Media: October 2024 • Chicago’s Very Own Dean Richards
Dean Richards
Dean Richards had an entire career before he started working at WGN-TV. He had been working in radio for nearly twenty years at stations like WFYR, WCFL, WIND, WCLR, WNUA, and WGN Radio. He had been a morning host, program director, and production director and held down nearly every day on the air.
The beginning of his television was almost accidental.
“I started doing booth announcing,” he explains. “That was my foot in the door at WGN-TV. One of the midday show producers, David Rosenberg, was a fan of my radio show at the time and would invite me to come on the midday show to do movie and theater reviews. He liked that I was kind of a smartass, and I didn’t really hold anything back. Larry Potash, who, at the time, still had to stick around and anchor the midday show in addition to mornings, said, “You need to be on the morning show.”
Before he knew it, he was part of the show.
“I was just doing it because I thought it was fun, and I was doing it because I really what motivated me was a different way of storytelling, you know, different than I had done my entire career, which had been strictly radio. I loved that I was learning new things and learning new ways of storytelling with the visual component added to it that I’d never done before. So, I did it for free for a while, but I was there so much that I finally went to them and said, ‘I’m here all the time. I’m doing stuff for you guys all the time, and if I’m going to continue this, I’ve got to be paid.” It’s honestly something I never in a million years would have thought could happen. It wasn’t something that I had in my mind as a goal, that I wanted to be on TV. It was stupid, dumb luck. I was just lucky that it happened to be on the number one show.”
While there was a learning curve involved in picking up the nuances of television, Dean’s radio career really did prepare him for this big chance.
“I remember one time the teleprompters went down, and everybody was freaked out, and it didn’t bother me a bit. They said, ‘how are you completely unaffected by this?’ Well, I do a four-hour radio talk show without a net. I could literally sit here and talk for four hours straight without a break if I needed to do that.”
Now he’s not just a part of the show, he has one of the highest profile roles. He’s the guy who does all the showbiz junkets. He’s the one who gets to interview most of the celebrities.
“There’s a benefit to doing it for 25 years,” he says. “They know who I am. They trust me. They know that it’s not going to be a confrontational interview, usually with me. I mean, there have been a few.”
Like the time Mel Gibson called him an asshole for bringing up the drunk driving incident.
“Yeah, that’s the most famous and has long since been resolved. But those happen less and less now. Now I walk into the room, and they know me, my name, they remember things that we talked about. They remembered that they had a nice time. They remember in addition to talking about their movies, we talk about some fun things. It’s not the same old questions that they get over and over again.”
Does he have any favorites?
“Tom Hanks is always at the top of that list. Yeah, he is as nice as he seems. That’s exactly how he is. He couldn’t be any nicer. Meryl Streep is, you know, arguably the biggest movie star in the world, and is the only one that when you walk in the room, she stands up to shake your hand like a person who actually has manners. I just talked to Vince Vaughn a couple of weeks ago. The Chicago people are, you know, I think they’re exceptional. Bonnie Hunt is a longtime favorite. With the Chicago people, when they hear WGN, their eyes open up. They want to talk about the Grand Prize Game and Bozo and the Cubs.”
“I think what makes the show work is we really do like each other,” Dean says. “We really do hang out. We really do care about each other. We know each other’s families. What you see is the way that it is. If somebody’s having a bad day, you can pretty much tell on the air and there’s probably two others at the desk who are going to give them shit for it. There are no prima donnas on our show. I’ve worked with some wonderful people, but never like this group. This is an exceptional group. I’m happy that they’re my friends; I’m proud that they’re my friends. We always have each other’s back. It’s more than just a professional relationship. Larry, Robin, Paul, Pat, and our newest addition, Brhett Vickery, who brought her normal, charming, and slightly irreverent personality into the show. We’re a family.”
Dean Richards can be seen on weekday mornings on WGN-TV and heard on Sunday mornings (9 am-1 pm) on WGN Radio.
-Rick Kaempfer
