Patrick Kane

This story is not good. From what I know of Kane, and his past transgressions, this is a giant beeping uh oh.

His home has been searched by police in a rape investigation.

The NHL has confirmed they are following this case, and the Chicago Blackhawks released a statement saying, "We are aware of the matter and are in the process of gathering information. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this time."

The Only Moment People Will Remember From Debate

It really feels like a reality show, doesn't it?

Jon Stewart's Parting Words

First all of his correspondents returned...and I do mean all of them including Stephen Colbert, Steve Carrell, Rob Riggle, John Oliver, Rob Cordrry, Samantha Bee, Michael Che, and Ed Helms. Then, Jon introduced everyone that works on his show. And finally, Jon said his official farewell with advice for how to replace him...(NSFW)



After that, a final performance from Bruce Springsteen.

And I was very sad after it was over. Are we really going to have a presidential campaign without him?

A Vine To Remember, a Vine to Forget

This Vine is something I can't get out of my mind...

Trump Grades Himself

Guess what grade he gave to himself for his debate performance last night. Are you sitting down? This is going to shock you, but he gave himself an A.

Details here.

The Official GOP Debate Drinking Game Rules

Rolling Stone is having some fun with the spectacle that is tonight's GOP Debate. I'd play along, but there are no winners in drinking games.

Drink THE FIRST TIME:

1. Donald Trump mentions his wealth, or how smart he is.

2. A candidate mentions Benghazi

3. A candidate says, "This president..."

4. A candidate whines about not getting called on enough.

5. Someone promises to "take America back."

6. Trump interrupts someone by saying, "Excuse me, let me answer that…"

7. Anyone mentions Hitler, Nazis or Neville Chamberlain. Includes related imagery, e.g. "ovens."

8. The crowd cheers a racist/bigoted statement by a candidate.

9. A candidate mentions his poor/hardscrabble upbringing, or a parent who "worked every day of his life."

10. A candidate talks about "stopping Hillary Clinton."

11. Anyone warns the U.S. is becoming Greece.

12. Trump refers to himself in the third person.

13. Anyone invokes St. Ronald Reagan.

Drink EVERY time a candidate:

14. Claims a positive relationship with a minority. Also known as the, "Some of my best friends are…" rule.

15. Tries to speak Spanish

16. Tries to warm up to the Ohio crowd with an awkward LeBron shout-out.

Drink EVERY TIME you hear the word(s):

17. "I'm not a scientist."

18. "You can keep your doctor."

19. "ACORN."

20. "The war on Christians."

21. "Thug."

22. "Right here in Ohio."

23. "Culture of dependency."

TAKE A SHOT OF JAGER AT ANY MENTION OF:

24. "Kenya."

25. "All Lives Matter."

This Year's Radio Hall of Fame Ballot

The list of people nominated was released yesterday, and once again John Records Landecker is not on the list. There are a few with Chicago connections however, including Eric Ferguson and Kathy Hart, and Tom Kent.

Robert Feder has the full list.

RIP Jim Lyman

I never met Jim in person, but we did communicate frequently via e-mail while he produced Mancow's show and the experimental morning show that followed it. Only 42 years old when he died. Way too young. From today's RAMP Newsletter...


Funeral services will be held tomorrow for Chicago radio vet Jim Lynam, who died early Tuesday morning. According to Chicagoland Radio And Media, Lynam was stricken with a sudden aortic dissection and underwent emergency heart surgery on Monday night, but did not survive the procedure. Lynam, who turned 42 last month, had been doing afternoons on Suburban Chicago Classic Hits WFXF (103.9 The Fox), but he's probably best known for his 11-year run on WKQX (Q101), where he was a contributor to (and later, Executive Producer of) Mancow's Morning Madhouse. After Mancow's departure, Lynam remained with the station until 2009. Lynam joined WFXF in December of 2014, reuniting him with his former Q101 colleague, Fox morning personality Brian Sherman. In a Facebook post, Sherman said, "Jim and I have worked off and on together over the last 10 years. Those who knew him knew that he could be loud and to the point. But mostly, the people that knew him will always remember he could be compassionate and larger than life. We may have lost him this morning due to complications of emergency heart surgery, however his heart is what made him the most memorable. It is what I will remember the most." Visitation will take place today from 2-9pm at Smith-Corcoran Funeral Home, 185 E. Northwest Highway in Palatine, IL. Funeral services will be held tomorrow, August 7 at 11am at St. Anne Church, 120 Ela Street in Barrington, IL. Lynam leaves behind a wife and two young sons.

