands, skits, etc.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it violates the very first law of radio: people listen because they have a connection with whoever’s speaking. Usually that connection is one of trust, and you don’t trust a panel, an interviewee, or a story…you trust a personality. People trusted Tom & Ray to make them laugh, and they did.

NPR, and its member stations, badly need to take some risks by finding true radio personalities and building a showcase around them. Car Talk didn’t succeed because it was about cars, after all. It succeeded because Tom & Ray’s easygoing, self-deprecating humor was exceptionally well-done and worked ideally for the radio. Maybe it was a natural talent for them, rather than the result of decades of honing a craft, but if so they were utter prodigies.

You’re not going to find more folks like that unless you put a lot of effort into it. NPR has not done so.

I am so glad that the podcasts will still be available. Many of us are defensive of the fact that we are hopelessly addicted to the infectious laughs of Tom and Ray Magliozzi. We don’t travel much, but when we do I keep a stock of Car Talk podcasts for the roadtrip. For those of us who have been around for awhile, Car Talk “defines” Saturday mornings

I’ll be sorry to see Car Talk go, it was a part of my NPR life, but it’s been time for a while.

What worries me is that NPR is going to substitute it with another shallow hipster program like “Ask Me Another.”

There’s a wealth of material out there waiting to be stolen from old defunct shows. Reminisce “My Word,” the Big black cock demonstrate with Frank Muir? Very educated format. I listened to it from my late 20s until it stopped when I was in my mid-30s. It skewed to all ages. I wonder if NPR could find six people literate and witty enough to do a similar display.

Listening this morning to my dearest NPR radio display (Car Talk) so disappointing to hear Car Talk is getting the ax. Saturday mornings will not be the same. Will have to purchase the CD’s while they are still available. What a witty, informative and entertaining showcase. We will ALL miss you. Thank you for a job well done. Not a fan of Wait, Wait much too sarcastic and prejudiced. Listened to Dick Estell, The Radio Reader while living in Miami loved it wish NPR would consider that instead of the fresh programming. Living in the Northeast now – no Radio Reader here. Thank you for the memories Car Talk!

Wait Wait is sarcastic and biased. Not interested in the least. NPR doesn’t need another hipster panel display.

The problem with the showcase is that is old content. They talk about cars from the ’70s/’80s/90’s, so the display is getting outdated. They are funny brother and I will miss then.

Kinda hard to have “fresh” content when they stopped production five years ago and Tom Magliozzi died in 2014, ya know?

Actually, it was the only display I listened to on NPR. They were funny, intelligent, and had fine common sense. NPR as a entire is so far left, often elitist, I mostly tune it out. Ira Glass is wrong and I wonder if he’s not a bit jealous. Car Talk is timeless. It indeed wasn’t about just cars. Not in the least. Ira doesn’t get it.

Listening to the radio this morning. And of course every Saturday morning. I just know that it was just about a little over a year ago that NPR announced it’s decision to discontinue Car Talk by the end of September 2017. With me serving my mission out in Salt Lake City Utah for my church. I found out about it at least two months after NPR announced it. And now with the month of August embarking. And September approaching at least one month from now. I realize 100% that I indeed do not have very many Saturdays left or very long to listen to Car Talk. I did a count today there is exactly eight more weeks left till the demonstrate goes off the air. Nine counting of how long I will be able to listen to the demonstrate. I was told by the station manager of my local public radio station that the producers of the showcase are planning a month’s worth of special programs to help listeners say goodbye. I will indeed look forward to listening to those shows. It is indeed one of those bittersweet moments for me. I like everybody else am sad to see it go. But also glad that I for one have the podcast to subscribe to so that I can hear it anytime. Or I can seek it out for my private use by using recordings of it that I have made from my computer from my local NPR station from the time that it was still being produced. Or it could be possible that I could find another public radio station that is still airing the display and can listen to it there. But I don’t know if that indeed will happen.

I will indeed miss Car Talk when it goes off the air. I am a massive fan of the display. It has been a part of my life since my growing up years from when I was a little boy. I can’t indeed recall the exact very first time I heard Car Talk but I assume I was inbetween the ages of like four or five years old. Not exactly sure. But as always is the case shows come and shows go Car Talk has been on the air for more than thirty years. Forty to be exact about the years at WBUR in Boston. I also love the laughter of Tom and Ray Magliozzi as well as their advice about cars. The only thing that I think is the problem with Car Talk now is I think the stuff they are discussing is pretty much outdated. They talk about older cars that date back to like the (60’s 70’s 80’s or even 90’s) But I also do know that the showcase has undoubtedly run it’s course on the air and also made a lasting and phat influence on public radio. I know that many of you are unlike me I would rather want reruns of Car Talk on forever. Just like The Lawrence Welk Showcase for example which has been on the air since the 60’s. They stopped producing the demonstrate live a long time ago. And still after all of these years they are airing reruns of old shows.

