MEDIA NOTEBOOK
A curation of news items about the media from this past week, with a particular emphasis on Chicago…
RADIO/PODCASTS
*Garry Meier Interview
=This month’s issue of Illinois Entertainer is out and
features my interview with National Radio Hall of Famer Garry Meier. We
talk about his current podcast, and after years of resisting talking about his
radio past, Garry looks back at his legendary Chicago radio career at the Loop,
WLS, WCKG, and WGN. He also gives his opinion about the current state of radio
today…
“It seems
to have lost all its direction. Don’t take my word for it. Listen today, and
then listen to what it was like 20 years ago and tell me there’s a remote
similarity there. I don’t want to wake up and listen to what the CDC is saying
about COVID or monkeypox, or what’s happening in the war in Ukraine at six in
the morning! Not that those aren’t relative topics, but fuck, every day, all
the time? Those are just show topics, not entertainment.”
*John Gehron Honored by the Illinois Broadcasters
Association
=One of the most respected radio programmers in the country has been recognized by the Illinois Broadcasters Association. John Gehron was named as this year’s W. Russell Withers Chicago Broadcast Pioneer. He will accept his award in October. (Radio Ink has the details.)
=Dennis
Lyle, CEO of the Illinois Broadcasters Association, explained why Gehron was
chosen for the award…
“John is a legend to anyone and everyone who
appreciates the medium of radio. His understanding of radio, and perhaps more
importantly, radio’s audiences, allowed him to master the art of programming
and provide a roadmap for generations of future programmers. A true ‘Broadcast
Pioneer’ indeed!”
=I’ve previously interviewed Gehron about his truly
memorable years at WLS. You can read that here.
*Meanwhile, downstate…
*Radio Girl Interviews Rob Hart & Charlie Meyerson
=Rob Hart can be heard daily on WBBM News Radio, and he’s also a great follow on Twitter. Rob’s a pop cultural savant. Radio Girl (Margaret Larkin) tapped into that reservoir of knowledge in this interview.
=That’s not the only recent interview from Margaret. Charlie Meyerson is the editor-in-chief of Chicago Public Square. (If you haven’t subscribed to his newsletter yet, you can do so here). Long-time Chicago radio fans remember Charlie from his time at WXRT, WNUA and WGN. He still has those radio chops in this interview.
=I’ve previously interviewed both Hart & Meyerson for Illinois Entertainer. If you’d like to dip into the Illinois Entertainer archives to read those interviews, click on their names. Rob Hart 2019. Charlie Meyerson 2017.
*Radio’s Best Friend Honored by University of Michigan
=Anyone who has worked in
a radio station has run into Art Vuolo at one time or another. He is known as
Radio’s Best Friend because he travels around the country videotaping radio
shows in progress. Turns out, radio isn’t Art’s only passion. Art grew up in
Ann Arbor and is a University of Michigan fanatic. He must have been thrilled
to be featured in Michigan Today, talking about his devotion to the Maize and
Blue.
*Podcasting Roundup
=WGN & Chris Cuomo
A few weeks ago I mentioned that Cuomo has joined News Nation. He also has a weekly podcast which drops Tuesdays, and that podcast is posted on the WGN radio website. The most recent episode features former Ambassador Bill Richardson.
=Billy Corgan on Wrestling
The Smashing Pumpkins front man is obviously a rock star, and one of Chicagoland’s most prominent celebs, but did you know that he was also a wrestling nut and owns a pro wrestling company? It’s all covered in this podcast.
=Podcasting Facts & Figures
I thought this piece in Inside Radio had some great insights into podcast
listener habits. As the host of three podcasts, I read it with great interest.
The #1 thing listeners dislike in a podcast? When it’s too long.
*Fred Jacobs Goes Old School
=Jacobs is a radio consultant who writes an
influential industry newsletter. In his most recent piece he talked about the general trend in
America of quiet quitting. I must admit, I got a kick out of Jacobs' take on
this trend when it comes to radio. Here’s a small taste of it…
I seriously empathize with anyone in the business who no longer
has the stomach for it, or who feels like they signed up for a different radio
industry. But I would also hope that if that describes you, and you're “quiet
quitting” while you plot out your next move, you speed it up. At this key
moment for the radio broadcasting industry we need everyone to be “all in” for
radio – whether you're on the air, selling ads, or in the corporate suite. If
you're playing a game of “rope-a-dope” with your station while you wait out the
rest of the year, maybe it's time to move over, Rover, and let someone new
who's motivated and amped up take over.