After Tonight's Final Daily Show...

...the Daily Show set will be dismantled and given to the Newseum in Washington. There it will remain on display. Seems like a fitting tribute to me.

E Author Solutions

What have we been up to this summer? We're launching a brand new service affiliated with Eckhartz Press called E Author Solutions. It's for authors who need help self-publishing or promoting their already published books. More details are below...

Around the Publishing World in Four Articles

Here are just a few pieces my fellow writers will probably enjoy and might have missed.




How Writers Can Find Meaning in Nonsense
The Atlantic is doing a feature asking writers to discuss their favorite passages of literature. In this article author Jesse Ball talks about Lewis Carroll's Jaberwocky and why he finds it a good example of writers embracing nonsense words. A short excerpt...

There’s a question of what master are you serving when you write something. If you want to tell someone that they have to go unplug the toilet, that's a very specific sentiment: Go, and unplug the toilet. It can succeed, or not. But what if the master you want to serve is to somehow communicate the entirety of your experience of Anglo-Saxon poetry, in a single poem? That’s when something like nonsense comes into its own. The wonder of it is not that it makes something out of nothing, or that it is without sense—but actually that it’s exploding with sense. It's not for when you have nothing to say, but when you have many things to say at once.

 

The Ideal Length For Blogposts
Most writers maintain a blog to stay in touch with their readers and promote their work. But it's one thing to write a blog, and another to attract readers to it. This piece by Orbit Media has facts and figures backed up by research.  We will warn you in advance. The ideal blog length for SEO purposes is much longer than you'd think. A short excerpt...

Think about it this way: Google is a research tool. Longer pages have more opportunities to indicate their relevance. Google sees longer pages as more likely to contain the answer to the searcher’s question.

Another reason is links. When MOZ analyzed 3,800 posts on their own blog, they found that the longer posts get linked to more often. Longer pages generally attract more links, and these links support a higher rank.

The ideal length for a search optimized blog post is 1,500 words.

 

Social Media Grammar Tips for Authors
My kids mock me because even my texts include proper punctuation. But when you're writing in 140 characters or less, that can really hold you back. This piece gives you seven grammar rules that you need to keep in mind when you're writing on social media. Shortcuts are OK, but mistakes in these seven areas make you look like a lousy writer. Here's one example...

If you have two sentences, please put a period between them. If you like semicolons and your sentences are closely related, use a semicolon. If you are using a conjunction like and or but, you can use a comma. What I am telling you is don’t use a comma alone to separate sentences

 

How ‘Lady Authors’ Were Told to Promote Their Books in the 1960s
This is a great piece in Time Magazine that shows how the times have changed for female authors. There are some great photos to illustrate it. Here's a short excerpt from the text...

In a LIFE photo essay called “What it takes to be a lady author anymore,” Rejaunier posed for shots that demonstrated how a woman should promote her literary work. A successful lady author, the captions suggested, must “swim a little,” “exercise in a bikini” and be “photographed in bed.” The essay attributed the success of her book, a novel based on the dark side of the modeling world, to Rejaunier’s beauty rather than her literary talents: “Just possibly because she smiles so prettily on the book jacket (the back and the front of the book) The Beauty Trap is now in its fourth printing.”

Ben Ponzio

He was the sales manager of B-96, and a WPGU alum (I've met him a few times at the alumni functions), but Ben Ponzio has decided to leave the radio business for a more stable career.

He's becoming a professional poker player.

Robert Feder has the details.

A Behind the Scenes Look at the Daily Show's 9 Biggest Moments

The New York Times spoke to some of the Daily Show staffers who were there for the biggest and most memorable moments in Jon Stewart's career.

Great stuff.

You can read it here.

Olivia Munn on Jon Stewart

Olivia was briefly a correspondent on the Daily show, and in this Entertainment Weekly piece, she talks about what John is really like. My favorite part...

"Clean his office. Just clean his office. And he has a few Emmys in a box somewhere. And by a few I mean like, 30. You know, just maybe pass them my way so I can, you know, just use one as a paperweight because it would be a much better paperweight than it would be in his box. But honestly, I would just like him to clean his office. It’s overdue. It’s been years."

