NPR & Storytelling, Part 5: A Prairie Home Companion

Here in the United States, National Public Radio broadcasts several great series that feature stories and storytelling, and as such are an excellent resource for writers. Each day this week, I’ll look at a different series that is aired on NPR. Today: “A Prairie Home Companion” (produced by Prairie Home Productions, and distributed nationwide by American Public Media).

Here’s a brief history of “APHC” from their website:

If you showed up on July 6, 1974, at the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College in Saint Paul and plunked down your $1 admission (50 cents for kids) to attend the very first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, you were in select company. There were about 12 people in the audience. But those in attendance thought there were worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon, so Garrison Keillor and the APHC team went on to produce close to 500 live shows in the first 10 years alone. There were broadcasts from this venue and that, until March 4, 1978, when the show moved to The World Theater, a lovely, crumbling building that was one plaster crack away from the wrecking ball. (Now fully renovated and renamed The Fitzgerald, it is the show’s home base.)

In June of 1987, APHC ended for a while. Garrison thought it was a good idea at the time, but only two years later, the show was back, based in New York and called American Radio Company of the Air. But there’s no place like home. So in 1992, it was back to Minnesota and, soon after, back to the old name: A Prairie Home Companion.

There has been plenty of adventure in the past 30-plus years — broadcasts from Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Iceland and almost every one of the 50 states; wonderful performers, little-known and world-renowned; standing ovations and stares of bewilderment. We’ve missed planes, coped with lost luggage, dodged swooping bats and hungry mosquitoes, plodded through blizzards, and flown by the seat of our pants. 

Today, A Prairie Home Companion is heard by more than 4 million listeners each week on some 590 public radio stations, and abroad on America One and the Armed Forces Networks in Europe and the Far East. Garrison recalls, “When the show started, it was something funny to do with my friends, and then it became an achievement that I hoped would be successful, and now it’s a good way of life.”

Good life, indeed. Garrison loved books, music, poetry, and telling stories. Look where following his bliss has led him to today. 

I remember my brother, who lives in Minneapolis, talking about this guy who had a morning show on a local NPR station, how he’d feature all sorts of eclectic music on his show, then tell stories about a fictional Minnesota town called Lake Wobgone. My first experience with “A Prairie Home Companion” was in 1978 when I saw a live performance at the University of Minnesota. I was immediately hooked. I can’t begin to count the times I’ve listened to APHC while prepping dinner on a Saturday night. Or sat in my parked car, waiting to hear the rest of Garrison’s “News from Lake Wobegone.” No surprise that In 2007, The Moth, a NYC-based not-for-profit storytelling organization, awarded Garrison Keillor with the first The Moth Award — Honoring the Art of the Raconteur.
 
I could pontificate about the show and what it means to me as a writer and as a person, but let me open it up for discussion: What is it about APHC and specifically “The News From Lake Wobegone” that makes it so special? Why do you love “A Prairie Home Companion”?

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