Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) on "Happy Days"

Richie Cunningham, the All-American 1950s teenager played by Ron Howard on the long-running sitcom “Happy Days,” has a poster on his bedroom wall that bears the image of a Confederate flag.

But you won’t see it again as long as the show is running on MeTV. From now on, the flag on Richie’s poster will be digitally blurred whenever it appears on the hometown network for “Memorable Entertainment Television.” Continue reading →

WBBM Newswradio

It was a rare clean sweep for Chicago's all-news radio station in the latest Nielsen Audio survey.

Audience estimates released Tuesday showed the Entercom combo of WBBM 780-AM/WCFS 105.9-FM finishing first overall for the fifth consecutive month and winning all four weekday time periods — mornings, middays, afternoons and evenings. Continue reading →

Maze Jackson

Robservations on the media beat:

Todd Stroger

Citing pressure from his bosses to ease off criticism of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, WVON 1690-AM morning host Maze Jackson resigned last week, taking co-host Todd Stroger and producer Sonia Escobar with him. "The long and short of it is I was censored by station management and told that I could no longer discuss the mayor, anything that could be connected with her, and to cut off any callers that were critical of her," Jackson told me. "I could not accept the censorship, so I chose to resign." Jackson and Stroger promptly turned up on time-brokered gospel station WBGX 1570-AM, where their show airs from 6 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday (and streams on Facebook and YouTube). Jackson, a political consultant, strategist and former lobbyist, had hosted mornings on WVON since 2017. Stroger, the former Cook County Board president, joined him as co-host in 2019. Melody Spann Cooper, chairman of Midway Broadcasting and general manager of WVON, confirmed that Jackson and Stroger “resigned over editorial and content issues with management,” and said she expects to announce a new morning show soon. In the interim, Ernest B. Fenton, an attorney and longtime contributor to the news/talk station, has been filling in from 6 to 9 a.m. weekdays. Continue reading →

Aurora Police Department

WMAQ-Channel 5 is taking the rap for a story posted briefly online that misidentified the police chief of west suburban Aurora, Illinois, as her counterpart in Aurora, Colorado.

The story concerned the firing of three police officers from Aurora, Colorado, who appeared in photos showing them reenact a chokehold used on Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who died last year after police stopped him on the street in the Denver suburb. Continue reading →

Hugh Downs

Robservations on the media beat:

The great Hugh Downs, whose more than five decades in television earned him a Guinness-certified record for most hours on network TV, started it all in Chicago. As a radio announcer at NBC Chicago in the 1940s, Downs moved to TV on "Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” the seminal children’s show created by puppeteer Burr Tillstrom. “On rare occasions I would be seen also, but usually it was voiceover stuff, announcing the program,” Downs recalled in a 1997 interview. “The show had no real rehearsal. They would discuss a situation and they would then just ad lib the whole thing and do it somehow tailored to time. That was an art that may be lost now in our business.” During the years he worked at NBC’s Merchandise Mart studios, Downs lived in north suburban Wilmette, according to broadcast historian Rich Samuels. It was at NBC Chicago that Downs met Dave Garroway, whom he eventually would follow as host of NBC’s “Today.” His amazing list of credits also included Sid Caesar's "Caesar's Hour,” “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar, the game show “Concentration,” and more than 20 years on ABC's “20/20.” Downs died Wednesday at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was 99. Continue reading →

Carl Amari and Lisa Wolf (Photo: Bob Chwedyk/Daily Herald)

With the impending cancellation of the weekly “WGN Radio Theatre” on WGN 720-AM, host Carl Amari is about to bring classic drama and comedy from the golden age of radio back to WIND 560-AM.

Starting July 11, Amari’s nationally syndicated “Hollywood 360,” co-hosted by Lisa Wolf, will air live on WIND from 8 p.m. to midnight Saturdays. The station previously aired the program from 2009 to 2015. Continue reading →

Dick Johnson

The passing of one prominent Chicago news anchor and the promotion of another to a new network position led the top 10 most-read stories here in June.

To read the full posts, click on the headlines: Continue reading →

David Jackson (Photo: WTTW/Chicago Tonight)

Robservations on the media beat:

David Jackson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who spearheaded a valiant effort to find a benevolent owner for the Chicago Tribune, has resigned after 29 years at the newspaper. Earlier this year Jackson and colleague Gary Marx wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which they pleaded for "a civic-minded local owner or group of owners" to rescue the Tribune from what they called "avaricious destruction" by New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital. (Here is the link.) Jackson's departure comes as Alden is poised to become majority stockholder of Tribune Publishing. “I am grateful beyond words for the many mentors I've had in this newsroom — reporters and editors who taught me our profession's highest standards — and for the many, many lifelong friends I've made,” he told me. “We got to do a lot of good together. Working here has been the gift of a lifetime." Jackson, whose last day at the Tribune will be July 10, declined to comment on his future plans. Continue reading →

BIN: Black Information Network

Radio giant iHeartMedia announced the launch today of a full-time national audio network “dedicated exclusively to providing an objective, accurate and trusted source of news coverage with a Black voice and perspective.”

BIN: Black Information Network will be headed by Tony Coles, former senior vice president of programming for iHeartMedia Chicago. Coles, who most recently was executive vice president of programming for the company’s west region, will be based in Chicago as president of BIN. Continue reading →

Chicago Tribune

Robservations on the media beat:

Staffers at the Chicago Tribune are bracing for bad news — but hoping for a miracle. Today marks the end of the standstill agreement for Alden Global Capital, the New York-based hedge fund that owns 33 percent of Tribune Publishing shares. That means Alden is now free to increase its stake in the company — including the possibility of acquiring the 24 percent held by Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times. As majority stockholder, Alden would be free to bleed the company dry through sweeping layoffs and other cutbacks to vital journalism. “I would love our team to be remembered as the team that saved the newspaper business,” Alden's managing director, Heath Freeman, told the Washington Post in an interview last month. The last guy who made that claim was Michael Ferro, who wound up selling his shares in Tribune Publishing to Alden. Continue reading →