Full disclosure: I've written a couple of episodes for 11 Central Ave. During its whirlwind two-year run I've raved about the show on PRX. When I recently moved to the Chicago area, I was overjoyed to hear it on my local public radio station, WBEZ, though, alas, I heard it air only once as a drop-in during Friday's Morning Edition. The following Friday -- same time, same station -- I wondered why 11 CA was conspicuously absent. I also wondered why, month after month, fewer and fewer NPR affiliate stations were licensing the program's weekly episodes.

Since then I've learned that 11 CA has lost funding. Despite five of its episodes being broadcast every day this week on Day to Day, it looks as though the series will fold and be a thing of the past. For me it will take its place, short as it is, alongside one of those defunct classics like "You Are There" or "Burns and Allen" that flourished during the so-called Golden Age of Radio.

Maybe the drop-in under review here isn't one of the show's vintage productions. If certain weeks' episodes weren't as good as other weeks', the overall excellence of the series was responsible for producer Susan Shepherd's winning an Individual Achievement National Gracie Allen Award for 11 CA in June 2007.

So what went wrong? Given Barack Obama's success last week, you would think listeners, especially young listeners, would go all out for a program that lists its tones as "Amusing, Edgy, Experimental." Nope, on Day to Day's blog this week, critics of 11 CA have called it "glib and insensitive," "tired and predictable," and "dumb and annoying." Granted, these critics are in the distinct minority compared to bloggers who've written to say they've appreciated, even loved 11 CA. As it may have turned out, a few relentless rotten apple heads may have persuaded PDs to drop a show whose irony and satire as a "radio comic strip" test the intelligence of Joe and Josephine six-pack types who want little more than politically correct say-what-you-mean-and-mean-what-you-say mediocrity.

I'm loathe to end on a negative note, Here's hoping a progressive station like WBAI or WFMT finds funds in these recessed times to license a show that fights depression and is the best three-minute fix I've found on the FM dial.