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MPR Cancels "Live From Here"

T

TheBigA

Big news as Minnesota Public Radio lays off 28 staffers and cancels "Live From Here With Chris Thiele." That show was the successor to the long-running Prairie Home Companion. No word if Thiele will continue the show elsewhere:

https://www.allaccess.com/net-news/...sota-public-radio-lays-off-28-cancels-live-fr

To be honest, the new show was primarily an Americana music performance show, and was very different from PHC.

https://current.org/2020/06/apm-mpr-eliminates-28-positions-ends-live-from-here/

This will create a big hole at NPR stations nationally. Many had built their weekends around PHC.
 
I spoke to one of the hosts at my local NPR member at the end of April. He said their underwriting revenue had gone to essentially zero.

A majority of their underwriting came from concert venues, festivals, the local orchestra and so forth. Obviously even though most businesses have resumed, those categories are still mostly closed.
 
The bigger problem is that underwriting revenue can account for as much as 75% of a station's budget. The other problem with "Live From Here" is the show itself didn't have an underwriter (other than MPR), and wasn't raising money for local stations either.
 
I wasn't really too familiar with the original program so I can't make any comparisons. For now it looks like they will air reruns in the time slot. Looking at some Facebook posts there certainly are some "Prairie Home Companion" fans cheering this decision while others are obviously disappointed. Some are also complaining about public radio doing more talk and less music. How many music programs are still in national syndication on public radio?
 
AbqAnonymous said:
Some are also complaining about public radio doing more talk and less music. How many music programs are still in national syndication on public radio?
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Keep in mind that when a public station carries a national show, it basically pays for that show through program fees. As opposed to commercial syndication, that's done with barter. If a station is going to play music, as WQXR or WCRB does, it will do locally hosted music show, and only carry syndication if it's something it can't do locally. This particular show fell into a musical area that isn't being done by a lot of public stations. The show it replaced was more of a variety show. This was strictly an acoustic music show. So with sponsorships down during the pandemic, and stations looking to cut outside program costs, these shows were hard to justify.
 
AbqAnonymous said:
Some are also complaining about public radio doing more talk and less music. How many music programs are still in national syndication on public radio?
Click to expand...

Quite a few. Obviously you've got the big classical music networks, Classical 24 and Beethoven Network, and a couple of smaller players. And several classical programs which are only an hour or two long, like "Performance Today" and "Exploring Music".

Then you have some jazz networks. Jazz24, JazzWorks, are 24/7. Jazz Satellite Network is produced 9 hours daily. Again, there are several jazz programs which are an hour or two long, such as "Jazz Inspired", "Jazz Happening Now", "Afterglow" and a few others.

There's a whole slew of "other" music programs that are syndicated. Everything from "Echoes" which features what I'd classify as ambient music, to the celtic sounds of "Thistle and Shamrock", or Appalachian music on "Mountain Stage" and "Woodsongs Radio Hour", to more diverse sounds on "World Cafe", to the opera, once the Met is able to resume. Some of these may stretch the definition of "National Syndication" by the nature of Public Radio eXchange.

I will say that it seems stations are programming less music. My local station used to run the Metropolitan Opera during the season, and several hours of classical music on Saturday during the off-season, but they have not done that in many years.

Obviously the death of "Live From Here" is a big blow to that sort of program.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
I will say that it seems stations are programming less music.
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There was a time when a public station was a hodge podge of formats, that alternated between news and various types of music. At one time, it was possible for one station to play classical, jazz, folk, and blues, plus news & information. Slowly, stations are moving away from that, towards one or the other. This is especially the case in bigger markets where the same non-profit owns two stations, one that plays music, the other does news. In just about every market, the news station gets better ratings, and consequently raises more money. The problem with Live From Here is it didn't really fit on a news station or a classical station.
 
I actually missed seeing this until today. I guess the news item about the cancellation must've gotten buried in all the Covid and politics-related news items back when this first occurred.

I obviously feel bad for the staffers who found themselves out of work, but I can't say I'll miss this show. I was a fairly regular listener to A Prairie Home Companion, and still listed occasionally to Garrison's older, archived shows, which can be found at A Prairie Home Companion Episodes

In my opinion, when Garrison exited, it'd have been better if they'd have just made the cut over to the new show with updated format and made all the changes they were going to make right away. Instead, it was Chris Thiele more or less taking over Garrison's old show and vowing to carry on with the format (for better or worse, depending on one's opinion about the original show and how relevant the original format may have continued to be with younger audiences). Then (in no particular chronological order) they got rid of cast members from the original Prairie Home show incrementally, then moved from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul which was the long-time home of PHC to a new "home" theater in Manhattan, got rid of the original musical director/pianist (Rich Dworsky), and changed the name of the show to "Live From Here". This meant that, rather than a proper ending of PHC and move to an entirely new, fresh show, longtime fans of PHC saw and heard the changes happening gradually, losing cast members and segments they'd long appreciated, until the show no longer resembled what Thiele had taken over and said he'd work to preserve. It just seemed like an odd way of doing it. I tried a few times to research what the ratings were for Live From Here vs. A Prairie Home Companion, but never saw the numbers.

My local NPR station hasn't carried Live From Here in at least a few years. I'm unsure why they dropped it, but they carry a few NPR quiz shows and game shows in that time slot and seem to be doing fine.
 
That. I stopped listening when Keillor left. When he resigned, he took the show with him. The replacement show ended up just a hacked-up carcass of the tight production that it once was.

