{"id":17397,"date":"2018-03-23T06:00:23","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=17397"},"modified":"2018-03-23T06:00:23","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T11:00:23","slug":"robservations-chicagos-wgn-celebrate-70-years-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2018\/03\/23\/robservations-chicagos-wgn-celebrate-70-years-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Robservations: \u2018Chicago\u2019s Very Own\u2019 WGN to celebrate 70 years on TV"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

<\/a> WGN Television Opening Night (April 5, 1948)<\/p><\/div>\n

Robservations on the media beat:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

WGN<\/p><\/div>\n

WGN-Channel 9<\/a> will celebrate its 70th anniversary with a one-hour special hosted by star meteorologist Tom Skilling.<\/strong> \u201cWGN-TV: 70 Years as Chicago\u2019s Very Own,\u201d airing at 8 p.m. April 5, also will feature Dan Roan<\/strong> on WGN\u2019s sports history, Micah Materre, Larry Potash, Robin Baumgarten<\/strong> and Paul Konrad<\/strong> on major news events WGN has covered, Dean Richards<\/strong> on legendary children's programs, and Lourdes Duarte<\/strong> on the station\u2019s community involvement. The Tribune Broadcasting flagship debuted April 5, 1948, with a grand opening program from Tribune Tower. Will this turn out to be a requiem? With parent company Tribune Media slated for sale <\/a>to Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group, \u201cChicago\u2019s Very Own\u201d may not belong to Chicago much longer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Scott Stantis<\/p><\/div>\n

Chicago Tribune<\/a> editorial cartoonist Scott Stantis<\/strong> issued a public apology <\/a>Thursday for buying Twitter followers in violation of the newspaper\u2019s code of ethics. Calling it a \u201ccheap and easy way to increase my Twitter audience,\u201d he acknowledged purchasing 5,000 fake followers in 2015 from a company subsequently linked to a \u201cblack market\u201d of bogus accounts. \u201cThat I have contributed to the diminishing of readers\u2019 trust in me and in the Chicago Tribune fills me with shame,\u201d he added. Stantis said he has deactivated his original account at @SStantis, which had about 22,000 followers, and opened a new one at @ScottStantis.<\/a> In a letter to readers posted on the Tribune\u2019s website, publisher and editor-in-chief Bruce Dold<\/strong> wrote: \u201cWe regret this violation of your trust in the Chicago Tribune.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Real Deal<\/p><\/div>\n

Coverage of Chicago\u2019s real estate market is about to get a new player. The Real Deal,<\/a> a magazine and online site reporting on New York, Miami and Los Angeles commercial and residential real estate, is expanding to Chicago. The financial news media company was launched in 2003 by publisher and film producer Amir Korangy.<\/strong> Starting in April, TRD Chicago <\/a>will be headed by senior reporter Scott Klocksin,<\/strong> a Chicago native who most recently was commercial real estate reporter for New York-based Bisnow Media.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Me-TV FM<\/p><\/div>\n

Chicago\u2019s red hot Me-TV FM<\/a> has its first export. The soft-rock oldies format of Weigel Broadcasting\u2019s WRME FM 87.7 has been picked up by a new station in the Midland, Bay City and Saginaw market in Michigan. Starting in early April, the Northern States Broadcasting outlet will launch as 1250 WJMK (acquiring the call letters of the former Chicago station). \u201cWe are excited to bring the Tri-Cities the proven Me-TV music format, which attained ratings far surpassing the heritage stations in Chicago in only one year of being on the air,\u201d station manager Philip Bernstein<\/strong> said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Collin Lambert<\/p><\/div>\n

Collin Lambert,<\/strong> vice president of Moody Radio, <\/a>has resigned after 15 years at the broadcast division of Chicago-based Moody Bible Institute and parent company of WMBI AM\/FM 1110\/90.1.<\/a> Under his leadership, Moody Radio expanded to more than 70 full-power stations and translators, six Internet stations and more than 1,600 outlets that carry its Christian ministry programming. Lambert told staffers he is moving back home to Austin, Texas, where he will join friends in a restaurant business. A search for his successor is underway.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Cecilia Vaisman<\/p><\/div>\n

An award in honor of the late Cecilia Vaisman<\/strong> has been established jointly by Northwestern University\u2019s Medill School of Journalism<\/a> and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. The Cecilia Vaisman Award for Multimedia Reporters will be given annually to audio and video journalists \u201cwho bring light to the issues that affect the Latinx and Hispanic communities in the U.S. and around the world.\u201d Vaisman, who died in 2015, was a multimedia producer for NPR who taught audio documentary and bilingual reporting classes at Medill.\u00a0In 2016, she was honored posthumously with a Studs Terkel Award from Chicago-based Public Narrative.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s comment of the day:<\/a> Shane Gericke:<\/strong> It's shameful. [Michael] Ferro's $15 million \"consulting contract\" would have funded those [Chicago Tribune] reporters for years, if corporations had the balls to fire executives and offer no rich severance packages, as they routinely do to the workers who actually MAKE the product the public buys.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robservations on the media beat: WGN-Channel 9 will celebrate its 70th anniversary with a one-hour special hosted by star meteorologist Tom Skilling. \u201cWGN-TV: 70 Years as Chicago\u2019s Very Own,\u201d airing at 8 p.m. April 5, also will feature Dan Roan on WGN\u2019s sports history, Micah Materre, Larry Potash, Robin Baumgarten and Paul Konrad on major... Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17397"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17411,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17397\/revisions\/17411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}