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Stupid media tricks

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* I’m speechless. The Ron Magers segments with Roe Conn are the one major highlight of daily Chicago commercial radio. And now, Citadel, in all its wisdom, has canceled Magers’ contract…

Citadel Broadcasting’s bankruptcy filing claimed its first Chicago casualty Monday: Ron Magers, No. 1 news anchor at ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7, has been dropped as a daily contributor to Roe Conn’s afternoon show on news/talk WLS-AM (890).

Today will be Magers’ last day after almost 12 years as a commentator and raconteur on Conn’s program. Magers’ in-studio presence (heard from 3 to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday) consistently was a highlight of the show — and often was the best half-hour of conversation in all of Chicago radio. Yes, he really was that good.

* NBC5 asked me to post a few items every day on the company’s revamped web site last year, but I turned them down for various reasons. First, the money was a joke. But, second, I don’t like working for somebody else. Steve Rhodes found that last part out the hard way…

I am no longer contributing to NBCChicago.com and I feel obliged to tell readers why. It’s also a tale that needs to be told in any case.

I was going to start this column this way:

“Tribune Company never interfered with my work after they bought Chicago magazine when I was working in part as an online media critic there. I had to work for NBC Universal for that to happen.”

But to bend over backwards to be fair to Tribune Company, I’m still not certain whether that happened - despite being told so on two occasions by two people.

Rhodes left after the station removed this post from its website about Tribune Company’s new CEO. Go read the whole thing to see what happened to Rhodes, but it looks like Mother Tribune might have flexed some muscle with Rhodes’ former boss. There’s more at WBEZ’s site.

* This isn’t really about the media, but it involves a web site, so I guess it kinda qualifies, and I wanted to post it anyway…

A group of Chicago Bear fans mad at the team’s dismal season isn’t waiting for the head office to review the job of head coach Lovie Smith. Instead they are publicly demanding the coach be fired along with the rest of the Bears staff.

The founder of the new Web site www.bearfansunited.org wants the voice of unhappy Bear fans heard and is collecting donations to erect a billboard urging the McCaskey family to “do the right thing and clean house, and hire an entirely new coaching staff.”

Shouldn’t they just hire a new team while they’re at it? And maybe fire the owners as well? Let’s start over. Nuke the whole operation, top to bottom.

* Related…

* A Very Short List: Publishers That Have Actually Told Google to Take a Hike

* 115 Magazine and Media Predictions for 2010

* Angry Kathy & Judy fans get in the holiday spirit

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 7:19 am

Comments

They say sports is a microcosm of life. That sure is true when you line up the Bears and Illinois politics. “Fumigate” the whole lot of them!

Comment by You Go Boy Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 8:39 am
What did I say that got me pulled?

Comment by Gregor Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 8:43 am
Never mind, I see its back now.

Comment by Gregor Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 8:44 am
The list of broadcast haircuts continues. Until ad sales pick up, along with the rest of the economy, that will be an ongoing story.

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 8:49 am
Kathy and Judy are missed along with many of the the others WGN managment has seen fit to replace. They seem to like white angry men more than quality interesting diverse radio personalities, they lost our family as listeners.

Comment by INDEPENDENT Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 9:06 am
i am shocked that magers won’t be on the roe conn show anymore. what a terrible loss for that show. i absolutely agree with the statement that his appearances, often times, were the best half hour of radio in chicagoland. what a short-sighted, dim-witted thing to do, citadel.

Comment by colt 45 Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 9:19 am
Brilliant move on behalf of Citadel. Take a show that is shakey, suffering from the loss of more than one castmenber and remove another solid element.

The next step is to cancel the show because ratings do not improve……

Comment by Plutocrat03 Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 9:49 am
I’m ambivalent on the coach, but you can’t really defend the GM.

Comment by Scooby Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 9:51 am
I think Roe must take a “Silkwood Shower” every time they let Blago use a WLS microphone….

Comment by Some Guy Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 10:20 am
Magers was very good with just terrific explanations of why and how stuff happened. I sure ratings will now sky rocket on the cost efficiency scale. I’ll just click to another station. Gary Meier must be chuckling.

