This American Life won't be on Public Radio International anymore, but Ira Glass' popular anthology program will be ... somewhere. Eventually.
After a 17-year-run that redefined Saturday afternoon for millions of listeners, the distribution agreement will terminate this summer, PRI announced Thursday.
“During our most recent negotiation, it became clear that our organizations’ expectations regarding our futures were different,” PRI executive Julia Yager said in a statement to Variety.
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PRI didn't say where This American Life — still one of the most downloaded podcasts in the U.S. — would be going. Nor did the show, which made very clear on Twitter that it would stay on the air.
Would that be terrestrial radio, or would they give satellite a serious look (see what we did there)?
Dear @Variety and everyone else: We are not going off the radio, just switching distributors. But thanks for the concern!
— This American Life (@ThisAmerLife) March 20, 2014
 
Glass's program still has an audience of 2.2 million listeners every week on 587 public stations, and has no plans to stop production while waiting to see where it will be distributed next. PRI's rivals, NPR and American Public Media, could swoop in, and public stations can still make their own deals to broadcast Life — it just won't be syndicated on Minneapolis-based PRI as of July 1.