joe_padavano

Tom Magliozzi, co host of NPR's Car Talk and one half of Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers has passed away at 77.

jaunty75

A couple of the many online articles about it.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/p...t-77/18422639/

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/...ry?id=26660930

m371961

Enjoyed those guys on many a road trip.

oldcutlass

Used to watch those guys every Sunday morning. Was a decent show!

jaunty75

Watch them? Where? I never heard of them being on television. I thought they were only on radio.

There was a short-lived animated show based on them in 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_a...e_Wrench_Turns

MDchanic

I enjoyed listening to their show, even though they laughed and BS'ed too much, and wrenched too little.

The show will go on without any change, though, as it has been in re-runs for the last two years (if I recall), since their retirement.

- Eric

jaunty75

This was not an accident. This was the point.

Their show was never targeted to gearheads. It was targeted to soccer moms. Did you ever notice how about half the callers were female, as they're very much more fun to have "fun" with, and about half the calls from females were about disagreements with their husbands or boyfriends or whatever and not directly about a car problem? Car stuff was always mixed in, of course, usually to the detriment of the boyfriend/husband side of the argument, but one of their main goals was to attract as many female listeners as possible. This is NPR, after all, not your local 1000-watt AM station trying to come with some kind of programming for Saturday morning.

Correct, although they had been continuing to record the brief announcements leading to station breaks and things like that. There would be references to current events in those announcements, so you knew they were new.

But I have noticed that the show is getting a bit stale. As funny as they are to listen to, you can tell the show is aging because the cars discussed are always 1980s and 1990s models, and they rarely have calls about, that I've heard, any car made in the 2000s. I'm sure there are some as the show was live until 2012. But the producers are going back now to mine the older stuff, so that means lots of calls about 1988 Honda Civics.

Mr Shifty Sidney

Don't drive like my brother

MDchanic

... And espresso-drinking Proust readers in Harvard Square,

Which is why I actually didn't listen to them very much.

I enjoy trying to solve a good automotive problem, and I'd figure out some of theirs, but so many of them relied on being able to review the manual before answering, which I was unable to do, but they were, because, unknown to many listeners, the show was not recorded all at once at some specific airtime, but was pieced together, with callers first leaving their questions on an answering machine, and then being called back after Tom and Ray had had time to review the literature and ask a few other guys about that exact make and model, so that they sounded far more knowledgeable than they were (or than any of us could be, really - I mean, every make, every model, every country, every year, right?).

Anyway, it's a sad moment, and their show was a cultural icon, whether I listened much or not.

- Eric

jaunty75

According to Wikipedia, the show was taped on Wednesday each week, and, as you say, people could call in to the 888 number that Ray was always repeating, leave their name on an answering machine, and be called back by the producers. They would tape responses to a number of calls and choose the best ones for airing.

I noticed once in a while that a caller would say, for one reason or another, that they were at work, and I wondered how many people were actually at their desks at work at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Then, of course, you realize that these callers were actually doing their talking on a weekday, so that they might be at work made sense.

drop top olds

Always loved the descriptive names of their producer, sound man, etc...Doug the subway fugitive....etc..

Rocketguy

I enjoyed the show too, and for many years.

It was about laughter first, people second, and cars third.

RIP Tom! I loved your wit and humor.

Octania

Well said, Rocketguy

farewell, and DON'T DRIVE LIKE -MY- BROTHER!

pogo69

It was fun to listen to and they did have fun with the female callers, they always got a kick out of asking the girls to describe the sound of the problem they were having with the car

MDchanic

Thing is, a decent amount of the time, they figured it out based on the sound.

- Eric

Greg Rogers

It was a fun show, I enjoyed it. The laughter and the eastern accents were a hoot.

allyolds68

They are only program I ever listened to on NPR

MDchanic

"Eastern accents"?

Waddayamean, "Eastern accents"???

- Eric

oldcutlass

Sorry was thinking of a tv show I used to watch, apparently my crs kicked in.

jaunty75

Interesting point. You're not alone, and NPR knows this.

I read an interesting article once about how, once Click and Clack decided to retire, the show itself should have been retired instead of playing reruns. Why? Because air time is limited. There are only 24 hours in a day. The hour that this show takes up could be put to use to allow other writers, producers, whatever to have an opportunity to create a program. Keeping a show like Car Talk on the air in reruns reduces by one the number of air time hours available.

But it'll never go away because the other side of the argument comes from the NPR stations around the country. Car Talk, even in reruns, is usually the most popular show the station airs, period. It's the one show where they can reach the largest audience when it comes to pledge drive time, and it's the show through which they attract the most financial contributions. For some stations, the show is the station's life-blood, and if the show were to go away, those stations would be facing serious revenue issues.

So I'd expect Car Talk to remain on the air as long as there IS an NPR. It's too valuable to let go.

TK-65

Koda

NPR is pretty much Radio Moscow.

joe_padavano

Not exactly on-topic...

MDchanic

Radio Moscow is all about free trade, fighting the EU, and keeping the Russian culture pure and free of corrupt Western influences these days, I would suspect.

- Eric

CarCrazyChemist

God rest his soul. They always cracked me up when I was actually up on a Saturday morning.
I guess besides re-runs, all I will have on NPR besides news is the Garrison Keeler show.

jaunty75

Keillor

RonFX

Guys:
I loved listening to them every Sunday morning, they made my day! I loved the joke one of them told about a wife who asked her husband for a special birthday gift, " Something that went from 0-200 in less than 4 seconds, so he bought her a bathroom scale" I almost wet myself when I heard that one, I was laughing and crying at the same time when NPR replayed some of their shows the other day as a tribute to him, his laugh was infectious!
Thanks, Ron