‘Those Were the Days’ salutes WGN’s 90th anniversary

“Chicago Theatre of the Air” (1940s)

“Chicago Theatre of the Air” (1940s)

On June 1, 1924, Colonel Robert McCormick transformed his fledgling radio station into WGN, inspired by the motto of his Chicago Tribune as “World’s Greatest Newspaper.”

Ninety years later, WGN AM 720 has come a long way from McCormick’s vision of the novelty as “the little box that picks sounds from the air" and by most estimates still ranks among America’s greatest radio stations. Continue reading

Jack Minkow 1946-2014

Jack Minkow

Jack Minkow

Jack Minkow brokered some of the biggest deals in the annals of broadcast ownership. But his most enduring legacy may have been his role in bringing Steve Dahl to Chicago.

President and CEO of Chicago-based Broadcasting Asset Management Corporation for 30 years, Minkow died Sunday after suffering two brain aneurysms. He was 68.

Before he launched his firm in 1978, Minkow managed radio stations for United Broadcasting Company in Baltimore and for ABC in Detroit and Chicago, including two years as vice president and general manager of WDAI (now WLS FM 94.7). Continue reading

Giacomo Luca moves up market

 

Giacomo Luca

Giacomo Luca

Remember Giacomo Luca? He’s the Roosevelt University prodigy who commuted four hours each way between Chicago and Lima, Ohio, where he anchored and produced weekend newscasts for NBC affiliate WLIO-TV.

Now just four weeks after he graduated, Luca, 21, already is moving up in the business: He’s just been hired as a bureau reporter for KFVS-TV, the CBS affiliate in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. It’s a 106-market jump — from the nation’s 187th market to the 81st. Continue reading

WGN Radio: ‘We didn’t kill Garry’

Garry Meier

Garry Meier

WGN AM 720 took to social media Thursday to defend its reassignment of afternoon personality Garry Meier.

The move came in response to complaints from listeners after the Tribune Broadcasting news/talk station unveiled a new weekday program lineup Wednesday that shifts Meier off the 50,000-watt broadcast outlet and relegates him to to WGN.fm, the “freeform media” online streaming portal.

“We didn’t kill Garry,” WGN management wrote on its Facebook page. “He’s simply moving to a different, much better-furnished/lit corner of WGN Radio.” Continue reading