Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Site Navigation
 |  |
About Dale Connelly
I was an MPR reporter for seven years, starting out in Worthington. I covered regional events for our station KRSW and fed stories to St. Paul to be included in MPR's version of All Things Considered. There was a lot of important news happening on the prairie, but the physical spaces were vast and the people were careful around young men with microphones, so I did not get a handle on what was really happening. Instead, I busied myself with creative writing and editing projects, and on the occasional slow news day when agriculture became an issue of interest in St. Paul I was able to get farmers to complain about the weather and the government. On the strength of this resume', I transferred to MPR's metropolitan headquarters in 1977.
I did the best I could during my reporting years. And I think my best was pretty good, considering that I suffered from the handicap of shyness, an affliction which made me seem incurious and distant - not good qualities in a journalist.
My real interest in radio was music and comedy. I listened to the Firesign Theater, I enjoyed Bob and Ray, was inspired by some of the work Dudley Riggs Brave New Workshop did for NPR in the late '70s, and I loved listening to The Prairie Home Morning Show with Garrison Keillor and Jim Ed Poole. The imaginary world they created was a complete and appealing fantasy. That there could be a Jack's Warm Car Service to come pick you up on a frosty morning, or a Hotel Transom across the park from the studio where musicians stayed the night before a broadcast, or even that Jim Ed had a trained chicken named Curtis ... I found these ideas more interesting than the headlines. Even though we worked in the same building, I rarely saw Garrison and occasionally ran into Jim Ed (Tom Keith). But that was OK. Already a shy reporter, I was an equally shy fan.
When MPR acquired a new frequency in the Twin Cities (1330 AM) to broadcast news, I became involved as a host on the weekend, filling a few Saturday morning hours re-playing national and local stories that I had culled from the archives. This week-in-review program was a bare-bones operation, designed to keep the station on the air when there was really no fresh programming available. I loved doing it because it gave me an opening to insert phony news reports from make believe characters
I approached Jim Ed (Tom Keith) and asked him to play Bud Buck, a hapless public radio journalist modeled after Bob and Ray's famous Wally Ballou. We did these comic bits for fun and to have something original in a show that, for the most part, was made up of regurgitated news.
And we were allowed to do it, I believe, because no one in management was listening carefully. Having such a space to work in is a great gift for anyone trying something new. We were extremely lucky.
Our antics on 1330 AM did eventually catch the ear of the program director, Marilyn Heltzer, who took the radical step of asking me to substitute for Garrison one week. That opening led to more opportunities to sit in for Garrison as he became increasingly busy.
When he finally stepped down from the Prairie Home Morning Show, rumor had it the show would revert to the classical music that dominated the rest of the day. As a listener, I felt I needed something more like Garrison's eclectic style and as a fan I definitely wanted Jim Ed to stay on the air. I applied for the job and did not get it. Instead, MPR assigned a wonderful and hilarious announcer named Bill Parker to do the Morning Show. Jim Ed would stay on, but remain mostly silent, returning to the technician role he had at the very beginning.
Bill Parker was an excellent choice for the morning slot, but there was a lot of second-guessing. Everyone seemed to have an idea for how Bill could keep the Prairie Home Morning Show audience happy while playing classical music, and there were also a lot of opinions about what he should NOT do.
After a year in the hot seat, Bill went back to less controversial classical music shift later in the day, and the search was on for a workable alternative for the early hours.
I re-submitted my application with the understanding that if I got the job, it would be as part of an on-air team that included Jim Ed.
This time the proposal was accepted and poof!
Twenty five years flew by.
I was an MPR reporter for seven years, starting out in Worthington. I covered regional events for our station KRSW and fed stories to St. Paul to be included in MPR's version of All Things Considered. There was a lot of important news happening on the prairie, but the physical spaces were vast and the people were careful around young men with microphones, so I did not get a handle on what was really happening. Instead, I busied myself with creative writing and editing projects, and on the occasional slow news day when agriculture became an issue of interest in St. Paul I was able to get farmers to complain about the weather and the government. On the strength of this resume', I transferred to MPR's metropolitan headquarters in 1977.
I did the best I could during my reporting years. And I think my best was pretty good, considering that I suffered from the handicap of shyness, an affliction which made me seem incurious and distant - not good qualities in a journalist.
My real interest in radio was music and comedy. I listened to the Firesign Theater, I enjoyed Bob and Ray, was inspired by some of the work Dudley Riggs Brave New Workshop did for NPR in the late '70s, and I loved listening to The Prairie Home Morning Show with Garrison Keillor and Jim Ed Poole. The imaginary world they created was a complete and appealing fantasy. That there could be a Jack's Warm Car Service to come pick you up on a frosty morning, or a Hotel Transom across the park from the studio where musicians stayed the night before a broadcast, or even that Jim Ed had a trained chicken named Curtis ... I found these ideas more interesting than the headlines. Even though we worked in the same building, I rarely saw Garrison and occasionally ran into Jim Ed (Tom Keith). But that was OK. Already a shy reporter, I was an equally shy fan.
When MPR acquired a new frequency in the Twin Cities (1330 AM) to broadcast news, I became involved as a host on the weekend, filling a few Saturday morning hours re-playing national and local stories that I had culled from the archives. This week-in-review program was a bare-bones operation, designed to keep the station on the air when there was really no fresh programming available. I loved doing it because it gave me an opening to insert phony news reports from make believe characters
I approached Jim Ed (Tom Keith) and asked him to play Bud Buck, a hapless public radio journalist modeled after Bob and Ray's famous Wally Ballou. We did these comic bits for fun and to have something original in a show that, for the most part, was made up of regurgitated news.
And we were allowed to do it, I believe, because no one in management was listening carefully. Having such a space to work in is a great gift for anyone trying something new. We were extremely lucky.
Our antics on 1330 AM did eventually catch the ear of the program director, Marilyn Heltzer, who took the radical step of asking me to substitute for Garrison one week. That opening led to more opportunities to sit in for Garrison as he became increasingly busy.
When he finally stepped down from the Prairie Home Morning Show, rumor had it the show would revert to the classical music that dominated the rest of the day. As a listener, I felt I needed something more like Garrison's eclectic style and as a fan I definitely wanted Jim Ed to stay on the air. I applied for the job and did not get it. Instead, MPR assigned a wonderful and hilarious announcer named Bill Parker to do the Morning Show. Jim Ed would stay on, but remain mostly silent, returning to the technician role he had at the very beginning.
Bill Parker was an excellent choice for the morning slot, but there was a lot of second-guessing. Everyone seemed to have an idea for how Bill could keep the Prairie Home Morning Show audience happy while playing classical music, and there were also a lot of opinions about what he should NOT do.
After a year in the hot seat, Bill went back to less controversial classical music shift later in the day, and the search was on for a workable alternative for the early hours.
I re-submitted my application with the understanding that if I got the job, it would be as part of an on-air team that included Jim Ed.
This time the proposal was accepted and poof!
Twenty five years flew by.
Services
|
|
