T Dog Media at 20

A look back at what’s changed in media and what to look forward to

After 4,385 posts, T Dog Media has reached the age of 20. And it’s been a long, strange trip to get here. 

The last time an anniversary landed in a “0”, I wrote a rather crabby, dystopian post, one where media’s future would be one giant mess. Yes, it has turned out that way, but for this anniversary post, I will be more positive – but realistic, as I talk more about me, how I fell in love with this profession, a look back at 20 years of writing, and a look ahead.

When I was a kid, I regularly read the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, listened to radio, and watched a lot of TV. I guess you can say I’m a TV historian, since I know a lot about it (not to mention owning so many books on the subject.)

When I was twelve, my older brother – who was working at an advertising agency at the time (and went on to work for WSCR-AM and ABC News in New York), brought home an issue of Broadcasting and the 1985 NATPE edition of TV/Radio Age. I was fascinated with the trade ads, featuring TV shows being sold to local stations, and yeah, I was instantly hooked, I also read the Tribune and Sun-Times’ media sections a lot, with columns by Robert Feder, Ron Aldridge, Marilyn Preston, and others. When I was sixteen, I subscribed to Electronic Media, based right here in Chicago where I learned the ins and outs of the media business, from journalism to syndication and international sales to the equipment radio and TV stations used. Journalists such as Diane Merigas, William Mahoney, Tom Thayer, Adam Buckman, and others taught me all I needed to know and they were smart media people.

When I went to Chicago State University, I spent a lot of time in the library, reading Broadcasting and Cable, Variety, and the Calendar Live section of the Los Angeles Times. I also read columns from the Dallas Morning News’ Ed Bark and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Gail Shilster. When the Internet came along, I read more columns from TV columnists, such as the Kansas City Star’s Aaron Barnhart (and his sorely missed TV Barn website), the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Tim Cuprisin, Mediaweek’s Marc Berman, and many others. I guess you can say I was exposed to media…a lot.

With blogging a brand new thing in 2006, I decided to write about my knowledge of TV and radio on Google’s platform. Since I also had a love of writing since I was fifteen (at the time, I was taking playwriting classes at ETA Creative Arts), I thought, why not combine the two? And so The T Dog Media Blog was born. I decided to launch the site on September 18, 2006 to coincide with the new TV season (I thought about launching it on the 11th, but didn’t due to obvious reasons.) It’s hard to believe now but at the time, cable was growing, cited as one of the reasons why UPN and The WB merged to become The CW. Social media was in its infancy, and streaming and “viral video” hardly existed. YouTube was around only a year, while the iPhone was yet to launch – and I still had a standard definition TV set. In the first few years, I wrote at least at least one to three posts a day, but slowed down as I shifted much of my breaking news stories to social media in 2009 when I launched my Twitter and Facebook accounts – which exposed my work to a whole new audience. 

In 2008, I began to be noticed – by none other than Feder himself, as he became a big fan of my work, and a source of pride for me. Other well-known people have read my work, including Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek fame and radio sports host David Kaplan. Several local journalists have also taken note – I’ve seen some of them in person at the Better Business Bureau dinners I went to when I was employed there (I attended six of them, from 2009 to 2014.) It was a thrill to see people like Rob Stafford, Allison Rosati, Darlene Hill, and Robin Robinson in person, and getting to see Bill Kurtis and Geoffrey Baer speak. It was a lot of fun, and was happy to see these personalities support their mission (of course, they didn’t know who I was, as I couldn’t say where I worked at the time.) Other news personalities visited the BBB while I was there, including Dorothy Tucker and the now-retired Silvia Perez.

The subjects I wrote about were quite varied in the early years – from a feud between comedians Carlos Mencia and Joe Rogan (before he became a big-time podcaster) to R&B superstar Mya finishing second on Dancing With The Stars (who I got to meet three times after her concerts and is very nice in person.) The first few years also featured what I call the “jackass” phase of T Dog Media, writing snide articles and bashing people who annoyed me – like Jim Belushi, and christening CBS as “The Church of Tisch”, named after the cheapskate owner Larry Tisch, who owned the network in the late 1980s and let the NFL slip away to Fox in 1993 – which grew out of an article I wrote about then-WBBM-TV GM Joe Ahern. You have to read it to believe it. 

So what is the wildest and most unusual story I wrote? It came in July 2007, when former WMAQ-TV reporter Amy Jacobson was caught at alleged murder suspect Craig Stebic’s house coming out of his swimming pool – by a rival station’s camera crew, WBBM-TV. The bizarrest post? One about about a character ESPN created for the X Games called “Darkmane”.  Oh, those were the days…

Enemies? Yeah, I made a few. After both Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Wil Wheaton and former Miss USA Kenya Moore both blocked me on Twitter, I wrote scathing articles about them. I feuded with FCC Chairmen and the Parents Television Council. I ripped into Larz from the former Chicagoland Radio & Media website several times, called Luke Bouma from Cord Cutters News a fraud, called out tons of media executives ranging from Ben Silverman to Jan Jeffries to Dawn Ostroff, and of course, Mancow Muller and Jay Mariotti. But I also wrote some important articles ranging from how the media failed the people of Ferguson, Mo. after Michael Brown’s murder by Police to the media coverage of the mayhem on Chicago streets during two rounds of looting in 2020. 

