Stuck In Muck
The ratings numbers tell us people in Chicago are hearing the radio. But how many people are really listening? Chicago radio used to crackle; it used to excite, entertain, energize, influence, and order its listeners. Now it’s white noise. Today, Chicago radio is becoming to entertainment choices what the Chicago Blackhawks are to sports choices.
Dating back more than 40 years, radio was a dominant force – especially in Chicago, which lacks Hollywood glitz and New York media concentration. You didn’t just want to listen, you had to listen. In the mid-to-late 1980s, for example, WLUP-FM was the unquestioned harbinger of “Chicago cool.” The Loop was “appointment radio.” Jonathan Brandmeier, Kevin Matthews, and Steve Dahl and Garry Meier entertained, shaped opinions, and made headlines. If you weren’t listening everyday, you were literally out of the loop.
And on the music side, there was no better resting spot on the dial than WXRT-FM. Its lineup of musicologists, including Terri Hemmert and Bobby Skafish, played an eclectic mix of hits, deep album cuts, and cool, obscure music you’d never hear anywhere else. Radio ruled. Past tense.
Radio insiders currently blame its hip slip on new technology “distractions,” including Internet, iPods, cell phones, Blackberrys, and video games. Cop-out! If radio content remained compelling, people would make a place for it. These new technologies are “distractions” only because radio allowed them to be distractions. When radio content declined, a new generation naturally went elsewhere.
The first half of 2006 featured great successes and huge failures on the local scene. Returning hero Brandmeier initially gobbled up listeners left adrift when Howard Stern exited terrestrial radio in January for Sirius Satellite pay radio. And Stern’s tepid replacement on WCKG-FM, Shane “Rover” French, was a horrendous corporate decision.
First, in replacing Stern, Chicago was treated by CBS Radio as Fly-Over City by not receiving one of its other marquee Stern replacements – rocker David Lee Roth and comedian Adam Carolla. Next, before his arrival, ‘CKG ran promotional spots with Rover referencing lame local cliches, including Chicago winters. Ugh. These banal bumpers made Rover a dead dog walking. Lastly, Rover’s show is a tired shock jock/frat boy/stunt hybrid that should be put down.
What happened to content on Chicago radio? It stagnated by relying on veteran talents that haven’t changed their acts through the years, failing to nurture new talent. It hired “stunt casting” personalities, chasing temporary fads; and its biggest sin of all: promoting the bland instead of the adventurous.
Twenty years ago, the names Brandmeier, Dahl, Hemmert, Skafish, and Larry Lujack were heard on the Chicago radio dial. In 2006, all of them are still heard. As much as I respect them, during the same 20-year period, almost the entire ‘XRT air staff remains, holding onto their shifts like popes. It’s been almost 15 years since “newcomers” like Mancow Muller and Mike North first arrived, and we endured and dismissed “D-Listers” like Danny Bonaduce and Mark Goodman. Elsewhere, Spike O’Dell simply warms that cozy WGN-AM morning chair, and WTMX-FM The Mix’s Eric Ferguson and Kathy Hart have a popular morning show of gossamer. Lujack even hauls out his dated “Animal Stories” segment on 1690-AM. So much for fresh blood and innovation.
Oh, for the days of biting, honest, topical humor when satire, parody, and well-placed sarcastic rants got our blood flowing. The only radio show coming close to the Dahl-and-Meier legacy is WSCR-AM’s afternoon duo, Dan Bernstein and Terry Boers. But because they handle mainly sports, their scope is limited.
Today, music radio is monotonous, and talk radio must get guts and sharpen its teeth. Obscenity doesn’t equal “edge.” Rather than hiring sidekicks that chew light bulbs for laughs, get some talent who can make people pay attention with their words and thoughts.
Yesteryear, Dahl mercilessly made fun of former radio personality Eddie Schwartz. These days, Dahl pays tribute to Schwartz during a radio telethon to assist an ailing Schwartz: a nice gesture that’s at the core of the problem.
Good Luck and Good Night: Chicago icon Walter Jacobson‘s misguided dismissal from Fox’s WFLD-Channel 32 leaves our city’s media and journalistic standards with a vacuous void. For almost 40 years, Jacobson defined local Chicago news, in print and on TV. Jacobson was a reporter first and an anchorman second, and that distinct dynamic enabled him to earn an unsurpassed media credibility and public trust. Walter Jacobson’s nightly and pesky “Perspective” helped make this city, even if for only a few flashing moments at a time, a little more fair, and a little less corrupt. Thanks for the tenacity, Walter.
