{"id":1864,"date":"2013-12-30T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=1864"},"modified":"2013-12-30T15:38:32","modified_gmt":"2013-12-30T21:38:32","slug":"a-30-year-look-back-at-radio-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2013\/12\/30\/a-30-year-look-back-at-radio-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"A 30-year look back at \u2018Radio Wars\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"780\" height=\"585\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4BNjaFs_4O8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a blast from the past: A 1983 look at Chicago radio stars Steve Dahl, Jonathon Brandmeier and the late Bob Wall as they battle for young adult listeners.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the third installment of a three-part sweeps series on \u201cRadio Wars in Chicago: Jockeying for Your Morning\u201d by Bob Sirott on WBBM-Channel 2. Just three years earlier, Sirott had left a successful career as a disc jockey to become a reporter for the CBS-owned station.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Profiled in earlier parts of the series were six morning personalities \u2014 Brandmeier of WLUP, Wall of WGCI, Wally Phillips of WGN, Larry Lujack of WLS, Robert Murphy of WKQX and Tomm Rivers (<em>who?<\/em>) of WBBM-FM \u2014 and their high-stakes struggle for ratings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is unique this time is so many stations all at once are putting a lot of money behind personalities who are allowed to bend the format a little bit, and everything seemed to happen at once,\u201d Sirott tells anchors Walter Jacobson and Don Craig.<\/p>\n<p>In an amusing footnote, four Chicago radio stations refused to air a commercial promoting the Channel 2 series. WLS, WKQX and WLUP rejected the ad because it referred to their competitors by name. A fourth station, WXRT, refused to air the commercial because its morning host, Terri Hemmert, had been excluded from Sirott\u2019s report. \u201cGiven that we weren\u2019t in the series, I didn\u2019t want to promote something that would have had people seeing Murphy and Brandmeier,\u201d WXRT general manager Seth Mason told me.<\/p>\n<p>Sirott was sympathetic: \u201cIf I were on the in morning and wasn\u2019t included in this series, I\u2019d have been annoyed, too,\u201d he said. \u201cIt does point up how serious their competition is. It really is war.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s a blast from the past: A 1983 look at Chicago radio stars Steve Dahl, Jonathon Brandmeier and the late Bob Wall as they battle for young adult listeners. It\u2019s the third installment of a three-part sweeps series on \u201cRadio Wars in Chicago: Jockeying for Your Morning\u201d by Bob Sirott on WBBM-Channel 2. Just three... <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2013\/12\/30\/a-30-year-look-back-at-radio-wars\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&#8594;<\/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\/1864"}],"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=1864"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1873,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions\/1873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}