Faculty member helps create digital archive of 'Le Show' radio program

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Rosa Eberly was a graduate student at the University of Chicago when she first stumbled across an episode of “Le Show,” the weekly public radio news commentary and sketch program created and hosted by acclaimed actor, writer and director Harry Shearer.

Though immediately taken with Shearer’s pointed satire, she didn’t become a devoted fan until years later, when Penn State’s NPR affiliate WPSU started carrying the program on its WPSU2 digital stream.

“That’s when it became religion to me — it was unlike anything else on the radio,” said Eberly, associate professor of rhetoric in the College of the Liberal Arts’ Department of Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS).

She’s since developed a working relationship with Shearer and incorporated “Le Show” into her scholarship. And for the past several years, she’s worked with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), a collaboration between the Library of Congress and Boston public media producer GBH, to compile the “Le Show” Collection, a digital archive consisting of more than 2,000 hours of broadcasts stretching back to the program’s beginnings. The archive officially launched Dec. 7, during the week of the 40th anniversary of “Le Show’s” Dec. 4, 1983, debut.

Eberly also curated the companion exhibit, "Harry Shearer’s ‘Le Show’: Sonic Portal to News, Satire, Memory, History,” which provides an overview of the series and showcases what Eberly calls Shearer's “sonic satire and information sharing.” Shearer contributed four short pieces about “Le Show’s” evolution over the years. It’s one of just 21 featured exhibits on the AAPB site.

“I wanted to write about ‘Le Show’ for a long time, but how could I do that without a stable archive? Now there is one — not just for me, but for the general public,” Eberly said. “‘Le Show’ is a cornucopia of vital information, sonic satire, and rhetorical richness well worth listening to again and again. If journalism is the first rough draft of history, ‘Le Show’ is a second, revised through a lens of satire, each week managing not only to teach but somehow to delight — though the delight is sometimes excruciating.”

“Rosa was remarkably determined and devoted to the idea of collecting and making available ‘Le Show’ episodes to the public — far more determined and devoted to that cause than I was,” Shearer said. “This is all due to her tireless efforts to spread the words.

“Nothing is more evanescent than doing a radio show. So, it’s deliciously ironic to have them collected like this, for leisurely review,” he added. “I have always loved radio, and ‘Le Show’ has always been a way of being in contact with an audience without having to cater to heavily inebriated people.”

Alan Gevinson, the Library of Congress’ project director for AAPB, said it was an honor to archive “such a vital collection.”

“’Le Show’s’ comedy has roots in traditions that came to the fore in the 1950s, when a young generation of satirists commented regularly on current events in nightclubs, college campuses, and political cartoons, often revealing hidden logics, absurdities, and hypocrisies through artistic imitations,” Gevinson said. “At the dawn of the 21st century, satirical news-oriented television shows provided critical alternatives to more traditional presentations of the news. Bridging both eras, ‘Le Show,’ now fully digitized, will be a treasure trove for cultural historians, media scholars and the public to explore our recent collective past through satirical creations.”

Best known for his many character voices on “The Simpsons” (Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers and Ned Flanders among them), as well as his work on “Saturday Night Live” and in the classic film mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap,” Shearer launched the radio program “The Voice of America” on Santa Monica radio station KCRW on Dec. 4, 1983. From there, it was renamed “The Hour of Power” before becoming “Le Show” in 1985.

Four decades later, Shearer continues to produce a weekly hour of biting satire that points its barbs at contemporary politics, sports and pop culture through deftly written comedy sketches, interviews and song parodies that fully utilize his comedic gifts.

Much of Eberly’s fascination with “Le Show” has to do with her work as a rhetoric professor. In her opinion, the show’s point of view is a model of rhetorical precision, she said.

“The quality of the information presented on the show is very high. I’m a former journalist, so I take the credibility of my information seriously,” said Eberly, who worked as a news editor before going into academia. “The character of the program and the character of the info and the sonic quality, and Harry’s sense of humor, are just so appealing to me. I’m incredibly captivated by it. And it’s just a rhetorical playground — it’s great for teaching students about rhetorical concepts and public issues.”

Eberly first reached out to Shearer in 2011, when she sought his permission to screen “The Big Uneasy,” his documentary about his adopted city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Not only did he give his consent, but he also agreed to appear at the screening via Skype.

From there, the two took up an email correspondence before eventually meeting in person.

“I’ve been able to observe Harry in the studio in London, New York, New Orleans and Santa Monica," Eberly said. "It’s always an immense privilege getting to spend time with him – he’s always been very gracious. Getting to know Harry has been a great treat.”

Eberly said the initial idea for the archive came around 2014, when she was having trouble finding archival clips on “Le Show’s” website.

“What I was getting just wasn’t granular enough for what I was looking for,” she said. “When you’re trying to offer something to students in class, one of things with audio is that it needs to be experienced in real time. And with radio, pre-digital, you would hear something and then it would be gone forever. But even more than my frustration with the website was just my wanting the show to be preserved.”

During a visit with Shearer in London that year, she inquired about the possibility of an archive. He responded, “Well, I guess it has to go somewhere.”

The two then set about finding an organization with the means to digitize and preserve thousands of hours of radio housed on beat-up cassettes and CDs stored in the basement of Shearer’s company, Century of Progress Productions. 

Gevinson, himself a longtime fan of “Le Show,” reached out to Shearer in 2018, and began collaborating with Eberly in 2019. In 2021, work officially commenced on the digitization project.

Meanwhile, Eberly’s “Le Show” work has branched out in other directions. This past summer, she and the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences hosted a three-day symposium devoted to the show. And she’s currently at work on “Harry Shearer’s Character Machine,” a monograph-length examination of “Le Show” that is being supported in part by a fellowship from the College of the Liberal Arts’ Center for Humanities and Information.

“I really appreciate the collaborative support this project has gotten. This was an ideal outcome,” Eberly said. “I’m happy this plane is finally landing. Preserving this archive is a matter of history.”