CHICAGO - Carl Kasell, sober-voiced radio newsman-turned-comic foil, will retire from his role as official judge and scorekeeper of the hit NPR comedy-quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,” Kasell and NPR announced.
Kasell, a former NPR “Morning Edition” newsreader who turns 80 in April, told The Two-Way Tuesday, NPR’s in-house blog, that the Chicago-based show made him “the luckiest man around to be able to have worked at a job I love for so many years.”
Kasell will continue to make occasional appearances as the show’s Scorekeeper Emeritus. He was not doing further interviews, an NPR spokesman said.
The retirement as regular weekly show personality will come “this spring” after proper farewell shows, in Chicago or Kasell’s home of Washington, D.C., or both, said show host Peter Sagal.
“We want him to be celebrated every place we go for the next few months,” Sagal said. “Carl is the popular person on our show. He is the heart and star of it. He is probably the single most beloved person on NPR. He was everybody’s favorite grandfather, uncle, or, going back some, brother by another name.”
The retirement will give Sagal and his producers a chance to re-examine the role of announcer and scorekeeper, in part “because it would be stupid to try to replace Carl,” Sagal said. “There’s been this huge part of the show built on the immense gravitas of this guy, and we’ve gotten huge mileage out of making this guy do funny things.”
For three decades, ending in 2009, he was the news anchor on NPR’s signature “Morning Edition” news program, but he told the radio service’s blog that “my favorite time at NPR has been ‘Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!’”
The show’s makers will think about how best to fill Kasell’s on-air job as various people fill in after Kasell’s retirement, said Sagal.
Asked if another straight-laced newsman, veteran Chicago TV anchor Bill Kurtis, might take the role, Sagal suggested the show could be looking for generational and stylistic change, as well.
“Bill Kurtis is great, and he’s another retired gentleman in his 70s,” Sagal said. “As you know Bill Kurtis has filled in for us very well. I would not be surprised if he came back and helped us out in the short term.”
