Think Tank Express: Radio…The Chicago Way

WLUP contest a scam? Nah. That’s the way things are done in the C-H-I. 

Only in Chicago where someone achieves a zero rating on a TV show and gets a radio deal.

Yours truly is talking about human repellent Mancow Mueller, whose recent WPWR show failed to find an audience and somehow managed to snare a deal with Cumulus-run WLUP-FM though a method so phony, the Chicago Democratic Machine would be proud.

(Don’t believe this bullshit Mancow spouts about “quitting”. His no-rated show was canceled when the contract expired last October.)

Remember those stupid “auditions” featuring Mancow and three others? The Loop Morning “Search” was nothing but a scam, with management obviously deciding on the winner before the first vote was even cast. You could vote early and often, but your vote didn’t count, noting on its website later on this wasn’t even “a contest” (to avoid getting in trouble with the FCC, no doubt.)

And worse, Mancow “needed time to think about the offer”, with WLUP pretending he went missing.

In an interview with Robert Feder last week, Ol’ Mancow was back in form, ripping into old adversaries Steve Dahl and Jonathan Brandmeier and for good measure, ripped into new WDRV morning co-host Pete McMurray and fellow morning search contestant Liz Wilde.

All of this just shows you how really bad Chicago radio has become the last few years (Want proof? Examples are here, here, and here). Mancow’s “hiring” and this “contest” just proves radio is no different than everything else run in this city, the most corrupt in the country, despite his plans to bring “joyous noise to hardworking men”.

It’s all in a day’s work following local radio: listeners whining about WGN management;  fans thinking Garry Meier is some kind of martyr; management continuing to hire has-beens like Mancow, Dahl, and Brandmeier, making Chicago radio look like a broken down nursing home for past-their-prime talent (Mancow actually got this part right, but he’s also one of them); and the list goes on and on and on…

Sad to say this, but given all the evidence, Chicago is now the worst radio market in the country. Worst than Sacramento. Worst than Memphis. Even worse than Jacksonville,  and this is a market with an Top 40 radio station once branded as APE-FM. (WAPE.) Hiring this idiot again is just icing on the cake. Proof you only need a third-grade education to run a radio station in the third-largest market.

Yes, radio can find space on the dial for Mancow – the one with a zero rating, but not a song from Empire, one of the hottest TV shows in years – the one with a twelve rating. This tells you how completely fucked up the radio business is.

As for this scam of a “contest”, look at it this way, Chicago… The Loop Morning Show Search winner could’ve turned out to be Wil Wheaton.