Car Talk
Car Talk is a Peabody Award-winning radio talk display broadcast weekly on NPR stations and elsewhere. Its subjects were automobiles and automotive repair, discussed often in a humorous way. It was hosted by brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi, known also as “Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers”. The showcase was produced from one thousand nine hundred seventy seven to October 2012, when the Magliozzi brothers retired. Edited reruns (which are introduced as The Best of Car Talk) proceed to be available for weekly airing on NPR affiliates, [Two] albeit in July two thousand sixteen the network announced its intention to end the broadcasts after September 30, 2017. [Three]
Contents
Car Talk was introduced in the form of a call-in radio display: listeners called in with questions related to motor vehicle maintenance and repair. Most of the advice sought was diagnostic, with callers describing symptoms and demonstrating sounds of an ailing vehicle while the Magliozzis made an attempt to identify the malfunction over the telephone and give advice on how to fix it. While the hosts peppered their call-in sessions with jokes directed at both the caller and at themselves, the Magliozzis were usually able to arrive at a diagnosis. However, when they were stumped, they attempted anyway with an response they claimed was “unencumbered by the thought process”, the official motto of the showcase. [Four]
Edited reruns are carried on XM Satellite Radio via both the Public Radio and NPR Now channels. [Five] [6] [7] [8]
Call-in procedure Edit
Across the program, listeners were encouraged to dial the toll-free telephone number, 1-888-CAR-TALK (1-888-227-8255), which connected to a 24-hour answering service. Albeit the approximately Two,000 queries received each week were screened by the Car Talk staff, the questions were unknown to the Magliozzis in advance as “that would entail researching the right response, which is what? . Work.” [Ten] Producers selected and contacted the callers several days ahead of the demonstrate’s Wednesday taping to arrange the segment. The caller spoke shortly to a producer before being connected live with the hosts and was given little coaching other than being told to be ready to talk, not to use any written prep and to “have joy”. The showcase deliberately taped more callers than it had time to air each week in order to be able to choose the best ones for broadcast. Those segments that did make it to air were generally edited for time. For the last four years of the showcase, fresh shows included previously broadcast segments as much as ten years old. The re-used segments, including re-used puzzlers, were not acknowledged as old material and sometimes fresh caller material was mixed in alongside the recycled calls. [11]
Features Edit
The showcase originally consisted of two segments with a break in inbetween but was switched to three segments. After the shift to the three-segment format, it became a running joke to refer to the last segment as “the third half” of the program.
The demonstrate opened with a brief comedy segment, typically jokes sent in by listeners, followed by eight call-in sessions. The hosts ran a contest called the “Puzzler”, in which a riddle, sometimes car-related, was introduced. The reaction to the previous week’s “Puzzler” was given at the beginning of the “2nd half” of the showcase, and a fresh “Puzzler” was given at the commence of the “third half”. The hosts gave instructions to listeners to write answers addressed to “Puzzler Tower” on some non-existent or expensive object, such as a “$26 bill” or an advanced digital SLR camera. This gag originally embarked as suggestions that the answers be written “on the back of a $20 bill”. A running gag worried Tom’s inability to reminisce the previous week’s “Puzzler” without strenuous prompting from Ray. For each puzzler, one correct response was chosen at random, with the winner receiving a $26 bounty certificate to the Car Talk store, referred to as the “Shameless Commerce Division”. [12] It was originally $25, but was enlargened for inflation after a few years. Originally, the winner received a specific item from the store, but it soon switched to a bounty certificate to permit the winner to choose the item they desired (tho’ Tom often made an item suggestion).
A recurring feature was “Stump the Chumps,” in which the hosts revisited a caller from a previous demonstrate to determine the accuracy and the effect, if any, of their advice. A similar feature began in May 2001, “Where Are They Now, Tommy?” It began with a comical musical theme with a sputtering, backfiring car engine and a horn as a backdrop. Tom then announced who the previous caller was, followed by a brief replay of the essence of the previous call, preceded and followed by harp music often used in other audiovisual media to indicate recalling and returning from a wish. The hosts then greeted the previous caller, confirmed that they had not spoken since their previous appearance and asked them if there had been any influences on the response they were about to relate, such as arcane bribes by the NPR staff. The repair story was then discussed, followed by a fanfare and applause if the Tappet Brothers’ diagnosis was correct, or a wah-wah-wah music lump mixed with a car starter operated by a powerless battery (an engine which wouldn’t embark) if the diagnosis was wrong. The hosts then thanked the caller for their comeback appearance.