I tried listening once a couple years ago and it was mind-numbing. All bluegrass, barely any comedy or radio drama parodies to break the monotony, no News from Lake Wobegon stories which had been the climax of the old show.

For the record I was a younger member of PHC's listening audience, since the early 2000s or so. In fact I think I really found out about it in high school around the turn of the century, reading a book on 1980s popular culture: "'Prairie Home Companion'? That title kind of sounds familiar. Doesn't 91.5 run that, like right after those car mechanics from Boston or that quiz show in the concert hall, or something? I remember Dad reading the Lake Wobegon books when I was a kid so there's that."

I don't know why I didn't record any episodes of the old one. Anyways, I'm glad prairiehome.org is still around and linking to the show archives. Easy way to get some Powdermilk Bisquits (with ketchup/catchup) back into my empty meaningless Saturday afternoons, especially this time of year when most of the 70+ mile bike runs in the county are rained out. Pity that they're all 128 Kb joint stereo, though.
 
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oldradiotapes said:
like right after those car mechanics from Boston or that quiz show in the concert hall, or something?
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That's how I discovered the show in the first place. My car radio was still on from the other two shows. The "quiz show" has moved into the car mechanics' slot and I listen to that now, but I didn't really before.
 
oldradiotapes said:
I tried listening once a couple years ago and it was mind-numbing. All bluegrass, barely any comedy or radio drama parodies to break the monotony.
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If true, this may be the reason my NPR station stopped carrying Thile's show, as they already have a long-running local bluegrass / folk / acoustic music program on Sundays. I mostly listened to the original PHC when working around the house or on projects in my shop. Same goes for "Wait Wait....".

My guess is that if PHC was still around, MPR would have simply suspended the live show for several months while waiting out the pandemic and aired older shows during that span, much as Keillor did every year for a few months during the off season. However, if Live From Here simply didn't have the same following or ratings, it most likely wasn't worth it financially to keep going with it. Also, as mentioned, the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul was PHC's home for several years and it's in Minnesota. The fact that the new show was now originating from New York may have also contributed to MPR's decision? I'd also wager that with all the required support staff, musicians, etc. the show was probably fairly costly to produce. If NPR stations like mine can get similar or possibly better ratings by carrying game or quiz shows which most likely cost much less to create and produce, why stick with Thile's.
 
Of course it's considered un-American and communist to not blame the pan(dem)ic for financial and management problems one has been having for years, so I wouldn't put it past MPR to believe that was the cause. Politics and social commentary aside, it could have just been that one particular episode was more music-heavy than others (particularly bluegrass). I had tuned in later on in the middle of other broadcasts for short periods and it was more of the same, the one I mentioned above was the only one I had attempted to listen to in its entirety so I may have just caught it on a bad day, but I really don't know.

Really, for the most part, after Keillor left I stopped listening since there was no longer much compelling reason to listen. Chris Thile is an alright musician; anybody can host a show if they want to but it takes a certain type of person to be an engaging host that people will want to listen to, not just a robot dryly going through the obligatory motions. I mean, look at the mistake Fremantle made when they hired Drew Carey as Bob Barker's replacement.
 
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If there's any question about motivation, consider the lack of any new programs launched to replace this show:

current.org

Programmers are filling holes left by ‘Live From Here' — and some want more choices - Current

As stations turn to local music shows and national talk and entertainment offerings, "everyone's looking for a hit."
current.org current.org

It was a problem in June, and it's still a problem six months later. Funding is a major issue, and also finding a way to do a live performance show given audience restrictions.
 
Simulating a live show for radio and making it believable isn't difficult since the visual element is missing. It's about suspension of disbelief. Concert halls are still there to do private recording sessions in, multitudes of recordings of audience noise exist these days and audio editing and processing technology couldn't be better. I was at my mom's place a couple months ago and she had some NFL show on the telly, there was recorded crowd noise but empty stands. It was completely unrealistic. The aural element conflicted with the visual element and the simulation fell flat on its ass. Had it been audio-only radio it might have worked. Radio stations used to produce halfway believable "live sport events" like baseball games all the time, in lieu of remotes, by playing records of crowd noise and baseball sound effects, and reading live play-by-plays from the teletype.

People being motivated enough to take the initiative to produce such a programme today is another matter entirely. The ability is certainly there.
 
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oldradiotapes said:
Simulating a live show for radio and making it believable isn't difficult since the visual element is missing. It's about suspension of disbelief.
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The protocols required (depending on the state rules) can be costly and aren't really conducive to the collaborative process. Sure they could do a small-scale acoustic performance with no audience, but how compelling is that? Sure they can rent out a concert hall, but with no ticket sales to offset the cost, that's an expensive proposition. Once again, there's interest on the part of stations for a replacement, but no one has come up with one yet.

Back in June, Chris said he was looking at ways to continue to do the show without APR, and after six months, it looks like he's recognized the difficulties.
 
oldradiotapes said:
That. I stopped listening when Keillor left. When he resigned, he took the show with him. The replacement show ended up just a hacked-up carcass of the tight production that it once was.

I tried listening once a couple years ago and it was mind-numbing. All bluegrass, barely any comedy or radio drama parodies to break the monotony, no News from Lake Wobegon stories which had been the climax of the old show.
Click to expand...
My experience was very little of the comedy, and music that wasn't as good as what I was used to with Keillor. The only comedy I remember with Thile was astronauts saying they would return to Earth January 20, 2021 or perhaps 2025.
 
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