I also wrote industry pieces from time to time, showcasing my knowledge oft he business. The first piece I wrote was in October regarding off-network dramas in broadcast syndication as NBCUniveral was offering Law & Order: Criminal Intent to local stations. I’ve also took a deep dive into alternative rock radio, cord-cutting (aka, the decline of cable TV), Donald Trump’s short-lived game show, the rise of FAST networks, and true crime programs, such as Dateline. I enjoy writing these pieces because it gives me a chance to educate readers about the ever-changing media business.

In addition to Chicago, I also wrote about happenings in other media markets such as Fort Myers, Fla. after a hurricane devasted the area (and yes, that infamous “Trump Country” radio format) to several head-spinning affiliation switches in San Diego. I even wrote about a radio station in Denver promoting the pot lifestyle and something called “Y’all-FM” in Birmingham, Ala. Yes, I’ve covered some weird stuff over the years.

But perhaps the standout for me is the T Dog Think Tank, where I write opinions on everything from living in Chicago to the the future of late-night TV (though I haven’t written one in a year.) Some of them were doozies, especially the one about Mayor Daley and a press conference he gave, where I channeled wrestler The Rock for some reason. 

For every T Dog Think Tank, T Dog Media Turkey Awards, and Media Notepad, I tried some things that didn’t work, such as a weekly winners and losers column, and the T Dog Hall Of Shame full of bad TV shows, which grew so large, I had to close it. I reviewed a handful of TV shows, such as The Orville, Heroes: Reborn, and Pat Tomasulo’s Man Of The People. There was even a time I wrote an awful Bill O’Reilly-Jay Mariotti skit on here. You’ll have to search this site for that one. 

In the past, I written about San Diego Comic-Con, NATPE gatherings, the Television Critics Association Press Tour, and my visits to C2E2 at McCormick Place. But things change, and as those events withered in interest, I pivoted away from covering them. But I had a lot of fun writing about those events.

Over the last few years, T Dog Media has evolved to a serious publication covering the business of sports, pop culture, and media, with less theatrics and nastiness than I did during the first decade (though to be sure, I blasted White Sox broadcaster John Schriffen here just two years ago.) I’m now 54 years old, and as my former boss Steve Bernas said at one of the our meetings at the BBB, you have to evolve, or you die.

Have I thought about ending T Dog Media? Yes, several times, including when the site would reach its twentieth anniversary. As fewer and fewer people are writing about media and the closure of numerous trade magazines and websites in the last decade – not to mention the steady beat of bad news such as layoffs, I considered hanging up my pen as writing about this business really wasn’t fun to do anymore. Most recently, I announced a break from writing due to mental health issues related to my job (I won’t say where, but if you look at my LinkedIn page, you’ll see why. And yes, I wrote about them in 2024 when they acquired a TV set manufacturer.) Writing is a form of therapy for me – something I didn’t even realize, believe it or not. 

But I feel a voice is needed in these unprecedented times as President Trump is looking to seize the airwaves to silence his critics through his hand-picked chairman, Brendan Carr as the First Amendment is in danger with media consolidation – which has taken place throughout the duration of this site, continues unabated. The piece I am most proud of is one I wrote two weeks after George Floyd died, saying there needs to be more racial diversity in media – in our city’s and nation’s newsrooms, executive suites, and in Hollywood. As one of the few Black men writing about this business, I feel it’s my duty to write about the struggles our people continue to have in this business, with most companies being forced to eliminate their DEI programs.

And responding to criticism from someone on Twitter a few years ago, I’ve written more about Black TV and radio than anyone, from marking WVON’s 50th anniversary to a now-closed local restaurant in Calumet Heights naming itself after a hangout of the TV show Martin to Amanda Seales’ firing by a Philadelphia radio station for being “not being funny enough” last year. And I’ve written about Tom Joyner, Steve Harvey, Howard McGee, and how Kanye West’s antics impacted Black radio, not to mention the continuing digital divide, the racial divide among what TV shows we watch, and the tense relationship between the Black community and the media.

So yes, I’m continuing – though at a reduced frequency than it was in the past as other things (such as working an awful job while looking for another one) and other personal matters have gobbled up much of my time. 

When I began this site in 2006, it was a different media world than the one we live in now, one that is making legacy media nearly irrelevant as viewers can watch whatever they want, whenever they want, or what platform they want. Podcasting has exploded as even legacy radio companies such as iHeartMedia, SiriusXM, and Audacy has gotten into the game while Spotify and YouTube Music gives listeners music on-demand anytime. And of course, there’s the looming threat of artificial intelligence, or AI, which has already eliminated jobs by humans, especially when it comes to writing (of note, except for a brief time when I used the awful Grammerly app to spell-check and correct my work, I have never used AI to write anything, and won’t plan to.) After all, I feel society needs a human perspective on issues – unless the AI bots rises up and kills us all.

I would like to thank you for reading my website and my social media pages for the last twenty years, and I hope to continue for another twenty (or, at least until I reach 25 years.) As the media world continues to change for better or worse, there needs to be a local voice to document it all – and it might as well be me. And I am proud of the work I’ve done here. Well, most of it.

But hey, at least I outlasted The Rachael Ray Show, which launched the same day I did.