[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 33 (Wednesday, March 22, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E382-E383]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF ``A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION''

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. COLLIN C. PETERSON

                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 22, 2000

  Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, A Prairie Home Companion is 
more than just a good radio program. It's a good radio program that has 
been around for twenty-five years. When it debuted on July 6, 1974, 
before a live audience of twelve at Macalester College in St. Paul, 
Minnesota, no one would have suspected that twenty-five years later it 
would delight a national weekly radio audience of 2.8 million 
listeners, and many thousands of international fans across the globe 
from Edinborough to Tokyo.
  Over the past quarter century, A Prairie Home Companion has broadcast 
over 2,600 hours of programming, and has toured to forty-four of the 
fifty states. Close to one million people have attended live 
broadcasts. It's now heard on more than 470 public radio stations from 
coast to coast. The program, with origins in the American Midwest, has 
made a successful leap overseas. In 1985, Minnesota Public Radio 
started sending reel-to-reel tapes of the shows to Australia and 
Sweden. In

[[Page E383]]

1990, digital audiotapes were sent to Taiwan. Since 1996, the show goes 
directly by satellite for broadcast worldwide. Now, it can be heard in 
dozens of European cities including Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Bonn, 
Vienna, Geneva and London. In twenty-five years, A Prairie Home 
Companion has become a true national treasure with international 
appeal.
  The origin of the name, A Prairie Home Companion, is the Prairie Home 
Cemetery in Moorhead, Minnesota, near Concordia College, all of which 
are located in my home district back in Northwestern Minnesota. Mr. 
Garrison Keillor, a fellow Minnesotan and the program's host, inventor, 
chief writer, and heart and soul, has stated, ``You can't name a show 
Prairie Home Cemetery, so I substituted Companion for Cemetery.'' His 
legions of fans are glad he did.
  Every week the two-hour live variety show is packed with musical 
guests, comedy sketches and Mr. Keillor's commentary about small-town 
life in his fictional hamlet of Lake Wobegone. Many people in this 
country and around the world identify Minnesota with the image of Lake 
Wobegone, a town ``where all the women are strong, the men are good-
looking, and all the children are above average.'' Though there are 
other ways to pass the time Saturday evenings, fans of A Prairie Home 
Companion often plan their weekends around the show. Nutritionist 
Leslie Cordella-Simon has said, ``It's a little respite at the end of 
the week.'' Here in Washington, Ruth Harkin, the wife of Iowa Senator 
Tom Harkin, has commented that they rarely miss the program. She echoes 
the sentiments of many when she says, ``Lake Wobegone is the town we 
both grew up in.'' NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw denies the rumor that he 
will not admit dinner guests to his house during the Lake Wobegone 
segment of the show. ``I just don't pay much attention to them,'' he 
explains.
  The first road trip of A Prairie Home Companion was to Fargo, North 
Dakota, and to Moorhead, Minnesota, in October 1974. Now, they 
routinely travel farther down the road to places like Edinborough, 
Scotland, and Dublin, Ireland. In the last twenty-five years, the 
show's truck has traveled over 230,000 miles, and personnel have flown 
or driven over 385,000 miles. The traveling shows are so popular that a 
sponsoring station manager in Peoria, Illinois, made the following 
remark after A Prairie Home Companion visited his town: ``I could've 
run for mayor and gotten elected.'' In 1985, Time magazine discovered A 
Prairie Home Companion and put Mr. Keillor on its cover. Over a span of 
twenty-five years there have been 941 live performances and 864 live 
broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion. From February to June in 1987, 
A Prairie Home Companion made the jump to television, running in an un-
edited time-delayed version on the Disney Channel. Since October 5, 
1996, the show's audio has been delivered live over the Internet to 
anyone with a computer and a modem.
  A Prairie Home Companion and Mr. Keillor have already received a 
silo-full of well-deserved national recognition, including a Grammy 
Award, two ACE Awards for cable television, and a George Foster Peabody 
Award. In 1994, Mr. Keillor was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame at 
Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communication. In 1999, he was awarded 
the National Humanities Medal by President Clinton at the White House. 
Mr. William R. Ferris, Chairman of the National Endowment for the 
Humanities, said, ``The 1999 National Humanities Medalists are 
distinguished individuals who have set the highest standards for 
American cultural achievement.''
  Mr. Keillor likes to describe Lake Wobegone as a place ``that time 
forgot and the decades cannot improve.'' The same could be said about 
his radio show. Mr. Speaker, I congratulate Minnesota Public Radio, the 
staff of A Prairie Home Companion, and Garrison Keillor on the occasion 
of the notable achievement of twenty-five years of proud representation 
of the art, culture and people of Minnesota.

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