For decades, there was one thing certain about weekend public radio schedules nationwide: “A Prairie Home Companion” or its successor, “Live from Here,” would be carried at suppertime on Saturday.
Live carriage of the show was so widespread that a person stopping for dinner in Hinckley, Minn., a decade ago could’ve found Garrison Keillor on a dozen FM frequencies. At one point, Duluth had four city-grade signals carrying the show live.
But American Public Media Group’s decision to cancel “Live from Here” forced public radio stations and networks to come up with new programming for a timeslot that had been set in stone since the Reagan administration.
A look at the new schedules for Upper Midwest public radio services shows that most chose entertainment or music programming, but there’s no longer one show that dominates the timeslot. Among the 95 regional stations that carried “Live from Here” until the end, no more than a third of the stations now carry the same show in the time period:
| Service | # of stations | 5:00 hour | 6:00 hour |
| Iowa Public Radio News/Studio One | 9 | Backtracks with Bob Dorr* | Backtracks with Bob Dorr * |
| Iowa Public Radio AM News | 3 | The Moth Radio Hour | Snap Judgement |
| WGGL Houghton | 1 | It’s Been a Minute | Hidden Brain |
| Minn. Public Radio News | 24 | It’s Been a Minute | Hidden Brain |
| NET Nebraska | 9 | World Cafe | World Cafe |
| KIOS Omaha | 1 | It’s Been a Minute | Live Wire |
| Prairie Public (North Dakota) | 7 | Snap Judgement | Live Wire |
| S.D. Public Broadcasting | 11 | Conversations from the World Cafe | Mountain Stage |
| Wis. Public Radio Ideas | 18 | Snap Judgement | The Moth Radio Hour |
| Wis. Public Radio News/Classical | 11 | On the Road to Higher Ground* | On the Road to Higher Ground * |
| WUWM Milwaukee | 1 | All Things Considered | On the Media |
*denotes local program