Profile America -- Friday , August 7th . Today is the birthday of one of the nation 's premier humorists and storytellers , Garrison Keillor ( " It 's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegone , my home town out on the edge of the prairie " ) , his unmistakable voice , while never identified , is the backbone of the popular weekly radio show , A Prairie Home Companion . The show is a unique mix of music , skits , stories , fictitious commercials and satire . It first went on the air in 1974 and is carried nationally on public radio stations , usually originating from a different town each week before a live audience . Across the U.S. , there are nearly 14,000 radio stations , one-out-of-five is noncommercial . You can find these and more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov.