Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

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Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!


Genre Game show
Running time ca. 50 min.
Country Flag of United States United States
Language(s) English
Home station WBEZ
Syndicates NPR, WBEZ
Host(s) Peter Sagal
Carl Kasell
Creator(s)  
Producer(s) Rod Abid
Mike Danforth
Executive producer(s) Doug Berman
Recording studio Chicago, Illinois
Air dates 1998 – present
Audio format Stereophonic
Website waitwait.npr.org
Podcast feed Podcast

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! is an hour-long weekly radio news quiz game show produced and distributed by National Public Radio in the United States and available worldwide on the Internet. Chicago Public Radio receives a co-production credit as they provide a support structure for the Chicago-based NPR staff. Broadcast on weekends, the show is hosted by Peter Sagal, with scorekeeper Carl Kasell and a panel of three drawn mostly from Roy Blount, Jr., Tom Bodett, Amy Dickinson, Sue Ellicott, Adam Felber, Aamer Haleem, Kyrie O'Connor, P.J. O'Rourke, Paula Poundstone, Paul Provenza, Charlie Pierce, Roxanne Roberts, Mo Rocca, and Richard Roeper. The program debuted in January 1998 with host Dan Coffey of Ask Dr. Science, but was later revamped.

In addition to the panelists, Wait Wait... listeners participate by telephoning or sending e-mails to nominate themselves as contestants. The producers select several listeners for each show, and call them to play games on the air on a pre-taped basis with questions based on the week's news. The prize for winning any game is to have Carl Kasell record a greeting on the contestant's home answering machine. These games include:

Who's Carl This Time?
The contestant must identify the speaker or explain the context of three quotations read by Morning Edition news-reader Carl Kasell. Two correct answers constitute a win. In a variation of this game, Carl Kasell's Countdown, three popular songs are played and the contestant must identify the related news story.
Bluff the Listener
The contestant hears three odd news stories read by the panelists. Two of the stories are invented by two panelists, with the actual story being read by the remaining panelist. The listener must determine which one is true and not a product of the panelists' imaginations.
Listener Limerick Challenge
The contestant must identify the last word or phrase in three news-related limericks read by Carl Kasell. Two correct answers constitute a win.
Not My Job
A specially invited guest takes a three-question multiple-choice quiz on a topic completely unrelated to the celebrity's field, with a unique appropriate category name used each week. Originally, the guests on these segments were NPR personalities and reporters, but the pool of guests later expanded to include mostly celebrity guests, ranging from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who was asked questions on the history of Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine, to author Salman Rushdie who was asked about the history of PEZ. Two correct answers constitute a win and the prize goes to a randomly selected listener who contacted the show but was not chosen as a contestant. At least one exception to this rule has been recorded when, in June 2005, Sagal made an "executive ruling" in favor of then-major Robert Bateman, who was participating as the celebrity from his station in Baghdad, Iraq. Although no longer used, the scoring system for Not My Job used names of NPR personalities corresponding to the numeric scores:
NPR Geek Game
Snippets are played from lighter news stories on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. The contestant must identify from which stories those snippets were pulled, potentially outing themselves as an "NPR Geek" in the process. In recent years, this segment has all but disappeared.
Wait Wait... Television
Debuting on October 1, 2006, Carl Kasell reads commercials for fictional television shows based on recent news events. The contestant must guess the person around whom the "commercial" is based to score a point. As with the other games, two correct answers out of three possible yields the prize.
The Carlslist Internet Destination
Debuting on October 22, 2006, Carl Kassel reads postings from the fictional Internet site Carlslist based on recent news events. The website is a parody of the website Craigslist. The contestant must guess the person around whom the "posting" is based to score points.

In between games, Peter Sagal asks the panelists questions from the week's news and the panelists earn points by giving correct answers. A panelist also earns a point if a contestant chooses his/her story in the Bluff the Listener game, whether that story was true or made-up. At the end of the show, the panelists take a Lightning Fill-In-The-Blank quiz. Each panelist is given a series of eight fill-in-the-blank questions about news stories, and must answer as many as he or she can (the stories become more frivolous and humorous as the quiz progresses) and are scored 2 points for each correct answer. After the quiz all the points are totaled and the panelist with the highest score is declared the week's champion. Panelists do not receive prizes for winning.

The show typically closes with the Panelists' Predictions, during which each panelist provides a headline that is designed more to make the listener laugh than to actually predict a real news story. That segment usually ends with Carl Kasell stating that if any of those come true, "... we'll ask you about it on Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!"

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! is produced by Chicago Public Radio, and was recorded in one of its studios until May 2005, when the show switched formats to being recorded in front of an audience at Chicago's Chase Auditorium in the Chase Tower on Thursday nights. A few times a year the show travels to various cities in the United States and produces a road show in front of a live audience.

[edit] "Not My Job" guests

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness. Revisions and sourced additions are welcome.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Rat Boy is a reference to Morning Edition anchor Steve Inskeep, who earlier in his career reported on a story about rats.

[edit] External links

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