I wish it could be that way for Car Talk when I very first learned that Car Talk was no longer going to be producing fresh scenes and airing just repeats of old shows. I thought that those shows would stay on forever. And that NPR would proceed running them on the radio forever. But now that is no longer the case with the one of the host’s dead and the producers shutting down production of the demonstrate entirely. It has been my pleasure to hear Car Talk Saturday mornings for the last fifteen and a half years of my life It has indeed been a phat part of my life with me growing up. and graduating from elementary then middle and then high school And now it is certainly time to make room for some fresh shows You never know what shows NPR will create that they will substitute Car Talk with. Could be the next Car Talk. It could also be something similar to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me A Prairie Home Companion or Ask Me Another. Maybe for the most part it could be an alternate quiz showcase Thanks for the memories Tom And Ray Magliozzi You have instructed me everything not only about cars but just about life in general. You have undoubtedly made a enormous influence in my life from the time I was little to the time I grew up. There is a time and a season for things. And now it is time to let the demonstrate and both of the hosts RIP and look forward to the next generation of programming that NPR is creating. I certainly look forward to eyeing what that will be like.

I just heard this today while listening to Car Talk and I’m sad. I find this to be my convenience zone on a Saturday morning while drinking my Folgers. Things are switching…..

Yes, the calls are about dated vehicles, but guess what, the mechanical problems are fairly often the same in modern vehicles.

A few years ago, when Car Talk was still in production, we were driving into Boston on the Mass Pike on our way to an early Sunday morning visit at the MFA, when another vehicle entered from Rt-128. We were astonished by Tom Magliozzi lunging out of the rear window, obviously trouble shooting a sound from the right rear wheel. We had no idea that someone could drape that far out of a car window.

We are disappointed in the shows cancellation and wish that an effort was made to have fresh hosts substitute Tom & Ray. We have discussions of national and international politics all day long on NPR/PBS and commercial network news. But, a car is still a major purchase for most of us. Selection and maintenance tips are certainly appreciated.

Thank you for years of good entertainment and skill, Tom & Ray.

Yes, why *isn’t* NPR looking to substitute Tom & Ray with fresh hosts? That’s a VERY good question.

And don’t give me “they’re irreplacable”. That’s nonsense. I’m not telling you can proceed doing the exact same display, that’s visible. But there’s nothing stopping NPR from creating a fresh call-in display about cars that features two guys who’re strong personalities and indeed funny. It’s not like there isn’t two dozen commercial radio morning shows that’re more-or-less based on the same concept.

This isn’t a passive drift. This is an active decision by NPR to not proceed the concept of the most successful weekend public radio showcase ever made. It’s utterly inexplicable and indefensible and goes should be rolling over it.

Could it be because the Magliozzi family now possesses the showcase under the name of “Dewey Cheatam and Howe” (look at the copyright on the web site), not WBUR or NPR? They may’ve determined reruns or nothing.

Hi Mark, how are you concluding that the Magliozzi family has any ownership?

Right off the web site: “Cartalk.com is a production of Tappet Brothers LLC d/b/a Dewey, Cheetham and Howe. Contents © two thousand seventeen Tappet Brothers LLC. ” And it seems to me that the credits announcement on-air is “Dewey, Cheetham and Howe in association with WBUR.”

FWIW, Massachusetts corporate registry shows Doug Berman and Ray Magliozzi as the officers of said LLC. But that doesn’t tell us anything about how the ownership of the IP and everything else is distributed among them, WBUR and NPR.

I don’t have any hard evidence, but the long-time story is that Jane Christo, the former GM of WBUR, determined Car Talk wasn’t all that valuable and let the brothers have ownership of the display way back in the day. Oops. *Allegedly* that was part of the reason why the fight inbetween Christo and Chris Lydon got so acrimonious; Lydon demanded an ownership stake and Christo utterly refused to do that. (that’s a very oversimplified version of a very complicated story, but I don’t feel like writing a tome to make the over-arching point here)

Certainly it was “common skill” amongst us WBUR lackeys…errr…”staff” 🙂 back in the 90’s that Car Talk was wielded directly by the Magliozzi brothers; I wasn’t aware Berman himself might’ve had a direct ownership stake but it wouldn’t surprise me.

Regardless, I think you’re all splitting Brad’s hairs waaaaay too fine here. NPR doesn’t have to call it “Car Talk” if that’s an intellectual property problem. They can call it whatever they want; nobody…not even the Magliozzis…has the off the hook legal right to a public radio display that has a humorous take on cars and relationships. I think Brad’s right: it’s shameful that NPR hasn’t taken a much more active role in finding/creating a personality-driven demonstrate to substitute Car Talk on the weekend lineup.

Yes, this is accurate, I’m just not sure how you’re concluding from that that the Magliozzi family has ownership.

And Adam’s discovery is admittedly the closest we will get to any actual proof, unless the floodgates of financial information open-but I had thought that the Magliozzis had taken over control of the demonstrate from WBUR and NPR.

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NPR’s ‘Best of Car Talk’ will end in September 2017, Current

NPR’s ‘Best of Car Talk’ will end in September 2017

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