Michael Feldman: I Was Blindsided by Wisconsin Public Radio

By Duane Dudek, Special to the Journal Sentinel

In the days leading up to his final "Whad'Ya Know?" broadcast Saturday, host Michael Feldman was already sitting shiva. "'Everybody loves a funeral' will be a theme" of the last show, Feldman said in his trademark glass-half-empty grumble. And, he added, his family will sit ritual shiva "in bereavement" after it as well. Tickets for the final show are sold out. It will air live at 10 a.m. Saturday, in Milwaukee on WHAD-FM (90.7).

Feldman felt blindsided by Wisconsin Public Radio's decision in March to cancel the weekly comedy quiz show after 31 years. Speaking about it recently, he sounded wry and self-deprecating but also deeply aggrieved. But this week, he announced some good news. A Kickstarter fundraising campaign to finance a "Whad'Ya Know?" podcast had raised more than $11,000. Feldman posted plans for live audience tapings September through December at the show's new home, Madison's High Noon Saloon.

WPR owns the broadcasts of the original show, but Feldman owns the name and concept. He said the show's cancellation was presented to him as a fait accompli. "'Here's the press release'," he said he was told. "'This blank is where you say what you say. It's set to go out.'" Feldman said he was told "'Maybe there's something you could do around here.' Custodial?" he speculated. "A little front desk? It's a slow death."

He said he was hurt that his show hadn't been mentioned on fund drives. And he complained that WPR did not plan to keep an archive of his old shows.

An 'Existential Crisis'

The death of "Whad'Ya Know?" likely was shocking to what Feldman estimated are his 400,000 listeners. But it is a common old-media refrain in a new-media world. This time, public radio is singing it — and Feldman is part of the chorus. "Whad'Ya Know?" joins other high-profile public radio departures, notably Garrison Keillor, upon whose "A Prairie Home Companion" National Public Radio was partly built and whose last appearance as the show's host is July 11; and the end of new episodes of "Car Talk" after the death of co-host Tom Magliozzi in 2014. (It is now heard in reruns.)

The Wall Street Journal recently declared that public radio, grappling with demographic shifts and digital challenges, is having an "existential crisis." The same can be said about Feldman, who started "Whad'Ya Know?" in 1985. Feldman was "part of the invention of the idea that public radio didn't have to be so serious all the time," said Mike Crane, director of WPR. "Whad'Ya Know?" was canceled, Crane said, because of its declining carriage rate — the number of affiliates carrying the show.

The show airs on 94 affiliates, 30 of which are WPR stations. That's down from what Feldman said was a high of 350 affiliates in 2005-'06. Feldman said his suggestion to produce a version of the show for the state network only was rejected. "Those numbers were just crushing," Crane said.

"Whad'Ya Know?" is distributed by Public Radio International, which gets a percentage of what affiliates pay for it. WPR gets the rest, a figure that shrank like the show's carriage rate. Crane said "Whad'Ya Know's" budget in the 2016 fiscal year — for 30 new shows and 21 repeats — was $561,000. WPR plans to replace "Whad'Ya Know?" with two comedy quiz shows, "Ask Me Another" and "Says You," starting July 2.

First In Radio's Prime Time

"Whad'Ya Know?" is as much a Wisconsin tradition as Bob Uecker and Friday fish fries. Even its title has a dairy state flair. Some suggested this regional flavor hurt him nationally, but a similar approach did not seem to hurt Minnesotan Keillor. Feldman's time slot — Saturday morning from 10 a.m. until noon — is public radio prime time. The Saturday morning time slot was vacant until he started his show. "Now everybody wants to be there," said Jack Mitchell, WPR director from 1976 to 1998 and now a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

His competition in the time slot includes "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!", a nationally syndicated comedy quiz show based in Chicago. The show was developed by National Public Radio after Feldman left for American Public Radio in the 1990s, Mitchell said. There has been bad blood between the shows since Feldman called it "Wait Wait...Don't Wake Me." The Chicago show badmouthed him in return. Now it appears Feldman is a victim of the success of "Wait Wait," which airs at 10 a.m. Saturdays on WUWM-FM (89.7).

An Old-School Approach

Feldman was working in Chicago radio in the 1980s when Mitchell, who knew Feldman from Madison radio, invited him to develop a show. Because Feldman liked "ask your neighbor"-type radio, he proposed a show with a live audience and a band. Feldman said he told Mitchell that he'd "'like to do a call-in show. But I don't want to talk about hot-button issues. A call-in quiz show, because I like talking to people on the phone.' And Jack said, 'Let's give it a try.'" Feldman's talent is bantering with audience members and callers, band members John Thulin and Clyde Stubblefield and announcer Stephanie Lee. It is acerbic but not mean, and the product of genuine curiosity and a quick mind. As a result, "Whad'Ya Know?" is radio you don't hear anymore, complete with mistakes, miscues and dead spots. "The show Michael is doing today is pretty identical to 30 years ago," Mitchell said. "He had opportunities to make changes but decided not to." "The type of radio I did, long-form and live, is pretty much dead," Feldman acknowledged.

"Wait Wait," on the other hand, is taped before a live audience earlier in the week, then edited into a tight, one-hour broadcast. It's the sort of accommodation Feldman was reluctant to make, said Mitchell and Crane. Can Feldman adapt it to a podcast world? Talking to The Wall Street Journal, he dismissed podcasts as what people listen to "on the elliptical machine." Although he is active on Twitter, Feldman said he was "a stranger" to the new-media world of podcasts. "People I picked up along the way" know what they are doing, he said. "But I have none of those skills or interests."