Soundstage Sounds On: WTTW-Channel 11’s hit-and-miss music series, “Soundstage,” begins its fourth season in late June. The show’s upcoming season airs in two parts, with six episodes showing during the summer and returning for seven more in January. The new lineup blends hip with hip replacements, including Garbage, Fountains Of Wayne, Train, Peter Frampton, and Robert Plant.
Media Mavens: In addition to Walter Jacobson, the local media scene also bid farewell to WMAQ-Channel 5’s Dick Kay. As a driven beat reporter and host of “City Desk,” Kay was one of the few TV reporters to regularly challenge and irritate evasive politicians. Hopefully, WLS-Channel 7’s Andy Shaw and WBBM-Channel 2’s Mike Flannery will continue to question rather than accept.
Tune in and turn onto WGN-Channel 9’s weather impresario, Tom Skilling. During his elongated weather segments, mute the volume and blast Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon. There is no better legal acid trip than combining Pink Floyd and “Major Tom’s” groovy, psychedelic, rainbow-colored, 3D maps showing storm fronts, jet streams, wind patterns, dew points, and pollen count.
– James Turano
And once again we’re treated to nothing but rock n’ roll radio. Bullshit. WBMX, WGCI hell even WJPC were stations WHITE PEOPLE listened to and yet we read an article chastising corporations for wrecking radio and yet the writer knows so little about even less other things in radio that occured. He’s no better than the people running things today because he’s ignored history and heritage of this market. You want to talk creative? Tom Joyner, Doug Banks, Be Be D Banana, Herb Kent, Evan Luck, Barbara Stanyck and others 20 and 30 years ago, that was creative. Some cow blowing up records because he was forced to take a bath to get into a nightclub that wanted to charge him a cover charge to see a DJ instead of some stoned long-haired junkie play one chord really really bad doesn’t qualify you as a legend. As usual, those who write history know the least about it. It’s a great article if you don’t know any better and much of the LEGENDS in Chicago radio that weren’t WHITE and yet had HUGE WHITE AUDIENCES, are left out as if they never existed.
I agree with you 100%.Most of the radio personalitie’s on air in this town and most other major market’s are about as popular as a wet dog in a crowded elevator!As a matter of fact if they got rid of most of these 50,000 watt bore’s and just played elevator muzak all day it would be a vast improvement.When are the people that are make’s these incredibly bad programming decision’s gonna get the axe?Rover was just taken to the pound to be put down just this week.Now that’s what I’m talking about Louis.As Barney would say to sheriff Andy,”NIP IT IN THE BUD!!!!!
Unfortunately, today’s radio station managers and program directors are merely pawns to their station’s ratings, and the subsequent amounts of money they can squeeze from their advertisers for your basic pimple cream commercials. The advertisers balk at the rates they’re charged? That’s when the format changes, or the jocks get fired or rehired, or CBS moves in for a bargain spot on the dial, etc. It has nothing to do with who is listening. What matters most is the number of listeners that Arbitron says are out there for a particular time slot, and if that number beats the competition, then it could be five cows and a retired turntable in the audience and it would not matter. Steve and Garry were a local treasure, and WXRT -in the bad old days- a true college of musical knowledge. But in today’s market, big money controls the content we hear on the airwaves, and the blather emitted by the air “personalities.” And in general – it is all toothpaste.
I too lament radio’s “walking dead” like existence these days. I’m not going to reminisce about my childhood with Lujack, Winston, Landecker, Sirot’s streaking on St.Patty’s day, Dahl, Meier, Joyner, etc., etc. It’s all in the past- dead and gone. What I want to know is why “radio” missed the internet revolution? Good audio entertainment will always grab listeners. Radio is not a thing…it is a form. The web could have been “radio’s” salvation. Invest in rich content and talent, and pump it through my computer while ENHANCING the live listening experience with what web tech allows you to do these days. But…no. The PD’s blew it back at the beginning. It just may be to late now to play catch up. And to those industry execs who wave the white flag while pointing to the technology monster, I say this; last I checked Limewire was reeeeeeeally popular with the kids, eh? C’mon guys- young people are dying for great musical entertainment on their “new” devices. Wake up and get to work…or are you to old and lazy?
Later gators.