It took about a year for the plug to be pulled on an ambitious (or some would say ridiculous) project: FM News 101.1. As of today, you will hear music on 101.1 FM instead of talk. The CEO of the station’s owner cited “lack of audience engagement” as one of the reasons: that’s doubletalk for …
Christmas Airchecks
Here’s an early Christmas present for all of you: a pair of archive files that each contain 90 minutes of somewhat innocuous holiday music. The real bonus, though, is hidden in the recordings: between the usual bits of Nat King Cole, Kenny G, and 101 Strings are little snippets of Chicago media history. These are recordings of two Chicago radio …
From Nirvana to News
As expected, the former Q101 (WKQX) changed formats this past weekend to become “FM News 101.1” (WWWN). There was a lot of lead-up to this change, beginning with rumors in June that the classic-alternative rock station was up for sale, leading through the announcement of an air staff with rather impressive credentials. Time Out Chicago‘s …
It’s Back To Basics For The Lot of You… *again*
I opened this morning’s Daily Herald to read coverage of the storms that blew through the Chicago suburbs yesterday. On the front page there was a teaser for Burt Constable’s column that read: “And I Feel Fine?” Of course, this was a meta-reference to the R.E.M. song “It’s The End of the World as We …
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TV Geekery From The Past
Among the negatives I recently had digitized at ScanCafe, I discovered the results of a former hobby of mine: photographing TV screens. When I first discovered 35mm photography (using my dad’s Kodak Retina IIa fold-out camera) I got interested in all the things you could do by messing around with the shutter speed and aperture. …
Valley Voices
I just finished re-reading Valley Voices by John Russell Ghrist. This is a 1996 history of radio stations that were based throughout the suburbs of Chicago, with a primary focus of the towns in the Fox River Valley. There are all kinds of interesting tidbits in the book, including the histories of Chicago stations WGN, …
A New Spot on the Dial For Your Dentist to Tune In
We were listening to WCKG, the former “Free FM” talk station at 105.9, just before 5:00 pm today and they were simulcasting WBBM-AM on their frequency. I’ve always been sort of fascinated, in a geeky way, at how stations handle format changes, and this was an interesting stunt: WCKG played simulcasts of WBBM and other …
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Übercaster Review Published
My review of the Übercaster podcasting software package has been published in the August edition of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine. Click on the magazine cover under “View Current Issue,” and you’ll find the Ubercaster review on page 41. You can also hear the dulcet tones of my voice reading the review at the magazine’s site. …
Publicity!
I had an interview tonight with a producer from WTTW’s Chicago Tonight. They are doing a piece on podcasting, and they may use some of my thoughts and possibly mention our 4th Time Around podcast on the air. The show airs Thursday at 7:00 pm CST. If you’re in the Chicago area, be sure to …
Oldies are New
Yesterday at noon, WZZN-FM (“The Zone”) dropped their “Alternative” format and became “Chicago’s True Oldies Channel,” thus filling a hole in the formats of Chicago’s FM stations. I find it unusual that they chose this time of year to make the change. Typically, people want to hear the Beach Boys and Motown hits while cruising …