As the Republican run House of Representatives stripped National Public Radio from the national budget, Garrison Keillor made his announcement that he will retire in 2013. The race is on. Who will disappear from the airwaves first NPR or Garrison Keillor?
Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion has become a stable piece of Americana on NPR for listeners across the country since it was first aired in Minnesota in 1974. It reaches 4 million people per week. 590 public radio stations broadcast the creative variety show based on Keillor’s self styled hometown of Lake Wobegone Minnesota.
The iconic PHC is only one of the shows in jeopardy if the Tea Party Republicans get their way in the Senate as well as the house. The also popular Car Talk, Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me, All Things Considered.
Garrison Keillor will be 70 in 2013 and he says that is a nice round number. He does want to first find a successor. Having suffered a stroke in 2009 from which he fully recovered, he took a longer look into the future.
Some pundits believe that Keillor is playing the usual fox with a twinkle in his eye. His retirement plan announcement comes as the fate of NPR is being hotly debated. Some believe that he is willing to put himself up as a poster boy for what will be missing on the long drives Americans take across the country if NPR disappears from the dial.
The Republicans are saying that it is time for the popularity of such shows to show themselves profitable in the marketplace and give up their place at the nation’s trough. It is true that the ideology that is would around the sweet morsels like Prairie Home Companion is mostly liberal democratic.
The full drama may not play itself out until the next Presidential election and maybe not until 2013.
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