John Bracken

The New York Times last weekend noted radio’s crisis:

While more than 9 out of 10 Americans still listen to traditional radio each week, they are listening less…Radio revenue growth has stagnated and the number of listeners is dropping. The amount of time people tune into radio over the course of a week has fallen by 14 percent over the last decade, according to Arbitron ratings.

Could the lack of localism on radio be a reason? It seems that AM sports is the practically the only programming that features local voices. Last year, on fall Sunday mornings, I had each radio in the house tuned to a different AM station for the Bears pre-game marathon: The Score in the bathroom, BBM in the living room, WGN in the kitchen and AM 1000in the bedroom.This year, I’ve settled on what may be the best Chicago duo in quite awhile: Chet Coppock and Steve McMichael on AM 1000 (I just can’t call it “ESPN Radio”). They spend almost as much time talking about the glory days of the 80s as they do the ‘06 team — but ain’t nothing wrong with that. They also demonstrate an anti-McCaskey bent that always plays well– but is strangely absent from WGN’s pre-grame, not so strangely missing from Bears flagship station WBBM. I’m still hopping around, catching the Three Bears on GN and Thayer on BBM during commercials, but I’m not even sure who is on 670 now, and I have yet to find Hub Arkush. Two weeks into an undefeated season, Coppock and McMichael– Chicago media stars for quite awhile now– are the tandem to beat.

That question was asked by CK in a comment on an earlier post on the Steve Dahl- -Garry Meier reunion. An earlier commentator, “Jason” had posted a comment, “Have you seen” followed by a link to something about what’s wrong in Chicago. CK was miffed that the link was, apparently, merely a promo for a new program on Chicago’s Q101.

“Jason” registered with an email address that appears to belong to someone named Tommy King. Turns out, the director of marketing for Q101 is named Tommy King. So, what do you say Q101 GM Marv Nyran and Emmis Communications CEO Jeff Smulyan and– is sock puppet comment spam your new marketing tool?

I needed a couple of days, but I finished off the podcasts of Friday’s (apparent) impromptu Steve Dahl-Garry Meier reunion. Conclusion: Dahl is a lot funnier with Garry than without. As I startled fellow bike commuters with my laughter, I was reminded by a comment that Roger Ebert once made; that Garry’s oddball interstitials are more likely to provoke audible guffaws than are Steve’s comments.