In the wake of federal funding cuts, Utah public radio fans filled Abravanel Hall to capacity on Thursday for the live taping of the latest episode of NPR’s “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!”
The Salt Lake City audience often drowned out host Peter Sagal and the show’s panelists with its laughter and applause.
Craig Bjorklund, a regular “Wait Wait” listener who attended Thursday’s taping, said anyone who hasn’t listened to the show before is “missing a good time.”
“It’s just such a fun show to listen to on the radio. This is the second time I’ve come to the one that they’ve done here in town. It’s just so much fun. You get a good laugh each week — or more than one,” he said.
“Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!” isn’t your average news program.
In “Wait Wait,” contestants, a panel of comedians and a celebrity guest are quizzed on the week’s current events in a series of games. The winner of each game receives a voicemail greeting recorded by the host or panelist of their choosing.
This week’s panel featured Luke Burbank, Shantira Jackson and Shane O’Neill. Actor Alzo Slade filled in for official judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis. Heather Gay of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” stopped by as the “Not My Job”celebrity guest.
“Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!” attempts to find the humor in the week’s news cycle. Burbank, who has been with the show for 20 years, told the Deseret News that that’s part of the show’s appeal.
“I think the fact that it’s about the news, but it’s not crushingly depressing, helps I think, particularly right now for a lot of these listeners,” he said.
KUER executive director Maria O’Mara believes the show’s novelty as a news quiz show has also contributed to its longevity as well as public radio fans doubling as “news nerds.”
“What would be more perfect for a news nerd than a show where you could kind of show your ability to know what’s happening in the world?” O’Mara said.
‘Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!’ and Salt Lake City
“Wait Wait” has had a long history with Salt Lake City, dating back 25 years.
On Thursday, Sagal called Salt Lake City the show’s second home.
“It’s so fabulous. We love being here,” Sagal said.
The program started off as a studio show in Chicago in 1998. Two years later in 2000, the show came to Salt Lake City to record in front of its first-ever live audience outside of Chicago.
“Wait Wait” celebrated another milestone in Utah during its last stop in Salt Lake City in 2019 when it recorded its 1,000th show.
The impact of federal funding cuts to public radio
The show’s stop in Salt Lake City comes weeks after Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law roughly $1 billion in federal funding cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which includes PBS and NPR, over the next two years.
Local stations will face the brunt of the cuts, as NPR receives less than 1% of its funding from the federal government, as the Deseret News previously reported.
The cuts have already made an impact. On Friday, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it will be shutting down by the end of the year as a result of the cuts.
“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” president and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement.
Following the show on Thursday, Sagal assured the Salt Lake City audience that the program would be safe from cuts, but he encouraged them to support their local radio stations, such as KUER, which hosted the evening’s show.
“But it is important to keeping new things going, bringing new things to life, keeping smaller stations alive so that people who don’t have much access to anything else in the more rural parts of Utah or other Western states, for example,” he said.
KUER will likely survive the cuts, too, per O’Mara.
“We’re very fortunate that we are not among those stations that will likely close because of that loss. Our funding from the federal government was at about 8 or 9%. We will have to stretch to make up that loss in revenue,” she said. “It comes out to about half a million dollars every single year.”
Sagal suggested listeners contact their representatives to express their support for public radio.
“Let them politely know how much public broadcasting means to you and the country at large, and never give up in fighting for the country and the government that you want,” he said.
The Salt Lake City episode of “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!” will be released on Saturday and can be found on NPR’s website and on various podcast platforms.
Listeners can also tune in to KUER to listen to the show at 10 a.m. MDT on Saturday.