Comment by zatoichi Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 10:35 am
I’m with Scooby. Replace Angelo, and then let his successor work on rebuilding the offensive line.

How can you have a running game or protect the quarterback with one of the smallest and oldest offensive lines in the league??

Comment by Capitol View Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 10:42 am
It’s not just radio that stinks now. The sun-times used to have must reads like novak and steve neal, now it’s some good city hall reporting and that’s it. Huntley does not know what he’s talking about, jesse jackson still having an editorial space is a joke and lynn sweet puts more effort into white house social secretaries than actual reporting.

The tribune is also filled with a series of op-ed page writers that outside of kass (who isn’t on the op-ed page) continue to regurgitate their 1995 talking points.

Thankfully we have something called the internets so we can now read decent stuff like this, the beachwood thing, Team America of the 10th, and not waste our time on msm.

Comment by shore Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 11:53 am
Other than posts lamenting the diversion of money from WBEZ, your link to the Feder piece on Ron Magers is the only sign of Vocalo’s existence I’ve ever seen.

Comment by irving & ashland Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 11:56 am
Shore,

I’m trying to figure this out. You think everybody at the Trib is rehashing their old stuff EXCEPT KASS?

Comment by irving & ashland Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 12:09 pm
Rich:

Thanks for quality reporting on the Steve Rhodes mess, it answered many of my questions about how it all happened. However, I would greatly appreciate it if you would let us know if a link is going to lead to something that is NSFW - the Google search results that you linked to included a piece of male anatomy as one of the search terms.

Comment by Seneca Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 12:31 pm
WLS has been trying to re-make itself into “all conservative, all the time” radio. It’s a one-dimensional echo chamber between the Wade show, Mancow, and the syndicated pundits. Even their voice-over announcer, who just comes on to say the station name, is now dropping little bons mots full of anti-liberal snark, innuendo, and anger, as if he’s trying to get his own show in between Hannity and Levin.

Roe Conn’s show is thankfully aimed at a wider audience, and it is an island of normalcy on that station. He’s funny, too, and acts fair to his callers, even when he doesn’t agree with them… but I think management doesn’t appreciate this. They like one kind of listener demographic “welded” to the station all day and night, and they don’t want Roe’s broader view and audience, they like everything the same all day, consistent.

I will really miss Ron’s segment; he’s a class guy and that segment was always entertaining as well as informative. They keep trying to kill off Roe’s show by cutting off his on-air contributors; at some point he will decide it is too much, and when he bails, that’s the last time I will listen to WLS.

Comment by Gregor Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 1:07 pm
===
You think everybody at the Trib is rehashing their old stuff EXCEPT KASS?
===

At least I no longer have to read the Trib and deal with the schmaltz that was Bob Greene. Wow. His columns alone caused me to stop reading the trib and give it up until the web came along.

Actually, the years I stopped reading newspapers in college and grad school were pretty nice. Hopefully Rupert Murdoch won’t force me to give up internet papers, too. But at least I got my Mike Royko. That’s really all you need (or ever will need).

Comment by Macbeth Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 2:54 pm
Looking at the Roe Conn thing, the new 2-year contact pairs him with Cisco Cotto as a partner. Isn’t this the same guy that was running for senate against Kirk recently? This to me seems to lend credence to the conservative “trend” WLS is taking on. Roe and Cotto go back a ways together, the new dynamic will be… interesting… to watch develop.

Comment by Some Guy Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 5:53 pm
–The sun-times used to have must reads like novak and steve neal–

Shore, they’re dead.

Kass is only good when one of the Two Eddies, Vrodylak or Burke, is writing the column.

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Dec 22, 09 @ 9:42 pm
Good night Ron Magers. Bad move as that show is a rational attempt to take on politics and current events. Conn has a slant, but does not let that get in the way of good common sense. As for Meier, the show is better off without him. The only reason he is missed is some of the voices he did.

Comment by Wumpus Wednesday, Dec 23, 09 @ 7:16 am