"Prairie Home Companion" founder Garrison Keillor fired from MPR over “inappropriate behavior"

Minnesota Public Radio has fired Garrison Keillor, known for creating and hosting “A Prairie Home Companion,” over “inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him.”

Keillor first confirmed his firing in an email to The Associated Press and said his relationship with MPR was terminated over “a story that I think is more interesting and more complicated than the version MPR heard.” Keillor told the Star Tribune that he put his hand “on a woman’s bare back. I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized.”

MPR later released a statement confirming Keillor’s time with the organization had come to an end, but didn’t respond to VICE News’ request to elaborate on the allegations against Keillor. MPR will terminate “its contracts with Garrison Keillor and his private media companies after recently learning of allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him.” An investigation is ongoing.

MPR will stop airing reruns of Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” episodes, and the current airing of the show, with host Chris Thile, will be renamed, MPR told The New York Times. Keillor retired from the show in 2016, but he stayed on at MPR as a producer for “The Writer’s Almanac.” Keillor founded “A Prairie Home Companion” in 1974 and it’s been a popular radio broadcast program for decades. Set in the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, the show includes a running string of sketches and characters. The show draws about 2.6 million listeners each week, according to MPR.

On Tuesday — just hours before Keillor was fired by MPR — he penned an op-ed for the Washington Post that defended Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota who has been accused of groping and sexually inappropriate behavior. The piece was titled “Al Franken should resign? That’s absurd.”

“Eleven years later, a talk show host in LA, she goes public, and there is talk of resignation,” Keillor wrote. “This is pure absurdity, and the atrocity it leads to is a code of public deadliness. No kidding.”