The brothers also had an official Animal-Vehicle Biologist and Wildlife Guru named Kieran Lindsey. [13] She answered questions like How do I liquidate a snake from my car? and suggested advice on how those living in cities and suburbs could reconnect with wildlife. [14]
Celebrities were featured as “callers” as well, including Geena Davis, Morley Safer, Ashley Judd, Gordon Elliott, former Major League pitcher Bill Lee, and astronaut John M. Grunsfeld calling from the Space Shuttle. There were numerous appearances from NPR personalities, including Bob Edwards, Susan Stamberg, Scott Simon, Ray Suarez, Will Shortz, Sylvia Poggioli, and commentator and author Daniel Pinkwater. On one occasion, the display featured Martha Stewart as an in-studio guest, whom the Magliozzis twice during the segment referred to as “Margaret”.
In addition to at least one on-orbit call, the Brothers once received a call asking advice on winterizing an electrical car. When they asked what kind of car, the caller stated it was a “kit car”, a $400 million “kit car”. It was a joke call from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory concerning the prep of the Mars rover for the oncoming Martian winter. [15] [16] Click and Clack have also been featured in editorial cartoons, including one where a befuddled NASA engineer called them to ask how to fix the Space Shuttle. [ scene needed ]
Humor Edit
Humor and wisecracking pervaded the program. Tom and Ray are known for their self-deprecating humor, often joking about the supposedly poor quality of their advice and the display in general. They also commented at the end of each display: “Well, it’s happened again—you’ve wasted another ideally good hour listening to Car Talk.”
At some point in almost every demonstrate, usually when providing the address for the Puzzler answers or fan mail, Ray mentioned Cambridge, Massachusetts (where the display originated), at which point Tom reverently interjected with a tone of civic pride, “Our fair city”. Ray invariably mocked “‘Cambridge, MA’, the United States Postal Service’s two-letter abbreviation for ‘Massachusetts”‘, by pronouncing the “MA” as a word.
Preceding each break in the demonstrate, one of the hosts led up to the network identification with a humorous take on a disgusted reaction of some usually famous person to hearing that identification. The total line went along the pattern of, for example, “And even however Roger Clemens stabs his radio with a injection needle whenever he hears us say it, this is NPR: National Public Radio” (later just “. this is NPR”).
At one point in the demonstrate, often after the break, Ray usually stated that: “Support for this display is provided by,” followed by an absurd fundraiser. [ citation needed ]
The ending credits of the showcase commenced with thanks to the colorfully nicknamed actual staffers: producer Doug “the subway fugitive, not a marionette to style, bongo boy frogman” Berman; [17] “John ‘Bugsy’ Lawlor, just back from the . ” every week a different eating event with rhyming foodstuff names; David “Calves of Belleville” Greene; [Legal] Catherine “Frau Blücher” Fenollosa, whose name caused a pony to neigh and gallop (an allusion to a running gag in the movie Youthful Frankenstein); [Nineteen] and Carly “High Voltage” Nix, [20] among others. Following the real staff was a lengthy list of pun-filled fictional staffers and sponsors such as statistician Marge Innovera (“margin of error”), customer care representative Haywood Jabuzoff (“Hey, would ya hum off”), meteorologist Claudio Vernight (“cloudy overnight”), optometric stiff C. F. Eye Care (“see if I care”), Russian chauffeur Pikup Andropov (“pick up and drop off”), Leo Tolstoy biographer Warren Peace (“War and Peace”), hygiene officer and chief of the Tokyo office Oteka Shawa (“oh take a shower”), Swedish snowboard instructor Soren Derkeister (“sore in the keister”), law stiff Dewey, Cheetham & Howe (“Do we cheat ’em? And how!”), and many, many others, usually concluding with Erasmus B. Dragon (“Her caboose must be draggin'”), whose job title varied, but who was often said to be head of the display’s working mothers’ support group. [21] They sometimes advised that “our chief counsel from the law stiff of Dewey, Cheetham, & Howe is Hugh Louis Dewey, known to [group of people] in Harvard Square as Huey Louie Dewey.” Huey, Louie, and Dewey were the juvenile nephews being raised by Donald Duck in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. Guest accommodations were provided by The Horseshoe Road Inn (“the pony you railed in”).
