Car Talk Getting Paid on NPR
Glenn M.: Twenty years on NPR, and how many listeners do you have?
Ray: Well, probably a fewer now, after that physics mess-up, but somewhere around 4½, 5 million.
Glenn M.: Five million people each week!
Tom: You wouldn't think there were that many stupid people!
Ray: The first few years that we were on we didn't get paid. That was the secret to our success. If they aren't paying you, there's no incentive to get rid of you, really. Then we were on long enough so that we were like the senior members at WBUR ...
Tom: ... and we still weren't gettin' paid!
Ray: We still weren't getting paid, but as new people joined the station, they'd say, "We can't get rid of Tom and Ray. They've been here longer than the furniture."
Tom: About 15 years ago I moved from one house to another. In moving, I found all kinds of stuff. I found a cigar box with a check from WBUR.
Ray: A paycheck?
Tom: It was a paycheck for the radio show. You know how much it was worth? Ten bucks. They were paying us ten dollars ...
Ray: I was only getting five!
Tom: Oops!
Ray: You were getting ten bucks a week?
Tom: Ten dollars a week. We're making 50 dollars a week now.
Ray: So we did manage to survive. Nobody really knew what to do with us. People would come and go, and we'd survive one station manager after another -
Glenn M.: By the way, the current station manager, Cory Lewis, went to UMass.
Ray: You UMass guys are everywhere!