Me Neither

Thanks to "DS" for sharing this one...

Ranking Led Zeppelin Songs

Music critic Bill Wyman took a shot at it, and I have to give him credit. This is a pretty strong list. I don't have too many problems with it. I think #2 is ranked too high, and I wouldn't put #9 in the top ten, but not bad. For me, it's hard to keep "Black Dog", "Rock and Roll", "Fool in the Rain" and "Dyer Maker" out of the top ten, but that just shows you how strong their catalog is.



His top ten Zep songs were...
10. All of My Love
9. The Song Remains the Same
8. The Immigrant Song
7. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
6. Over the Hills and Far Away
5. Dazed & Confused
4. Stairway to Heaven
3. Whole Lotta Love
2. Good Times Bad Times
1. Kashmir

Chicago Radio Ratings

From this morning's Tom Taylor column, an analysis of the latest Chicago radio ratings...

Chicago – Nobody manages to achieve a 6.0-share, and talk WGN misses the spike from the Stanley Cup-winning Blackhawks. So who’s #1? That honor still goes to iHeart’s urban AC WVAZ (6.8-6.5-5.8). Next is Hubbard’s hot AC “Mix” WTMX (4.8-5.0-5.0) and third is CBS all-newser WBBM (5.3-4.6-4.7). WBBM’s usual simulcast partner is WCFS/105.9, but during Cubs baseball the FM stays with the news product while WBBM runs the games. This time, WCFS moves 2.4-2.1-2.2. Fourth is CBS classic hits WJMK (3.5-4.0-4.1) and fifth is iHeart’s top 40 “Kiss 103.5” WKSC (3.9-4.1-3.9). Nice recent moves by urban sister WGCI (3.3-3.8-3.8). Then comes WGN, 3.3-4.3-3.7. How much does ’GN miss the Blackhawks in their run to glory? In the June book, WGN was #1 at nights. Now it’s #20. iHeart’s hot AC WLIT trails off, 3.5-3.6-3.2. Could Cumulus talker WLS fall below a 1.0-share, one of these days? It’s off 1.1-1.1-1.0. The Windy City’s leading cume station is top 40 “Kiss” at 2,355,000.

Audio of Landecker's Last Show

Thanks so much to Larz at Chicagoland Radio & Media for posting the audio of Landecker's last show on WLS.

You can listen to it here. It's a scoped version of the show, which means the commercials and most of the music have been removed.

U of I Ranked Top Party School

University of Illinois is the top party school?

Things have clearly changed since I went there. We spent most of our time in the library and church. Although, I do recall a time or two when one of the ruffians on our dorm floor snuck in a Zima. Isn't that right 1980s-era Illini?

Gawker Publishes Trump's Cell Number

I'm no genius, but I saw this in my crystal ball several weeks ago.

The Donald can't say that he didn't see this coming.

What's the saying about reaping what you sow?

Jon Stewart's Last Week

The New Yorker pays tribute to Jon Stewart. They entitled their piece, Exit Stage Left.

It's a great read for Daily Show fans.

Reviews for BRANDwidth

Kipper McGee's BRANDwidth is available at Eckhartz Press.

This book explains lot about how big broadcasting allowed itself to fall into current straights -- but also ways for smart media operations and others to gain an advantage. I also enjoyed the "translation" for what this means to non-broadcaster businesses which apply to any operation. I am definitely passing this insightful book along to my bosses and friends.
--Jim Denning

Packed with actionable insights. Kipper offers a valuable perspective: putting media disruption into context. A must-read for managers working in media, communications and the performing arts. We can all learn something from Kipper McGee.
--Dave Martin

John Dempsey

My latest Illinois Entertainer column is out. This month I interviewed WLS Newsman John Dempsey.

You can read it here.

We're #2!

The interest in John Landecker's final WLS show (which was great by the way) has helped propel our book "Records Truly Is My Middle Name" back up to #2 on the Amazon charts in it's category.

Thanks for your interest. Here's a direct link to the e-book on amazon.

RIP Cilla Black

Cilla Black passed away this weekend at the age of 72.

Her name isn't really known to American audiences, but she was a 50-year star in England. She was good friends with the Beatles and was represented by their agent Brian Epstein. This song below was written for her by Paul McCartney and produced and recorded by George Martin.