It isn't that a radio comedy couldn't work as a change of pace on NPR's Morning Edition, segments from Harry Shearer's Le Show is featured as part of the news fairly often and work well. But this week's radio serial I'd Rather Eat Pants doesn't work because it is rancid - the writing is so broad, the characterization so stereotyped that it sounds like self-parody. Something a tad more sophisticated and topical than Fibber McGee and Molly next time perhaps?

I have been forced to commercial radio in the car after dropping my son off at school for the last week - it appears I am not the only one:

What the folks at National Public Radio hoped would be a whimsical break from the routine of Morning Edition has been met with a chorus of boos from some rattled listeners.

I'd Rather Eat Pants, a comedy by Peter Ackerman, stars Ed Asner and Anne Meara as an elderly New York couple who travel to Los Angeles on a motorcycle in search of fame, fortune and a reunion with their estranged daughter.

The five-part radio play has been airing in daily eight-minute segments this week.

''If I were interested in 'entertainment' in the morning, I would turn on TV and watch the latest nonsense on the Today show,'' one listener from Washington, D.C., fumed in an e-mail. ''Please return the 'news' to NPR News.''

And a listener from Mechanicsburg, Ohio, wrote: ''I've just turned off my radio because your 'radio drama' is now airing, and I find it excruciating to listen to. Please stick to what you do best — reporting on news and current events.'' [USA Today]