"Car Talk" Putting on Brakes
After 25 years, the chatty pair of mechanic brothers from Boston are calling it quits
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Sad news out of Boston today: Tom and Ray Magliozzi, better known as the Saturday morning radio mechanics on NPR's "Car Talk," are calling it quits, the Associated Press reports.
The show will continue to air in reruns, but after 25 years of giving at once useful and hilarious advice on car maintenance to callers with every manner of malfunction, no new episodes will be produced. Older brother Tom is 74 years old, while Ray is 63.
The show was first broadcast on WBUR in Boston in 1977. It's now the most popular program on NPR and is heard coast-to-coast. The show is heard locally at 10 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday on WAMU, 88.5 FM.
"As of October they will no longer be recording new shows," explained Benae Mosby, Communications Manager for WAMU.
Mosby said that while new recordings will cease in October, NPR will continue to offer its member stations the Car Talk program.
NPR plans to "repackage" old content into new broadcasts and to distribute those to local stations, she explained.
Mosby was not certain how many those of those repackaged broadcasts would be produced or if there would eventually be a space in WAMU's schedule.
"It's not going away completely," said Mosby. At least, not for now.
Marty Chase
3:33 pm on Friday, June 8, 2012
The good news is that they have at least eight years of great material that can be re-broadcast without repeating any of the 'repeats' so to speak
Sammi
8:45 am on Saturday, June 9, 2012
Your tax dollars at work-----if these two could have made it on commercial radio, then that is what they should have done. When I learned how much tax dollars were being spent to fund these jokers, I stopped listening to them yuck it up. Good riddance!
Mark Gross
9:28 am on Saturday, June 9, 2012
Sammi - This program made a small fortune for public radio. The paltry sum that the federal government gives to public broadcasting and public radio is nothing compared to what the BBC and CBC get. Much of the commercial radio around here is nothing but music DJs and right-wing blow hards. Perhaps if you actually listened to public radio, you'd be better informed.
Sammi
4:02 pm on Saturday, June 9, 2012
Listening to "Public Radio" I would have learned that Sarah Palin pulled the trigger when the shooting took place in Arizona----remember that??? I am informed----that's why I know that the car guys don't earn their inflated salaries the way ordinary folks do, but rather that they have their hands out for the "paltry sum" (your term, not mine) that the tax payers give for their air time.