*Joel Sebastian Interview
=Joel is a little bit before my time, but he was a huge radio star in Chicago at stations like WCFL, WIND, WMAQ, WLS, and WJMK. He passed away before the internet age (in 1986), so there aren’t many old interviews of him available. Thanks so much to the guys at the Facebook group Chicago Radio Archives and Memories for posting this 1985 Joel Sebastian interview conducted by WilliamShenold. What a great listen.
=WGN Radio’s John Records Landecker grew up listening to Joel in
Detroit when he was a kid. There are several great stories about Sebastian in
Landecker’s book Records Truly Is My Middle Name.
This is just one of those stories…
One day between my freshman and
sophomore year of college, I was working as a stock boy at Ulrich’s Bookstore
on the Michigan campus to make a little extra money, when I had a brush with
radio greatness. I’ll never forget it. I was wearing an apron, and sweeping the
floor, when I looked up to see who was coming in the door. It was Joel Sebastian! Though Joel was a rock
jock, he also had a number of other intellectual interests. He had a degree in
psychology. He was interested in architecture. And on that particular day, he
was trying to buy a protractor, of all things.
*Rewound Radio Reminder
=Joel Sebastian is just one of the jocks that will be featured
this weekend on Rewound Radio. I mentioned last week that they would be playing
entire shows from classic Top 40 jocks from the 60s and 70s all Labor Day
weekend. Well, former Big-89 jock Chuck Buell (one of the jocks being featured)
sent me the list of names you’ll hear and now I’m even more excited. In
addition to Joel and Chuck, you’ll hear…Dick Biondi,
Barney Pip, Larry Lujack, Tommy Edwards, Art Roberts, Ron Riley, Clark Weber,
Dex Card, Gary Gears, Fred Winston, Kris Erik Stevens, John Records Landecker,
Paul Christy, Chuck Knapp, Yvonne Daniels, Bob Dearborn, Scotty Brink, Jerry
Kaye, Bill Bailey, Bob Sirott, Larry O’Brien, Big Ron O’Brien, Jim Stagg, Dick
Saint, Jeff Davis, Ron Britain, Tom Kent, Johnny Driscoll, Steve King, Dick
Shannon, Bob Hale, Bill Taylor and more. Just go rewoundradio.com.
=I’ve previously interviewed 12 of those guys listed above. If you want to find out more about Lujack, Edwards, Riley, Weber, Winston, Stevens, Landecker, Sirott, Davis, Britain, King or Hale, check out the media page at Illinois Entertainer, or go to the alphabetical list on my blog Chicago Radio Spotlight
*RIP Bradley Norling
=Sad news to report about the son of former Chicago
jock Stu Collins, Bradley Norling. He passed away last week at the age of only
53. Bradley followed in his father’s footsteps and worked in radio for many
years. His obituary is here. Deepest condolences to the family.
MEDIA
BIRTHDAYS/MILESTONES
*August 30, ESPN
Radio’s Mark Zander birthday
=I haven’t interviewed Zander since he started doing sports talk, but we chatted in his rock days back in 2007.
*August 30, 1993
=Big day for David Letterman...
*August 31, 2017, Mitch Michaels Book Launch
Anniversary
=Mitch threw a heck of a party on the day his book Doin
the Cruise was
released back in 2017. The star-studded event drew a who’s who of Chicago
radio. If you’d like to peruse some pictures from that day, click here. See how many luminaries you can identify.
*September 2, Bill Cochran’s birthday
=Cochran isn’t just one of the great voice-over guys in radio (WXRT, WNUA, ME-TV), he has a band that recreates classic albums on stage. I got a chance to talk to him about that back in 2017.
TV/STREAMING
*Sharing Svengoolie with the World
=In Chicago, we tend to think of Svengoolie as our
guy. After all, he’s from here, he broadcasts from here, and he has been a
constant on our television screens here for decades. But Me-TV took Svengoolie
national a few years ago, and he has really been catching on across the country.
How popular is he now? The Wall Street Journal just interviewed him this week. (You can see the interview page, article title and giant picture at the link.
The full article is behind a pay-wall.)
*Tumult at NBC
=Giving up on the 9pm Central Hour?
