Last live show?

shea48

When will Car Talk's last "live" show air?

GeorgeSanJose

The first national show apparently was broadcast on October 31, 1987. That might be a clue anyway.

http://www.amazon.com/Car-Talk-2012-Daily-Calendar/dp/0811879593

VDCdriver

This is by no means authoritative, but...the train may have already left the station.
On last week's program, someone phoned in about a problem that he had experienced with a rental 1999 Pontiac. Since not even Rent-a-Wreck keeps cars that long, I have to believe that this particular phone call was...I'll be diplomatic.."archived".

While there may in fact be more "new" shows in the pipeline, it appears that the boys have not stopped recycling old program segments during their run-up to the last show.

JoeMario

From today's Boston Globe:

In October, Tom and Ray will record their last completely new episode at WBUR, but the radio show on NPR will continue, and their weekly newspaper column will be published in the Boston Globe’s Automotive section every Saturday starting September 29.

Dodge Dakota DOA

Hmmmm. I very well might have to subscribe to the Saturday/Sunday Globe... I wonder if it can be sent to the DC area via snail mail? Does anyone know?

VDCdriver

"I wonder if it can be sent to the DC area via snail mail?"

Of course it can. All newspapers have a provision for mail subscriptions.
However, most newspapers also have e-subscriptions nowadays, and it is very likely that you could receive this publication electronically.

Zonk

Why is the date of the last show such a state secret? Trying to slip one by your devoted listeners? Come'on guys. Let us mourn, or celebrate, with dignity.

Les Moore

Was listening to the last 5 minutes of the show in the car this morning. The guys were talkng to the father of a listener who had confessed to running her dad's car without oil in it. Sounded like a fun story so I logged into the site to listen to the rest of the show (and the beginning of the story) and the segment was totally MISSING. It had been replaced by another confession story, and another call by Tom and Ray to a guy named David who didn't even answer the phone. So, not only are we getting re-runs, they are piecing them together willy-nilly.

CapriRacer

I noted with interest that Click and Clack referrenced Felix Baumgartner - so at least part of the show is pretty current.

GeorgeSanJose

@LesMoore ... here in the San Francisco area at least, the show broadcast Oct 21 matched the podcast call for call, and which also matched this website's description summary of the calls. The final call (the one broadcast and the one on the podcast) is where Tom and Ray call David, but he doesn't answer, and involved David's sister borrowing his car and it got accidentally damaged. Nothing on the show was about someone running her dad's car without oil.

I expect that you heard a different episode of the show in your local area. Perhaps a prior taped episode was broadcast for some reason. Or more likely, your local NPR station is having a contribution period, and the local stations often broadcast special Car Talk episodes for contribution weeks. Special Car Talk's are provided to the local NPR stations with extra segment breaks for time for the local station to remind folks to donate. these are completely different from the normally broadcast show most of us receive.

WesternRoadtripper

While we all know that some or all of the calls now are from the archives, I've noticed a few other show components which suggest that C&C must be continuing in some fashion. First of all, at the end of the show when they announce that listeners can download a podcast, they give the number of the podcast, which yesterday was identified as #1243. Maybe they spent a couple hours recording three years worth of podcast numbers to splice in?

Also, in the past month or so I don't recall hearing a rerun show opener segment - correct me if I'm wrong. This week for example, Tommy's first comment about problems with their own cars seemed fresh. Then again, immediately following that - comments about sports - sounded familar to me.

And this week's puzzler was unfamiliar to me although the previous one about the sign they had painted on their garage was almost certainly a rerun - I know I remember a puzzler about that sign, but don't remember it completely. But are the the puzzler winners also repeated from the the first time that puzzler ran, or are they announcing a new winner second time around?

Another part that seems like it's freshly recorded is the listing of underwriters at the beginning. There are probably other examples. So I'm thinking that they may be planning to come in to the studio now and then and record some of that stuff to be used for weeks into the future.