Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, singer, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He created the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) show A Prairie Home Companion, which he hosted from 1974 to 2016. Keillor created the fictional Minnesota town Lake Wobegon, the setting of many of his books, including Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories. Other creations include Guy Noir, a detective voiced by Keillor who appeared in A Prairie Home Companion comic skits. Keillor is also the creator of the five-minute daily radio/podcast program The Writer's Almanac, which pairs poems of his choice with a script about important literary, historical, and scientific events that coincided with that date in history.
A Prairie Home Companion is a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host, and the successor show was eventually renamed Live from Here and ran until 2020. A Prairie Home Companion aired on Saturdays from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota; it was also frequently heard on tours to New York City and other U.S. cities. The show is known for its musical guests, especially folk and traditional musicians, tongue-in-cheek radio drama, and relaxed humor. Keillor's wry storytelling segment, "News from Lake Wobegon," was the show's best-known feature during his long tenure.
Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), is a public radio network for the state of Minnesota. With its three services, News & Information, YourClassical MPR and The Current, MPR operates a 46-station regional radio network in the upper Midwest.
Radio comedy, or comedic radio programming, is a radio broadcast that may involve variety show, sitcom elements, sketches, and various types of comedy found in other media. It may also include more surreal or fantastic elements, as these can be conveyed on a small budget with just a few sound effects or some simple dialogue. Radio comedy began in the United States in 1930, based on the fact that as most United Kingdom music hall comedians such as Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel progressed to silent films, they moved to Hollywood and fed the radio comedy field. Another British music hall comic, George Formby, stayed in the British movie industry, and in 1940 joined the Entertainments National Service Association to entertain British World War II troops. UK radio comedy therefore started later, in the 1950s.
American Public Media (APM) is an American company that produces and distributes public radio programs in the United States, the second largest company of its type after NPR. Its non-profit parent, American Public Media Group, also owns and operates radio stations in Minnesota and California. Its station brands include Minnesota Public Radio and Southern California Public Radio. Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, APM is best known for distribution of the national financial news program Marketplace.
American Public Media Group, formerly the Minnesota Communications Group, is the non-profit parent organization of Minnesota Public Radio, American Public Media, and Southern California Public Radio. Jean Taylor is APMG's President and CEO.
KSJN is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Owned by Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), this station serves the Twin Cities region as the flagship of "YourClassical MPR", MPR's classical music network. KSJN's studios are located at the MPR Broadcast Center on Cedar Street in downtown Saint Paul, while its transmitter is located on the KMSP Tower in Shoreview.
Thomas Alan Keith was a radio personality who worked for Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was the engineer for Garrison Keillor when the latter began his early morning radio show from the St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota studio. Keillor wanted dialogue during the program and Keith was about the only other person around at that early hour. Keith was one of the primary sound effects performers for the radio show A Prairie Home Companion and was often an actor in sketches written by Keillor. Keillor created the persona of Jim Ed Poole for Keith on the old early morning show. Jim Ed was said to have grown up in West St. Paul, Minnesota and graduated from Henry Sibley High School.
Tim Russell is an American radio announcer and voice actor (AFTRA/SAG) in Minneapolis – Saint Paul. He is most widely known as one of the actors on the long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, and continued in that role on the show, re-titled, Live From Here with Chris Thile until September 2018. As a voice-over talent and announcer, Russell also appears in radio and television commercials.
Sue Scott is an American actress and character voice actor (AFTRA/SAG/AEA) in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. She is best known for her work as a radio comedy actor on Garrison Keillor's public radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, and for her work as a voice-over talent in radio and television commercials. She has also appeared in films and television.
A Prairie Home Companion is a 2006 American musical comedy film directed by Robert Altman and is his final film. It is a fictional representation of behind-the-scenes activities at the long-running public radio show of the same name. The film received mostly positive reviews and was a moderate box-office success on a small budget. The film features an ensemble cast including Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Garrison Keillor, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Meryl Streep, and Lily Tomlin.
Guy Noir is a fictional private detective regularly featured on the public radio show A Prairie Home Companion. Voiced by Garrison Keillor, the character parodies the conventions of hardboiled fiction and the film noir genre. Guy Noir works on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building in a city that "knows how to keep its secrets", St. Paul, Minnesota.
Lake Wobegon is a fictional town created by Garrison Keillor as the setting of the recurring segment "News from Lake Wobegon" for the radio program A Prairie Home Companion broadcast from St Paul, Minnesota. The fictional town serves as the setting for many of Keillor's stories and novels, gaining an international audience with Lake Wobegon Days in 1985. Described as a small rural town in central Minnesota, the events and adventures of the townspeople provided Keillor with a wealth of humorous and often touching stories.
George Bilgere is an American poet.
KFSR is an American radio station licensed to serve the community of Fresno, California. Founded in 1982, the station's broadcast license is held by California State University, Fresno. KFSR broadcasts jazz, blues and other genres from the campus of California State University, Fresno.
Louis Burke Jenkins was an American prose poet. He lived in Duluth, Minnesota, with his wife Ann for over four decades, beginning in 1971. He also lived in Bloomington, Minnesota. His poems have been published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies. Jenkins was a guest on A Prairie Home Companion numerous times and was also featured on The Writer's Almanac and on the Northern Lights TV Series.
The Morning Show, initially called The Morning Program and then for a time A Prairie Home Entertainment and A Prairie Home Morning Show, was a weekday morning drive-time radio program produced in St. Paul, Minnesota and broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio's KCMP and other stations of the MPR network.
Mary Crow is an American poet, translator, and professor who served as the poet laureate of Colorado for 14 years. She is the author of three collections of poetry, three chapbooks and five translations.
Erica Rhodes is an American actress and comedian. She has been performing on A Prairie Home Companion since the age of 13 and appeared in several movies and TV shows, including Plague Town, 1,000 Ways to Die, and The Consultants. She has also guest starred on New Girl, @midnight with Chris Hardwick, and Modern Family. She competed in the reality television comedy competition series Bring the Funny.
Live from Here, formerly known as A Prairie Home Companion with Chris Thile, is an American variety radio show known for its musical guests, tongue-in-cheek radio drama, and relaxed humor. Hosted by Chris Thile, it aired live on Saturday evenings. The show's initial home was the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2019, the show moved to The Town Hall in New York City, where it remained until its cancellation the next year.
