NBC 5’s Marin, Ahern to host weekly show on politics
Mary Ann Ahern and Carol Marin
Robservations on the media beat:
- In a spinoff of its Ward Room political blog, NBC 5 Chicago is launching a half-hour weekly talk show hosted by its crack political reporting team of Carol Marin and Mary Ann Ahern. Starting this week, the video version of Ward Room will air at 7pm Fridays on Chicago Nonstop Digital Channel 5.2. Taped at various locations, the show will feature interviews with local political figures, and focus on the hot stories of the week. “Ward Room has become a destination blog for local political news both in Chicago and nationally,” Frank Whittaker, station manager and vice president of news, said in a statement. “Expanding the Ward Room brand to a weekly show is a natural evolution, especially as we head into a presidential election year.”
- Two public radio broadcasters and a weekly print reporter are this year’s recipients of the prestigious Studs Terkel Community Media Awards. Maria Hinojosa, host of National Public Radio’s Latino USA, Chip Mitchell, a reporter in the Humboldt Park bureau of Chicago Public Radio WBEZ-FM (91.5), and Mick Dumke, political reporter for the Chicago Reader, will be honored March 14 by the nonprofit Community Media Workshop. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Terkel’s birth. “Studs was one of the world’s most effective communicators, multi-talented as a writer, an actor, a journalist, an orator,” CMW president Thom Clark said in a statement. "He brought dignity and hope to the hopeless and powerless, and had a raw, respectful and honest insight about those who succeeded in life.” For information on the benefit fundraiser, see communitymediaworkshop.org.
Don Cornelius brought ‘love, peace and soul’ to the world
Don Cornelius
Don Cornelius was remembered Wednesday as a genuine Chicago original whose iconic dance show Soul Train advanced race relations and changed popular music, fashion and entertainment forever.
Tributes from around the world lauded the groundbreaking producer and legendary host who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Los Angeles home. He was 75.
Old friend and longtime radio executive Marv Dyson may have been the last Chicagoan to hear from Cornelius. “I just spoke with him yesterday, and he left three voice-mail messages on my machine yesterday,” Dyson told the Tribune's Steve Johnson. "He sounded very up and into his career. That’s why it was hard to understand why he would kill himself.”
Nowhere was his influence greater than in his hometown, where Cornelius began his broadcasting career and created the program that would become one of the longest running and most successful in first-run syndication history.
Super week for Spanish sports/talk on Chicago radio
Oscar Ramos
While Chicago’s two sports/talk radio stations are enjoying record-high ratings these days, a major new Spanish-language player just entered the game.
Wednesday marks the debut of ESPN Deportes Radio over not one but two Chicago-area outlets. As first reported here, the full-time Spanish sports programming will replace the news/talk format on NextMedia Group’s north suburban Waukegan-based WKRS-AM (1220). But wait, there’s more: Clear Channel Media and Entertainment also will carry the format on its low-power 97.5 FM.
Ex-anchorman ‘climbing the mountain’ to personal recovery
Kevin Roy
One month after he was arrested and spent Christmas in jail on a variety of charges, former Chicago television newsman Kevin Roy says he’s thinking of making a bid for the White House to help change public attitudes about mental illness.
Roy, 43, is the former ABC 7 reporter and weekend news anchor whose contract was not renewed in April 2010 after he repeatedly failed to show up for newscasts. At the time, he cited “physical exhaustion” for missing assignments.
In an interview Monday, Roy acknowledged that he had been dealing with substance abuse. “I had been through my own personal dealings with addiction," he said. "That certainly played a role in why I lost my job. I want to have this opportunity to take full responsibility for that and acknowledge it. But I’ve also been working real hard to face my demons and to overcome them.”
VanOsdol adds his voice to Dahl’s podcast network
James VanOsdol
Another distinguished Chicago broadcaster is about to join Steve Dahl’s subscription podcast network.
James VanOsdol, the widely admired rock jock best known for his long run at the former Q101, will host a monthly 45-minute interview show for The Steve Dahl Network, the online venture Dahl launched with his own daily podcast last August. VanOsdol follows legendary radio personality Kevin Matthews, who came onboard with a weekly podcast in December and now hosts three shows a week for the network.
“It's a real pleasure to give talented people, such as James and Kevin Matthews a place from which they may continue to ply their trade,” Dahl told me Sunday. “It's also nice to know that their fans get to hear them exactly how the radio gods intended they be heard.”
Ads infinitum: Online exhibit celebrates classic commercials
Mean Joe Greene
Just in time for Super Bowl week, a critically acclaimed online exhibit on the history of television commercials has been relaunched by Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications.
