A captivating audience
Michael Feldman's ability to draw humor from his "Whad'Ya Know" audience is key to the radio show's success.

MADISON, WIS.-- With his eyeglasses and balding head, Michael Feldman figures he has the proverbial "face made for radio."

Sometimes, though, the host of the comedy-quiz show "Whad'Ya Know" has to remind his studio audience that listeners at home can't see his mug, or anything that's happening in front of the mikes.

"How many of you are here for the first time?" Feldman asked a crowd one recent Saturday before the show, which airs worldwide on public radio from a studio in Wisconsin's capital city. About half the audience of 300 raised their hands.

"What's wrong with that response? It's a radio show," Feldman said, then watched as some of the audience caught on and chuckled. "Radio's not advanced enough to where you can actually see the hands. So, like, for instance, if I say how many of you are here for the first time, you say . . . "

This time the audience responded appropriately, applauding and whistling.

"Whad'Ya Know" is broadcast weekly on 261 Public Radio International affiliates from Philadelphia to Prague. Feldman said the success of the show is due in part to the audience's willingness to contribute to the pandemonium.

"They're there mainly for my benefit, is the way I look at it," Feldman said. "I sort of prey on them. . . . They have funny things to say, and they can top me. Usually, I get one in there."

These are big days for Feldman. He broadcast his 500th "Whad'Ya Know" show Nov. 1. And the show was recently added to the Museum of Television and Radio in New York.

But with success has come competition -- National Public Radio has been developing its own answer to "Whad'Ya Know," set to premiere in January.

"Whad'Ya Know" producer Chris Bannon said the appeal of the show comes from Feldman's "spontaneity of what he does, his quickness, his ability to react with such good timing and say such funny things."

Feldman tries to draw humor out of average people. For instance, in a show last month, Feldman called a bar in Harshaw, Wis., to discuss a sport-lover's nightmare: the fact that deer-hunting season opened the same weekend as the big Cowboys-Packers football game. Feldman talked to bar patrons live on the air.

"Who's this?" asked Feldman.

"Butch!" came a voice over the loudspeaker.

"Hey, Butch, how's it going?"

"Oh, I got two or three of them already!"

"Two or three?" asked Feldman.

"Beers!"

What his show lacks in star power, it makes up in regional humor and charm.

"What we're doing is doing the show from the home office," said Feldman, referring to David Letterman's fictitious middle-America source of Top Ten lists. "We're in the Midwest. Madison is not a typical Midwestern town, but our audience is filled with people who come from those towns."

Tanya Randall-Tanner, a Middleton, Wis., native, made her third trip to see the show live recently. She had once been a contestant in one of Feldman's wacky quizzes.

"Michael's real quick, real fun," said Randall-Tanner, now of Shelton, Wash. "It's kind of a guess to see what kinds of things he's going to say."

Novelist Anne Lamott, author of "Crooked Little Heart," has been a guest on Feldman's show several times.

"For me, he's like a really wonderful dance partner, because he's so smart and sharp and quick," Lamott said. "He's always showcased me, he lets me be the star. He always plays the straight man."

Lamott takes exception to Feldman's bit about having a "face made for radio."

"He's not ugly at all. He's actually very nice looking. He has a very pleasing face," Lamott said.

Feldman started "Whad'Ya Know" on Wisconsin Public Radio in 1985. The show went nationwide on National Public Radio that year with about 20 stations. It moved to NPR's rival, American Public Radio (now Public Radio International) in 1989.

NPR tried to woo back Feldman in 1996, but PRI made him a better offer, Bannon said.

Now, NPR is set to move ahead without him. "Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!" a quiz show starring Dan Coffey to be broadcast from Chicago, will air Saturdays starting Jan. 3, said NPR spokesman Michael Abrahams.

"I feel a little anger, a little resentment," Feldman said.

He said he knew NPR was working on its own show, but until recently "I didn't know . . . it was going to be a quiz show with a wisecracking Jewish guy as host. There isn't room for two of us. There's entirely room for me."

There has also been some talk between Public Radio International and National Public Radio about a merger.

Feldman said he's concerned that "if one programming source controls all the programming out there, that will definitely have a chilling effect on the development of shows."

But despite the politics of public radio, every Saturday morning from chilly Madison, the focus is on laughs. "Whether it's successful or not, I would have done the same show," Feldman said. "Apparently, this was the right thing at the right time. It's really a fluke. I couldn't have done it anywhere else. No one would hire me."