Despite the death of its co-host Tom Magliozzi, “Car Talk” lives. The garrulous older member, with his curmudgeonly brother Ray, 65, of the duo also known as Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, died Nov. 3, at age 77, of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. But neither brother had been active in the show since 20012, when Tom was diagnosed.
The show has been in reruns for the past two years, and after Tom’s death was renamed by National Public Radio as “The Best of Car Talk.” The show is still heard on Wisconsin Public Radio, at noon Saturdays, and on WUWM-FM (89.7) in Milwaukee, Saturday at 9 a.m., and Sundays at 11 a.m. WPR “plans to continue airing” it “while exploring new options for weekend programing,” said Michael Arnold, Wisconsin Public Radio director of content.
I got a little verklempt listening to the show this weekend. Tom sounded full of life and his laugh is contagious.
That said, half the music on my iPod is by artists who have “run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible,” as John Cleese said. One of the show’s accomplishments was to introduce levity into the mostly serious NPR program schedule.
Nielsen surveys show that “Car Talk” is the top or second rated hour on WUWM, alternating with “Morning Edition,” said general manager Dave Edwards.
“Some people thought that when the guys stopped recording new programs that the audience would fall off,” said Edwards. “That didn’t happen because the show is not timely. The only thing that listeners have noticed is that the model year of the cars being discussed are getting older.”
He said that given the show’s popularity, it will “be a long time before it falls from grace” and that there are “zero plans” to come up new hosts. “That would be a miserable failure,” he said, “much like when Minnesota Public Radio hired Noah Adams to replace Garrison Keillor” on “A Prairie Home Companion” a number of years ago.
Keillor’s show is the only other public radio show that could go on in reruns, said Edwards, who called it “timeless.”
The pair’s syndicated auto repair newspaper will also continue, according to the Associated Press. King Features had announced plans to continue using both brothers names in its byline. But newspapers had ethical problems with the decision and “editors threatened to cancel it if they did,” according to the AP.
The column will now only carry Ray Magliozzi’s byline.
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