At the end of the display, Ray warned the audience, “Don’t drive like my brother!” to which Tom replied, “And don’t drive like my brother!” The original tag line was “Don’t drive like a knucklehead!” There were variations such as, “Don’t drive like my brother . ” “And don’t drive like his brother!” and “Don’t drive like my sister . ” “And don’t drive like my sister!” The tagline was heard in the Pixar film Cars, in which Tom and Ray voiced anthropomorphized vehicles (Rusty and Dusty Rust-eze, respectively a one thousand nine hundred sixty three Dodge Dart V1.0 and one thousand nine hundred sixty three Dodge A100 van, as Lightning McQueen’s racing sponsors) with personalities similar to their own on-air personae. [22] Tom notoriously once wielded a “convertible, green with large areas of rust!” Dodge Dart, known jokingly on the program by the faux-elegant name “Dartre”. [23]
In 1977, radio station WBUR-FM in Boston scheduled a panel of local car mechanics to discuss car repairs on one of its programs, but only Tom Magliozzi displayed up. He did so well that he was asked to comeback as a guest, and he invited his junior brother Ray (who was actually more of a car repair pro) to join him. The brothers were soon asked to host their own radio display on WBUR, which they continued to do every week. In 1986, NPR determined to distribute their display nationally. [24]
In 1992, Car Talk won a Peabody Award, telling “Each week, master mechanics Tom and Ray Magliozzi provide useful information about preserving and protecting our cars. But the real core of this program is what it tells us about human mechanics . The insight and laughter provided by Messrs. Magliozzi, in conjunction with their producer Doug Berman, provide a weekly mental tune-up for a vast and ever-growing public radio audience.” [25]
In May 2007, the program, which previously had been available digitally only as a paid subscription from Audible.com, became a free podcast distributed by NPR, after a two-month test period where only a “call of the week” was available via podcast. [ citation needed ]
As of 2012, it had Trio.Three million listeners each week, on about six hundred sixty stations. [Two] On June 8, 2012, the brothers announced that they would no longer broadcast fresh scenes as of October. Executive producer Doug Berman said the best material from twenty five years of past shows would be used to put together “repurposed” shows for NPR to broadcast. Berman estimated the archives contain enough for eight years’ worth of material before anything would have to be repeated. [Two] [26] Ray Magliozzi, however, would sometimes record fresh taglines and sponsor announcements that were aired at the end of the showcase.
Ray Magliozzi hosted a special Car Talk memorial gig for his brother Tom after he died in November 2014. However, Ray continued to write their syndicated newspaper column, telling that his brother would want him to. [28]
The Magliozzis were long-time auto mechanics. Ray Magliozzi has a bachelor of science degree in humanities and science from MIT, while Tom had a bachelor of science degree in economics from MIT and an MBA and DBA from the Boston University School of Management.
The duo, usually led by Tom, were known for rants on the evils of the internal combustion engine, people who talk on mobile phones while driving, Peugeots, women named Donna who always seem to drive Chevrolet Camaros, lawyers, the clever use of the English language, people who choose to live in Alaska (or similar snowy, icy climates), and practically anything else, including themselves. They had a relaxed and humorous treatment to cars, car repair, cup holders, pets, lawyers, car repair mechanics, SUVs, and almost everything else. They often cast a critical, jaundiced insider’s eye toward the auto industry. Tom and Ray were committed to the values of defensive driving and environmentalism.
The Magliozzis operated a do-it-yourself garage together in the 1970s which became more of a conventional repair shop in the 1980s. Ray continued to have a arm in the day-to-day operations of the shop for years, while his brother Tom semi-retired, often joking on Car Talk about his distaste for doing “actual work”. The demonstrate’s offices were located near their shop at the corner of JFK Street and Brattle Street in Harvard Square, marked as “Dewey, Cheetham & Howe”, the imaginary law hard to which they referred on-air. DC&H doubled as the business name of Tappet Brothers Associates, the corporation established to manage the business end of Car Talk. Originally a joke, the company was incorporated after the display expanded from a single station to national syndication.
Executive producer Doug Berman said in 2012, “The guys are culturally right up there with Mark Twain and the Marx Brothers. They will stand the test of time. People will still be loving them years from now. They’re that good.” [Two]
Tom Magliozzi died on November Trio, 2014, at age 77, due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease. [29]
The demonstrate was the inspiration for the short-lived The George Wendt Showcase, which shortly aired on CBS in the 1994-1995 season- as a mid-season replacement. [30]
In July 2007, PBS announced that it had green-lit an animated adaptation of Car Talk, to air on prime-time in 2008. [31] The display, titled Click and Clack’s As the Wrench Turns is based on the adventures of the fictional “Click and Clack” brothers’ garage at “Car Talk Plaza”. The ten gigs aired in July and August 2008. [32]
Car Talk: The Musical. was written and directed by Wesley Savick, and composed by Michael Wartofsky. The adaptation was introduced by Suffolk University, and opened on March 31, 2011, at the Modern Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts. [33] The play was not officially endorsed by the Magliozzis, but they participated in the production, lending their voices to a central puppet character named “The Wizard of Cahs”. [34]
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