Public Radio Market

07/06/2026

GK had an early-morning radio show beginning in 1969 called The Morning Program, A Prairie Home Companion, and The Prairie Home Morning Show. From July 1976 until November 1982 with his engineer, Tom Keith, GK did the three-hour weekday program of recorded music as well as the Saturday evening broadcast. The Saturday evening radio show began in April 1974, with three ninety-minute shows taped at the Walker Art Center with Vern Sutton, Philip Brunelle, the Wolverines Classic Jazz Orchestra, Judy Larson and Bill Hinkley, and others. One show included the slide lecture on the p***s, "very short, and needing the cooperation of every member of the audience."
July 6, 1974 was the first LIVE broadcast, from the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College, St. Paul, 4:30 PM. Sutton, Brunelle, Hinkley and Larson, Bob DeHaven, a longtime familiar radio voice of the upper Midwest from WCCO Radio, accordionist Ernie Garven, and the Brescian String Quartet performed before an audience of twelve in a four-hundred seat hall. Margaret Moos sold tickets ($1.00, forty cents for children).
The year 1974 saw the first appearances of Butch Thompson, and the Hall Brothers Jazz Band, Peter Ostroushko (as a teenager), and Charlie Maguire, singer-songwriter. In October the show moved to Variety Hall Theater, eighty-two seats in Park Square Court across the hall from KSSJN, where the newsroom served as the backstage. October also saw the first road trip, to Fargo, ND and to Moorhead, MN with Hinkley and Larson, Dakota Dave Hull, and poet Mark Vinz.
Here, for your enjoyment, is the broadcast from July 6, 1974.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNmFWl10RpA

06/05/2026

“There’s something beautiful in every day if you’ll just look for it.” That’s the kind of optimistic outlook on life that Garrison writes about these days. This quote is from a recent column.

"There is something beautiful in every day if you'll just look for it." is a quotation from Garrison's recent column but summarizes his current outlook on life at age 83. It's an optimistic outlook that we should all carry forward. Tee is 100% cotton and available in S-XXL.

05/29/2026

‘Mozambique’ shall be shortened for tomorrow’s show but here’s the first run through. Join us tomorrow night for the only full A Prairie Hime Companion show this year!

Come join our choir! A Prairie Home Companion is LIVE in Spokane, Washington tomorrow night at the The Fox Theater SpokaneJoin us (and use this link to get rush seats for $25 using discount code WOBEGON) See you at the FOX! Tickets - https://secure.foxtheaterspokane.org/1296/1541

Coeur D'Alene Northwest Bluegrass

05/25/2026

Honor our veterans today. Here is ‘They Were So Young’

05/05/2026

The Writer's Almanac for May 5th - https://thewritersalmanac.substack.com/p/the-writers-almanac-from-tuesday-b26?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=kuh5a&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Get it daily on our page, website or daily newsletter.

The Writer’s Almanac from Tuesday, May 5, 2015

04/16/2026

"Stupid TV, be more funny!" -Homer Simpson on The Simpsons

The Simpsons pokes fun at Garrison Keillor and public television. From S05E15 "Marge on the Lam"*the voice actor is not Garrison KeillorI own no copyrights t...

04/03/2026

For National Poetry Month, today we salute Billy Collins:
Poet Billy Collins (born March 22, 1941) once said, “While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the window pane.” Collins grew up in Queens. His mother was a nurse who could recite verse on numerous subjects, and his father was an electrician who used to bring home copies of Poetry Magazine. Young Billy was a voracious reader, tackling Compton’s Encyclopedia at the age of four before moving on to books like Black Beauty, The Yearling, and the Lassie series. His mother read to him often, and, Collins says, “I have a secret theory that people who are addicted to reading are almost trying to re-create the joy, the comfortable joy of being read to as a child by a parent or a friendly uncle or an older sibling. Being read to as a child is one of the great experiences in life.”

Collins is widely considered the most popular poet in America. He never attended a writing program or took writing workshops, though he did meet poet Robert Frost when Frost visited his class at Holy Cross College. The students were shy, though, so Frost spent most of the evening talking to the Jesuits. Collins remembers mostly staring into his soup.

He published his first poems in the back of Rolling Stone magazine. They paid $35.00 a poem. He didn’t publish his first book until he was 40 years old. He said, “I thought I would be completely content if I was recognized at some later point in my life as a third-rate Wallace Stevens.”

Billy Collins uses a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint pen in 9 x 7 notebooks to draft his poems before typing them out. When he thinks he might have enough for a book, he puts all the pages on the floor and walks on top of them in his stocking feet, trying to figure out the order. He revises his work carefully, he says, because “Revision can grind a good impulse to dust.”

Below, is a few of his poems read by Garrison Keillor that were featured on the daily show:

“1960” from The Rain in Portugal. Random House

“Banana School” from Whale Day and Other Poems. Random House

"House" from The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems. Random House

“I Love You” from Aimless Love. Random House

"While Eating a Pear" from The Art of Drowning. University of Pittsburgh Press

“Imperial Garden” from Whale Day and Other Poems. Random House

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04/02/2026

Christine DiGiallonardo will join A Prairie Home Companion on May 30th in Spokane, Washington at The Fox Theater Spokane, home of the Spokane Symphony, for a wonderful evening of stories, songs and poems designed as a salute to our countries 250th birthday. The America the Beautiful stop will also feature vocalist Heather Masse, musical director Richard Dworsky and the full band, our talented acting company including sound effects wiz Fred Newman and Garrison leading a sing-a-long and delivering the News from Lake Wobegon. Join us! Ticket info - https://secure.foxtheaterspokane.org/1296/1541

Listen to 'Feels Like Home' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISg9YJleeP4

Garrison Keillor Spokane Public Radio KUOW Public Radio Northwest Bluegrass

Provided to YouTube by CDBabyFeels Like Home (Live) · Christine DiGiallonardoA Prairie Home Companion 50th Anniversary (Live)℗ 2025 Prairie Home ProductionsR...

03/31/2026

Pre-order the CDs and learn all about the stories -

It may seem like another quiet week in Lake Wobegon — the weather shifts, theseasons come and go, there’s new life, rekindled old love, familiar pranks. Buteveryday events in the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve are at once ordinary and miraculous, predictable, and ast...