Former MBC Building may be used for migrant shelter

Former broadcast museum considered as Venezuelan migrants continue to flood city as space for shelters dwindles  The former Museum of Broadcasting Communications building in Chicago’s River North neighborhood on State Street could be the unlikely new home for a migrant shelter.  As reported by crime news website CWB Chicago last week, city officials are looking at the taxpayer-funded building vacated […]

AM Radio in trouble? Car makers looking to boot frequency

AM radio still matters in Chicago as local media rallies around medium  A lot of electronic ink has been written in recent years about the demise of linear TV, but there’s a communications medium in even more dire straits whose fate isn’t being helped by the auto industry.  Numerous carmakers – especially those who produce electric vehicles, are looking to […]

Radio host Jim Bohannon dies

Chicago was one of his stops in long, storied career Nationally syndicated radio host and Hall Of Famer Jim Bohannon died on Saturday from cancer. He was 78. Bohannon made his final appearance on his Westwood One show October 14, four days after he announced he was retiring due to being diagnosed with stage four terminal cancer. Nexstar’s WGN-AM was […]

The Media Notepad: Cubs-Reds Field Of Dreams game a base hit for Fox

  Also: NBC 5 makes a new hire while a Baltimore TV reporter gets fired. The second edition of The Field Of Dreams game didn’t have the theatrics of last year’s contest, but still drew a healthy amount of eyeballs. The game featured two teams who were already out of playoff contention this season: The 44-64 Chicago Cubs and the […]

Clark Weber dies

Legendary radio personality dies of cancer Longtime Chicago radio personality Clark Weber passed away Sunday morning from complications due to cancer at an Evanston hospice. He was 89. Weber was a legendary showman, getting his start in Chicago radio at ABC’s WLS-AM in 1961, at the Top 40 powerhouse known as “The Big 89”. In August 1965, Weber and evening […]

Roseanne Barr, meet Howard Miller

            Roseanne not the first media personality to fall from the top When Roseanne Barr made several racially insensitive and anti-Semitic tweets in May, ABC canceled the successful reboot of her 1980s and 1990s sitcom Roseanne, becoming the first top-rated show ever to get canceled and the first one because of a tweet. But to […]

Nik Wallenda draws a crowd – inside and outside

Wallenda’s stunt over Chicago skyline draws viewers Biggest draw for Discovery since 2010 – or is it? As far as we know, there was no trickery involved in Nik Wallenda’s wire-walking stunt, which he successfully walked from Marina City to the Leo Burnett Building and between the Marina City towers themselves, high above the air with no net or no […]

T Dog’s Grab Bag: CBS 2 unveils new weather vehicle

– How to get ahead  by channeling the Xbox One and the PS4: CBS-owned WBBM-TV has unveiled its latest weapon in the weather war, with the look and feel of a video game – one you can play on the road. WBBM’s new toy is a new vehicle called The Mobile Weather Lab, and the Columbia Puslar 600 ultrasonic weather […]

“Get your clothes off and get in the tub!” – Remembering Larry Lujack

Former WLS-AM “Superjock” Larry Lujack Dies Before voicetracking and corporate takeovers ruined the radio industry, there was quite a lot of personality in the medium. And from the late-1960’s to the mid-1980’s, one jock used his dry wit and sarcastic humor to win over a generation of Chicagoans… the one, the only “Superjock”… Larry Lujack. On Wednesday, Lujack died at […]

Remembering Jerry G. Bishop

When you think of Svengoolie these days, you think of Rich Koz, the personality behind the character. But to a generation of Chicago TV viewers back in the 1970’s, Svengoolie went by the person who originally created and played the character for Screaming Yellow Theater: Jerry G. Bishop. Bishop, whose real name was Jerry Ghan, died Sunday in San Diego at […]

T Dog’s 4 Pack

It’s another edition (and another new name) of the weekly winners and losers list, now called The T Dog’s 4 pack. Let’s hope this one sticks, as the last two titles were quite clunky. There are two 4-packs: one Fab, another Flop. Simple for you? I know it is for me… – T Dog’s Fab Four-Pack: President-Elect Barack Obama. Yes, […]

Happy Trails

My apologies for just getting around to these stories, but a belated happy trails to two notable Chicagoans: Jimmy P. Stagg, a discjockey who worked at the old WCFL in the 1960’s and 1970’s, who helped shape Chicago’s Top 40 wars with WLS back in the day. He passed away last week from cancer at the age of 72. He […]