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Prairie Home Companion’s 40th Anniversary Special
< < Back to prairie-home-companions-40th-anniversary-specialThis Saturday, July 5, will mark the 40th anniversary of A Prairie Home Companion.
To celebrate the event, WOUB Public Media will air a three-hour extended version of the show Saturday evening from 6 to 9 p.m. live from the campus of Macalester College, the site of the original broadcast.
The first show, created by Garrison Keillor, had a studio audience of only 12 people and two of them will be brought back for this 40th anniversary celebration.
“We intended the show to last for a year, or maybe two, but just as we were about to quit, the show started to draw an audience, fifty, a hundred, two hundred people coming to see it on Saturday night, and we kept going so we could figure out what we were doing right,” Keillor said.
“The formula is simple: a variety of music that appeals, radio actors who can do noir, or horror, or soap, strong writing, a Midwestern ethos, and the thrill of live radio. And a support staff to do the work,” Keillor added. “It isn’t what I planned to be doing for forty years but luckily for me my plans went awry. It’s a good show. People have grown up listening to it and now they are middle-aged and still like it.”
This Saturday’s show also will feature many of the same guests who appeared on the first broadcast – including Butch Thompson, Philip Brunelle, Vern Sutton and members of the original “Has Your Family Tried em?” Powdermilk Biscuit Band.
Mountain Stage, usually heard on WOUB FM on Saturday’s from 8 to 10 p.m., will be delayed this week and air from 9 to 11 p.m.
Afropop Worldwide, normally heard at 10 p.m., will be delayed until 11 p.m.
The normal Saturday night schedule will resume on July 12.