Charles Krupa/Associated PressThe brothers Tom Magliozzi, left, and Ray Magliozzi, of “Car Talk” in 2008.Tom and Ray Magliozzi, who have hosted the public-radio staple “Car Talk” for the last 35 years, said on Friday that they would retire this fall.
NPR, formerly called National Public Radio, will continue to distribute repeats of “Car Talk” to local stations. But the announcement nonetheless saddened fans of the pair, also known as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, whose freewheeling chat show — ostensibly about cars — has been a weekend tradition for generations of listeners.
“Car Talk” started on WBUR, a Boston public radio station, in 1977, and was distributed nationwide a decade later. The brothers — both graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — gained expertise from running an auto repair shop in Cambridge, Mass.
In 1993, the show won a Peabody Award. In an interview at the time, they said they were baffled by the news. “Evidently our esteemed producer entered us,” Tom said. Ray continued: “He didn’t tell us. Because we would have told him, ‘Don’t bother.’ ”
A playful column posted on their Web site Friday morning quoted Ray, 63, as saying “we’ve decided that it’s time to stop and smell the cappuccino.”
Tom, 74, added, “The good news is that, despite our general incompetence, we actually remembered to hit the ‘record’ button every week for the last 25 years. So we have more than 1,200 programs we’re going to dig into starting this fall, and the series will continue.”
NPR emphasized that fact in a statement on Friday. “Beginning in October, the Car Talk production team will actively produce new shows built from the best of its 25 years of material – more than 1,200 shows – with some updates from the brothers,” the statement read in part.
Multihour NPR programs like “Morning Edition” reach more people than the one-hour “Car Talk” each week, but “Car Talk” is No. 1 in the radio ratings measurement known as “average quarter hour,” which assesses how many people are listening on a 15-minute basis. “There are more people listening at any one moment to ‘Car Talk’ than to any national program,” an NPR spokeswoman said in an e-mail message.
In part for that reason, “Car Talk” has been an important fund-raising tool for the public radio organization, which relies in part on donations from listeners. Through “Car Talk,” there is even a vehicle donation program for local public radio and television stations.
Although the two hosts are retiring, the spokeswoman said, “We have every reason to believe the show will continue to be as important and as successful.”
The Magliozzis were “discovered,” so to speak, while working at their garage in Cambridge. According to a 1995 profile of the pair by Current, a publication about public media, they were recruited to participate in an automotive panel discussion on the radio:
Car Talk evolved out of what was supposed to be a call-in show with a panel of mechanics. The WBUR volunteer/producer of that show called Tom and Ray to sit on the panel and Tom agreed, thinking that it would generate business for his and Ray’s fledgling garage. As it turned out, Tom was the only one of six mechanics who showed up.
“It was a wild success,” says Ray, “two or three people called in.”
The producer, who soon left the show, asked Tom and Ray to do it every week. “And we figured ‘What the hell!’,” says Ray. That was 1977.
Tom, the older of the two brothers, no longer works at the garage, but Ray still does, according to the Web site for “Car Talk.”
In the column, Ray said to fans, “Thank you for giving us far more of your time than we ever deserved. We love you. And know that starting this fall, for the first time, we’ll be able to sit at home, laughing at ‘Car Talk’ along with you guys on Saturday mornings.”
Brian Stelter writes about television and digital media. Follow @brianstelter on Twitter and facebook.com/brianstelter on Facebook.
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