If you listened to WGN Radio yesterday, you heard a day long celebration of the radio station's 100th birthday. Congrats WGN!
I've appeared as a guest on WGN radio for more than 20 years now on dozens of shows, and met many impressive pros. But I've also been interviewing WGN personalities for more than 30 years as a media writer, and in that time I've written about more than 50 of them.
Today, as the station starts it's second century, I wanted to post a few highlights from some of my favorites...
ROY LEONARD
I interviewed Roy in 2010, and we spoke at length about his incredible WGN career (1967-1998). I had never heard the story of how he came to Chicago...
In 1967 my station in Boston went rock and roll. They were a WGN-type station before that, #3 in the market, but they wanted to be #1. And that’s what they became. They were #1 in seven months. They asked me to stay on, but I didn’t want to be a rock and roll disc jockey. I liked the music, but I didn’t want to play it on the radio. One of my best friends was Curt Gowdy, he was a neighbor, and I asked him if he knew anyone that would hire me. He called his buddy in New York, and it turned out that he repped WGN.
At the time, WGN had marvelous ratings in the afternoon because of Cubs baseball, but after the season ended, they got no numbers. So, I bought three Chicago newspapers, The Trib, Sun-Times, and The American, went through them, and made a tape of what I thought my show would sound like in Chicago. They liked the tape, and Wally was taking some time off, so they paid me to fill in for him, and that Friday after filling in for a week, they asked me to work for them in the afternoon slot, 1 to 4 PM. I had been getting up at 3 in the morning, so I said, that’s great! But, my family was in Boston, and I have six kids, and I couldn’t just pack up and leave. So they agreed to fly me home to Boston when the Cubs were in town that summer of 1967. That made the move a little easier. We were able to sell our house and move out here before school in the fall.
As for my style of radio, you’re right, nobody is really doing that kind of show right now, but then again they weren’t doing it before I got here either. I listened to Chicago radio as much as I could (Howard Miller, etc.) when I first came to town. I tried to find what nobody was doing, and make that my own. Nobody was talking about theatre or film at the time, and I enjoyed both immensely, so when I first started, that’s what I talked about.
I remember Aaron Gold was representing the Ivanhoe, and he heard me talking about theater, so he asked me to come out and see their latest show. And that’s when I started getting these great guests.
Marcel Marceau (photo) was one of my first guests—and we really hit it off. Ironically, he wouldn’t shut up (laughs). We even had him out to the house. That’s one thing I never really talked about on the air—that I spent a lot of time with some of these people off the air—many of them came out to the house. I remember another time we had Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits over. He ended up in the bedroom upstairs playing guitar with my boys.
ORION SAMUELSON
On the eve of his 50th anniversary with WGN Radio, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Orion Samuelson. I asked him to tell me about the stories he covered that were most memorable to him...
Well, I’ve also done a television show for many years too, and with my crew we’ve gone to forty three countries. That’s one thing.
I’ve been asked about this a lot in the last few weeks, and I suppose the one that comes to mind is the day that Senator Kennedy came to Green Bay in May of 1960. He held a press conference in the Northland Hotel, and I asked him several questions about farm and dairy issues. After the press conference was over, a gentleman in a suit came over to me and said, “Senator Kennedy would like to speak to you privately.” He wanted to learn more about farm issues. So we sat in the bar of the Northland Hotel and discussed farm issues for about twenty minutes.
Then, on November 22, 1963, I happened to be on the air when the news came over the wire. I was in the middle of a weather forecast, and I remember it was a warm and rainy day in Chicago, when the yellow teletype was handed to me. I thought it was a joke at first, because of course, that’s the sort of gag we liked to pull on each other, but when I saw the faces in the control room I knew it was for real.
You have to remember, this was before we had the internet, and before we had computers—we were totally reliant upon UPI and AP to give us the news. That was all we had. At 12:33, all I had was this one or two sentence bulletin stating that the President had been shot. I didn’t know what to do. The program director was at lunch, so we couldn’t ask him. The record turner was at lunch, so we couldn’t go to music. So I just went back to reading my forecast, then read the bulletin again, then went back to the forecast. Finally, someone found the record turner, and we went back to music. Walter Cronkite announced that Kennedy was dead around 1:00. I’ll certainly never forget that day.
On the other end of the spectrum, another highlight for me was being the announcer on the WGN Barn Dance. I grew up listening to WLS, the Prairie Farmer Station, and the Barn Dance was a regular Saturday night feature, and had been since the 1920s. They held it at the old 8th Street Theatre. Well, on April 30, 1960, WLS signed off as a farm station, and the next day they became a rock and roll station. This infuriated every single farmer in the Midwest. I said to Ward Quaal, that it would be a shame to let the Barn Dance die, and he agreed. We brought it to WGN, and from 1960-1969, I got to meet some of the greats of the business, including Johnny Cash, and boy you name it, they were all on the show.
I still talk to 4-H clubs with some regularity, and I always tell young people, if you don’t remember anything else I’ve said, remember this: You can’t dream big enough. As a kid sitting on a three-legged milking stool in Wisconsin, I never would have believed the life I had in front of me. Thanks to the power and influence of WGN, I’ve met seven presidents. I even went to a dinner at the White House once when Richard Nixon was president. I never would have believed that could happen to me.
EDDIE SCHWARTZ
Eddie was the overnight man at WGN Radio for many years and became a legend in this town. I interviewed him in 2007, shortly before his death. I asked him how it was he get on WGN Radio in the first place, and was pleasantly surprised by his answer...
During a very long and successful run at WIND 560 Bob Collins from WGN invited me out to dinner. He shared his hopes for the future. The retirement of Wally Phillips was on the horizon and Bob knew the WGN morning show was going to be his biggest challenge. Replacing an icon like Wally was no small assignment.
Uncle Bobby knew how to read a rating book and he realized that WIND was #1 in both male and female demos and had been so for years. He wasn't looking forward to hitting the air every morning with a competeing station having a larger audience. He knew it would take him longer to get each morning off the ground with a 3 or 4 share when WIND had 12's and 14's. So Bob proposed I join him at WGN and work overnight as his lead-in. I was a bit stunned, but it was something I had always hoped for and didn't know how to make happen. WGN was the home of Franklyn Macormick, Jay Andres, Mike Rapchak and the Meister Brau Showcase. My kind of act had never played there at night.
The opportunity Bob presented came at the perfect time. WIND had just welcomed a new G.M. He was a corporate guy from back east. The station was doing well with all time slots well established and this new dude comes in and tells us it's his station now and we all better get used to his ways. He also told us he was looking at the entire schedule with the possibility of juggling some of us around. I knew at that moment I wasn't going to put my future into the hands of a guy with his poor people skills. I had my agent make a deal and a few days after my WIND contract expired without a new deal ready it was the time to jump. I called a friend with a truck and one night after my show I just moved out and never said goodbye. It was a tough but correct decision.
WIND was scrambling to replace me and Larry King's program which had been on for a while at WCFL with no perceptible audience so WIND made him a pitch and his syndicated show moved into my old slot. King, when asked by Irv Kupcinet in the Sun-Times how he intended to procede said that "He wasn't concerned about me and my program. I spent most of my time interviewing the sewer commissioner."
The next day one of his minions called to "apologize" for the unkind remark and said that Kup misquoted King. He said Larry didn't really mean that. I knew from that point my mission was three-fold. 1. Build an audience 2. Support Bob Collins and 3. Kick King's ass bigger than he'd ever been kicked before. And that is just what I did. He was a total failure on WIND. He is the most ill-prepared interviewer I've ever seen or heard.
