Whad'Ya Know?

Is a program produced by Wisconsin public radio, for Public Radio International (PRI). The program, started in 1985, is a comedy/quiz show. Hosted by Michael Feldman, the show travels to one of it's affiliates usually at least once a month, and is broadcast from Madison, WI the rest of the time.

Whad'Ya Know? follows the same basic format most of the time. It starts out with a joke, usually bad, and Feldman asks the audience, "Whad'Ya Know?". The audience responds, "Not much. You?" The theme plays and Feldman launches into his monologue. (Feldman, in his humor, reminds me of Bob Newhart a lot.) He then usually goes out into the audience and queries them. I should point out that most of the humor, possibly because of the show's setting, is mid-western in flavor (earnest, with no bad words) and can be wickedly funny.

Towards the end of the first and second hours (the show is two hours), Michael takes one audience member and one caller and plays the "Not Much Quiz", which they claim on their website, "Why is this not trivia? Because it's bigger than trivia; it's life. So let's see how well you've been living." The questions usually are along the lines of:

What sport has hoglines, hacks and rocks? Answer: Curling.

The show then ends with the town of the week, where they call up someone randomly in a small town and discuss where they live.

Later: I went to the show recently read my experience here.

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Some info via notmuch.com

A rather funny and quite frankly wierd game show that comes on Saturdays right after Car Talk on National Public Radio. It is hosted by Michael Feldman. The prizes are usually quite useless or trivial, such as a gift certificate to some diner on a roadside in Bagboro, Montana, or a particularly large package of Boca burgers.

The History of the show is such: Michael Feldman was born the son of David and Geraldine Feldman in Milwaukee, WI, USA. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1970 with a degree in English. He went on to become a schoolteacher in Madison, WI but in 1978 ended up doing some fill-in work on a local radio station called WORT. Within a year he had a morning show called The Breakfast Special broadcast from a greasy spoon called Dolly's Fine Diner. He eventually quit his teaching job, then quit radio to become a cab driver.

Not too pleased with this as a career he went back into radio at Wisconson Public Radio and had a small show called High Noon. This was eventually canned, but through the radio business later on he made friends with John Thulin and Lyle Anderson. There was a stint in 1984 with Chicago's WGN but was fired right around Christmas.

Upon returning to Madison from Wisconson, he met with Jack Mitchell (his old boss from Wisconsin Public Radio) once more at the Time Museum in Rockford, WI.

"Let's give it a try." Jack said.

"Whad?" replied Feldman.

The idea was for a very strange game show that eventually came to be called "Whad'ya Know?"