You'll remember that Alex was on the air with Ben Finfer a few weeks ago when Finfer discovered live on the air that his job was being eliminated. I watched Quigley's facial expression during the segment. He was obviously incredibly uncomfortable, because he had already been told, but hadn't yet shared the information with his on-air partner. You can see the conflict in his face. As a management guy--but also a friend of Finfer's--he was in a terrible position.
I've met Alex a few times over the years. I've interviewed him for Chicago Radio Spotlight, and recently featured him in the Illinois Entertainer as part of the article about WPGU alums in Chicago. He's clearly a smart guy, and a good broadcaster, and I hope he has learned from this incredibly odd WGN experience. I suspect he may not truly gain perspective from it until he is removed from it for a while, because he has been in the middle of a firefight for a few years now.
He cut his management teeth at WGN working alongside Kevin Metheny, who was famously combative. I remember one conversation Alex and I had at the Billy Goat at a WPGU reunion party during that era. We were breezily discussing my radio blog, when he told me that he and Charlie Meyerson considered my interview style to be like Oprah--a sort of feel-good happy talk. They looked at each other after he said it, like "uh oh, we probably shouldn't have said that out loud." But it didn't bother me. They were right. I wasn't a conflict-seeking journalist when I wrote that. I was writing a blog to spotlight radio talent.
It's not like I hadn't scratched that conflict itch. My novel "$everance" is a scathing satire that could have been titled Chicago Radio Conflict. And the last five years of my radio career could have been called the same thing. But my conflict was never with the talent. My conflict was with the people who forgot that the whole point of the medium was to connect with the audience--not the advertisers, and certainly not the stockholders. I sat in meetings where promotions and remotes and partnerships were discussed, and when I asked aloud what was in it for the listeners, they looked at me like I was a moron. "Nobody cares about that, Rick. Why do you?"
To which I always replied: "Why don't you?"
I still occasionally speak out against that sort of attitude, but I also consciously accentuate the postive when I see it, and that more often than not comes from the talent. For instance, I'm going to feature Ray Stevens of US-99 in the January issue of the Illinois Entertainer. Some day I'll probably feature Alex again too.
I don't know him well, but I do wish him well.
