Rob Feder's column in the Chicago Sun-Times this morning noted that one of my favorite radio programs is losing its longtime host.
Rick O'Dell, a compadre from my very early days in Chicago radio at the old WCLR (now WTMX), started The Sunday Lite Brunch twenty-one years ago. Smooth jazz was in its infancy and Rick created a warm and comfortable place to be on Sundays whether you chose to sit on the couch and read the paper with him or get out and bike through the neighborhood. Rick left WCLR for WNUA and carried Lite Brunch with him, helping to brand 'NUA as one of the top, if not the top, lite jazz stations in the country.
Rick's departure from the show leaves him free to pursue other projects at the station but it reminds me of the changes I've seen recently in Chicago radio.
Barry Keefe, my old boss at 'CLR and then 'TMX, left the station recently after thirty-some years reading morning drive news.
Across town, WLS radio fired a handful of people, several of them friends and former co-workers, and decimated a professional news organization. Fortunately, John Dempsey and Jim Johnson remain in place but I know from first-hand experience how tough it is to anchor news in a shop without enough manpower. I going to guess it's a bit like being a fighter pilot who's told that, in addition to the flying, he now has to do all his own maintenence. Oh and load the bombs while you're at it, willya?
Of course, change is nothing new in the radio business . For years, WMAQ radio (670) gave WBBM (780) a decent run for the all-news audience in Chicago. Working there was the most fun I had in the business. 'MAQ shut its doors in 2000. A number of 'Q vets moved over to 'BBM; some left radio for public information posts with the city.
Now Sam Zell has taken over the Chicago Tribune and I'm watching to see how, if at all, his people will change WGN Radio (720). An industry leader with a great clear-channel signal, its loyal listeners keep 'GN at the top of the ratings but, with new management comes new philosophy and new approaches to doing business. I don't expect to see an upheaval in programming at 'GN but Zell will surely tinker with it. Maybe that's a good thing.
What disappoints me about radio in Chicago, and elsewhere, is that its lost its punch. Whether it results from staff downsizing, low morale, or just a lack of energetic direction from the bosses, radio doesn't "break" news any more. I seldom hear even a new angle reported on old stories. Real street reporting, the chase for exclusives, even the first breathless reports from the scene of a four-alarm fire, seems to be left to TV. Radio follows when it can. That's not to say some radio reporters aren't out there digging. But they aren't given nearly the support they deserve for their efforts. And that sentence isn't exactly breaking news, either.
Years ago, I was writing copy for a newscast at a station where I worked in Kansas, listening as a station secretary lead a high school tour through the newsroom. She pointed out the on-air studios and the police scanners and the newswire machines and to us "hard working newsguys" and then pointed to a stack of newspapers sitting on a shelf. "And those are the day's newspapers," she said, "where they get the news they report."
Unfortunately, I think that was a prediction of where radio news is headed.
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