I had what the guys would call the dubious distinction of putting Tom on NPR's air. For 10 years they'd had a weekly program on WBUR in Boston. In 1987, when we were launching Weekend Edition Sunday, we asked stations for tapes of local programs that might work nationally. WBUR sent cassettes of Tom and Ray, and their five-minute spots became the hit of Sunday mornings.
As host, I got in on their act — chatting with them and their call-in listeners. At first, the format made them uneasy. They'd been doing just fine for 10 years; who needed some New Yorker horning in?