The popularity of streaming, and the declining popularity of network television, is making the networks rethink their approaches in some rather dramatic ways. NBC is seriously considering giving the 10pm Eastern/9pm Central hour back to the affiliates for local programming. Fox has obviously been doing that for years, but NBC has shows like “Quantum Leap,” “New Amsterdam,” “Chicago P.D,” “Law and Order: Organized Crime,” and “Dateline” on the schedule in the fall. This article says they are considering dropping or moving those shows to accommodate the move.
=According to Bloomberg, the corporate daddies are asking them to cut $1 billion from the budget. That's billion with a B.
=Is Chuck Todd in Trouble?
The host of “Meet the Press” has been a lightning rod
for criticism over the past few years, but it wasn’t until recently, when his
ratings really started dropping (down 21% from last year), that his bosses
started considering whether or not he is still the right man for the job. They
brought in CNN’s David P. Gellis to address the situation. The Daily Beast speculates about Todd’s future under the new regime.
=The SNL exodus continues. In addition to Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson, and Kyle Mooney leaving the show, Alex Moffat, Melissa Villasenor, and Aristotle Athari announced yesterday that they are gone too. AV Club has the details.
*Fox
News Hosts in Court
=This was not a good week for the
talent at Fox News. The Dominion Voting Systems billion dollar lawsuit has ensnared
many of the biggest names on the network, and this week the likes of Tucker
Carlson, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Steve Doocy, and Jeanine Pirro were deposed
by Dominion’s attorneys. The New York Times and
Washington Post both
covered this story pretty well this week.
*Further Exploring John Malone’s Role at CNN
=Last week I shared my theory about the role Liberty
Media CEO and WB board member John Malone was having on the changes in tone and
reporting at CNN. This week, Vox analyzed the same thing.
OTHER MEDIA NEWS
*Filling the Gap in Local News Coverage
=The number of
information deserts, places where local news just doesn’t exist anymore, has
been increasing across the country. We’re lucky we still have local television
news and newspapers here in Chicago, but other towns are not as lucky. The
Medill School at Northwestern University did a study about this phenomenon and
shared the data this week. They
also tried to tackle the solution to the problem. This is what they wrote…
There is no single solution. Reversing the loss of local
news requires developing different journalistic and business strategies to
address the disparities between the resources available in rural and urban
areas, as well as in longstanding news deserts. Solving the problem
requires a coordinated, multi-pronged approach that includes:
·
Identifying areas
within each state that are without local news, or in danger of losing it.
·
Designing
policies and incentives at the state and national levels to address the
disparity and availability of news in these communities.
·
Increasing – as
well as redirecting – venture and philanthropic funding toward news
organizations that seek to deliver reliable and comprehensive local news and
information to residents in news deserts.
·
Rethinking
journalistic practices to compensate for the dramatic loss of almost 60 percent
of newspaper journalists in recent years.
*Woodward & Bernstein Receive Poynter Award for
Lifetime Achievement in Journalism
=To be honest, I’m surprised it took this long for
them to receive the award. Previous winners include Tom Brokaw, Judy Woodruff,
Lester Holt and Katie Couric. The journalists who broke the Watergate story
will be presented with their awards at Poynter Institute’s annual bow-tie gala
in Tampa in November.
*Twitter is Finally Testing an Edit Button
=This has to be the most irritating thing about
Twitter. You cannot edit your tweets. Well, according to the Verge,
that may change soon. Although, it appears it will not be free.
*Truth Social Banned by Google Play
=It’s becoming clear that former President Trump’s
favorite social network, Truth Social, is in some serious financial trouble.
Now comes word that the content on the site has become so violent, and the
content moderation is so lax, that Google Play has banned it. CNBC has the story.
*Gannett Announces Layoffs
=The publishers of USA Today announced this week that they laid off 400 employees and eliminated another 400 positions during the month of August. Details on the newspaper bloodbath were reported by Poynter.
*Mickey Dolenz FOIA’s Monkees FBI Files
=This
story just cracks me up for some reason…
Huh, Micky Dolenz, the lone surviving member of The Monkees, has lodged a FOIA lawsuit for FBI records related to the band. pic.twitter.com/MAYhKEwAGQ
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 30, 2022
If you have any media stories (Chicago or national) that you think I might like to share in future columns, feel free to drop me a line at rick@eckhartzpress.com or amishrick@yahoo.com
