Think Tank Express: A long way to go on diversity

Deadline article, Bernstein’s comments prove women and minorities still face a hostile environment in the media business  It’s interesting we have a “communications” as a college major, and yet have a lot of people who don’t know how to communicate – especially when it comes to gender and race issues. And this week, the point was proven more than once. […]

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 […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: Radio fails to embrace “Empire”

Is radio missing the hottest trend right now? According to Michael Schneider at TV Insider, contemporary-hit and urban stations have all but ignored the music of one of the hottest TV shows in years, Empire. While the soundtrack from the show has topped Billboard’s album chart – not to mention on-demand songs from the album serving up more than 20 […]

Think Tank Daily: The Sun-Times throws in the towel

Might as well write your obituary for the Chicago Sun-Times as the people running the paper have all but given up. As of Wednesday, the beleaguered newspaper decided to outsource national and international news to USA Today, retaining only its local columnists to do local stories. This is a huge mistake. Even though yours truly doesn’t think much of the […]

Think Tank Daily: “CSI: Cyberjunk”

  CSI: Cyber proves overextending a franchise isn’t a good idea  Wednesday night saw the underwhelming premiere of CSI: Cyber, and it goes to show you even in a so-called “Golden Age Of Drama”, how banal some of these programs still are. The “new” CBS drama featured “Academy Award Winner” Patricia Arquette as a FBI “agent” who heads a task […]

Think Tank Daily: Oprah closes Harpo Studios in Chicago

Editor’s Note: This is an experiment yours truly is trying out for the next few weeks or so… in order to put more material on the website, I plan to write a daily media news analyazation piece between 200 and 400 words – a shorter version of the Think Tanks opinion pieces, which averages between 1000 and 1500 words. Even though […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: When radio personalities attack

The recent confrontation between WLS-AM host Bruce Wolf and African-American traffic reporter Kelli Walker just goes to show you what a complete embarrassment Chicago radio is, and the media industry is in general. In case you haven’t heard (and that’s most of you), Walker “threw some shade” at Wolf on the morning of November 18 over the issue of racism on the air […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: The media fails us on Ferguson

  What can you say about the coverage of the Ferguson, Mo. disturbances from the broadcast networks and cable news networks? They dropped the ball, of course, with the lack of live coverage of the events unfolding in the St. Louis suburb over the last few nights. And if you were a journalist, you sure as hell didn’t have an […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: Blow it out your bullhorn

(Editor’s Note: This piece contains strong language. Reader discretion is advised.) If you want to make the case cable TV is one big ripoff, look no further to what aired this past week. And no, I’m not talking about CNN’s crappy Chicagoland show. I’m talking about the inane puke garbage that is The Real Housewives Of Atlanta, which had an […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: “Heroes” returns. Oh God, why?

Just when you think the idiots who run broadcast network television couldn’t get any stupider, here comes this piece of news: NBC aired a promo Saturday night – yes, Saturday night during the Winter Olympics for the debut next year of a hot new series… Heroes. What the what? And here’s the kicker: the person helming this revival of Heroes: […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: Fans of Steve and Garry need to move on

Believe me, this is the shortest Think Tank ever. In fact, I’m not even including a photo, which for once, would actually increase web hits. But here’s a quick word (or two) about Steve and Garry, Round 2: As you know by now, Garry Meier did not thank his longtime radio partner Steve Dahl (who did not attend) as the pair […]

Is “Katie” on the ropes?

Could Katie get knocked out of the daytime talk show ring before the end of her second season? Another report has surfaced over the increasingly iffy future of Katie Couric’s daytime talk show, which airs in predominantly early fringe time slots on most ABC affiliates. Fox News is reporting that ABC Syndication is looking for a replacement when Couric’s talk […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: Blackhawks slipping back to old ways?

An update to Friday’s story regarding Susannah Collins: As speculated, Collins’ firing was indeed ordered by Blackhawks’ owner Rocky Wirtz who, according to Robert Channick of the Chicago Tribune Saturday, sent a letter to CSN Chicago, showing his concern about those SportsNutz videos she was in during 2009 and 2010. The copy of the letter was cc’ed to Jerry Reinsdorf […]