Culled from the museum’s archives of more than 10,000 commercials and nearly 100,000 hours of content, We’ll Be Right Back: 60 Years of Television Commercials includes more than four decades of Super Bowl ads, from such classics as Mean Joe Greene’s Coca-Cola spot and Joe Namath and Farrah Fawcett shilling for Noxema to Betty White and Abe Vigoda touting Snickers.
After the exhibit was originally launched last year, it quickly became the museum’s most popular online feature ever. Organized by decade (from “The Cool ’50s” to “The 2K’s”) and by genre, each section includes an authoritative essay that provides historical context to the featured commercials. Additional sections also cover product placement, political advertising, infomercials and public service announcements.
Rodgers, Harvey join Black Journalists Hall of Fame
Pat Harvey
Two of the most charismatic and dynamic figures ever to work in Chicago television — former CBS 2 general manager Johnathan Rodgers and former WGN news anchor Pat Harvey — are among five new members of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.
Rodgers, 66, who joined CBS 2 as assistant news director in the 1970s, returned in 1986 to become the first African-American general manager of any network-owned station in the country. After four years in that role, he was promoted to Chicago-based head of the CBS Television Stations group and later went on to become president of the Discovery Networks. He retired in 2011 after seven years as president and CEO of TV One.
Harvey, 57, was a popular and award-winning news anchor at WGN from 1985 to 1989 before moving on to a stellar career in Los Angeles — first at KCAL-TV and since 2010 at KCBS-TV. Earlier in her career, she helped launch CNN Headline News and anchored CNN’s Daybreak newscast.
Comcast, NBC move broadcast museum closer to opening
Chicago’s nearly completed Museum of Broadcast Communications took another big step forward Thursday with the announcement of a $2.7 million grant from Comcast Corp., NBC News and NBC 5 Chicago.
A jubilant Bruce DuMont, founder, president and CEO of the museum, called it the biggest infusion of support since Governor Pat Quinn fulfilled the state’s long-delayed capital development grant of $6 million in 2010.
“We are grateful to have Comcast, NBC News, and NBC 5 Chicago — institutions that have contributed so much to the history of television — show so much support for our new facility,” DuMont said in a statement. “We are excited to open our doors and share the experience with visitors.”
WVON keeping hope alive for Santita’s return
Santita Jackson
Three follow-ups for the price of one:
- Tuesday’s report here about Santita Jackson parting company with urban news/talk WVON-AM (1690) in a “cost-cutting measure” at the station elicited a clarification from Melody Spann Cooper, chairman of parent company Midway Broadcasting and general manager of WVON. The eldest daughter of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson has been gone since mid-December from the midday talk show she hosted for more than five years, but Cooper said they have not severed ties. If and when Jackson lands a radio syndication deal, WVON would welcome her back. “Santita’s goal is to have a national platform, and I need some time to get over a little [financial] slump,” Cooper said. “When she rolls out on a national level, I will clear this market for her, let her use our studios and give her all the support I can give her.”
- It’s over and out for Alex Perez as a general assignment reporter at NBC-owned WMAQ-Channel 5. As tipped here last week, Perez is believed to be close to a deal to join ABC News. His last day at NBC 5 will be February 3. Saying Perez was leaving “to pursue a network opportunity,” Frank Whittaker, station manager and vice president of news, wrote in a memo to staffers: “We appreciate all of his contributions over the last six and a half years, and wish him the best in the future.” Declining comment on his next move, Perez told me: “I do want to mention how grateful I am to my colleagues here at NBC Chicago. They are some of the best, hardest working journalists in the business. I’m lucky to have been able to work with, grow, and learn from them over the last six and half years.” A native of Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, Perez joined NBC 5 in 2005 from KVIA-TV in El Paso, Texas.
WLS adds Ponce Brothers to weekend talk show lineup
Anthony and Dan Ponce
It’s official: The first family of Chicago television has conquered radio, too.
Reporters Dan and Anthony Ponce, the sons of veteran Chicago news anchor Phil Ponce, have been named permanent weekend co-hosts at news/talk WLS-AM (890). The two, who had been filling in together since last May on the Cumulus Media station, will be on from 1 to 3pm Sundays, starting this weekend.
"There's always so much more to report beyond time we have on TV,” said Dan Ponce, who continues as a general assignment reporter at Tribune Co.-owned WGN-Channel 9. “This is the perfect opportunity to tell the story behind the story.” He previously spent three years as a reporter at ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7.
Younger brother Anthony Ponce, a general assignment reporter and occasional fill-in news anchor at NBC-owned WMAQ-Channel 5, said: "We're hoping to give listeners a peek into the world of Chicago journalism, and hear their opinions about the week's biggest stories and how they're covered.”
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