Do you have a broadcasting resume, Doc?

Only behind the camera and in the director's chair.

Doc and Irish Boy.

Get it done

The guy they had on in the late afternoon sounded like Bobcat Goldthwait. Not exactly a radio-friendly voice. I didn't catch his name, but he said he started out in Chicago and went to Dallas shortly after 9/11 to host a show and is now back in Chicago. He was saying he wants listeners to meet him every Saturday night at Tribune Tower after his show to go out for a few cocktails.

I can't see that ending poorly.

Well, Bernstein has the everybody is wrong genre covered.

?

The guy they had on in the late afternoon sounded like Bobcat Goldthwait. Not exactly a radio-friendly voice. I didn't catch his name, but he said he started out in Chicago and went to Dallas shortly after 9/11 to host a show and is now back in Chicago. He was saying he wants listeners to meet him every Saturday night at Tribune Tower after his show to go out for a few cocktails.

I can't see that ending poorly.

The guys that are on right now are pretty entertaining. They are brothers. And there is some hotp-sounding Katie chick on with them.

They are goofing around a lot and pretty funny.

On til midnight - Abe Cannon and his brother Sam or something?

Steve Dahl's Bootleg: The Tale of the Tape/Getting Wired
By Michael Miner @hottype

By Michael Miner

Steve Dahl's Bootleg: The Tale of the Tape

Radio is tricky to write about because it's so loosely linked to reality. Names don't come with faces, and you can't always believe the names. Steve Dahl, to his credit, has a first name and a last, but the other key players in this drama are known to Chicago as Shemp, Pugs, and Kelly.

Then there's the noisy chorus that comments on the action. God knows who those people are.

The curtain went up last Thursday on a strangely deferential Robert Feder column in the Sun-Times. Without so much as raising an eyebrow, Feder allowed Dahl to explain away behavior that a more judgmental writer would have pilloried.

Feder asked Dahl to talk about some tapes of chortling colleagues he'd been playing on the air. In one of the snatches of conversation Dahl shared with his WCKG audience, a male voice could be heard exclaiming, "The guy [Dahl] lives in a visual fantasy world!" A female voice responded, "Yeah, you know, it's like, yeah, sure, sooner or later we're going to be out to get him. But not right now. We're not in any position to right now. We're not stupid."

The next voice was Dahl's, live on the air. "That's funny," he said. "That makes me laugh."

Feder reported that the tapes captured two part-time radio hosts Dahl already suspected of ripping him behind his back. They were soon fired by the station at Dahl's urging. But Feder didn't tell their side of the story. He didn't even identify them (they were Pugs and Kelly). And he didn't say that taping a private conversation and putting it on the air might be ethically and legally problematic. "I really tried to be neutral," Feder tells me. "I had every intention of following the story as it develops, and I highly doubt that this is the last that I'll be reporting on it."

Dahl told Feder the taping had been done with cameras and audio equipment already installed in a WCKG studio for security purposes. Dahl said, "I have never played those tapes for management. I merely used them for my own edification so I could feel confident that I had done the right thing. It was a personal matter." He'd taped "to confirm my suspicions. This was in a studio filled with microphones and cameras. Legally, I don't feel they had any expectation of privacy in that case."

Feder told enough of the story that bright readers could figure out the rest. Dahl had taped and aired two people's private conversation; then, arguably motivated by what he heard on that tape, he got WCKG to take their jobs.

"He just put it out there as it is and let the chips fall where they may," says a radio executive who admires Feder's craft. "The best way is to let somebody hang himself."

Pugs and Kelly began hearing from attorneys who'd sized up the conceivable damages and wanted a slice of that sizzling bacon. All they were asking Pugs and Kelly to do was sue Dahl and WCKG, which is owned by Infinity Broadcasting, which is controlled by CBS. And after the dust settled they'd have a lifetime of fun looking for another job in radio.

Pugs and Kelly, who hosted a Saturday night show on WCKG and filled in at other times, are actually John Myron and Kelly Mohr. Kelly is married to Shemp, actually Mark DeYoung, who'd been Dahl's producer until Dahl fired him in August. Expecting a second child and trying to close on a house, Kelly was in no position to quit in protest when Dahl booted her husband.

Understandably, Kelly and Shemp aren't saying much. "I was thinking about a quote for you," said Kelly earlier this week, trying to be helpful. "If he thinks people talk badly about him in the studio, he should take a walk down to the sales department."

Dahl tried to call me during a commercial and missed me. So he told Ali, his personal assistant, to give me a message. The message was: "Those people are all idiots, and they don't know what they're talking about."

For messages by the carload, the place to go is Crowbar--"CROW" stands for Chicago Radio Online Watch--a board launched two and a half years ago by Zecom Communications. It's no place for the faint of heart, and nothing posted there can be taken at face value.

"You have three types of people, especially in the case of a Steve Dahl," explains Zecom president Marty Zivin, who can tell pretty well who Crowbar visitors are. There's a silent majority that laps up the action from the sidelines. Then there's the 10 percent who are "Dahl haters" and can't get enough of him. "Every time he burps on the air they write," says Zivin. And 15 percent are radio insiders "doing smash mouth. It's common knowledge that over the years Steve Dahl's burned a lot of bridges."

Between the haters and the smash mouthers, Dahl has been annihilated daily, as debate rages among monikers such as Dulls Bitch, Are You Goofy?, LawZilla, Jubilation T. Cornhole, What a Crock!!!!, and Still a Fan. Fortunately an occasional posting rings of sober authority. For example, police sergeant Alan Hurlbut, star 3109, coolly dissected the matter and reported, "I ran this by my assistant state's attorney at coffee this morning and he was of the opinion that the state code violation on eavesdropping was clearly violated. He also indicated that there would probably be civil recovery if the victims had a good attorney." And a Northwestern law school instructor with communications law as a specialty wrote in to predict that "the victims can recover damages in at least six figures" and that if they took the matter to state or federal prosecutors they could have Dahl arrested.

Sadly, the Chicago Police Department tells me that Sergeant Hurlbut, star 3109, doesn't exist. My research persuades me the Northwestern instructor doesn't exist either. Someone wise in the ways of Chicago radio warns me that both these postings--and many others--are probably the work of a certain famous local radio personality who hates Dahl and wants to put him away. The radio personality denies this.

After wandering for days in a culture characterized by extravagant noms de plume, endless and unusable off-the-record conversations, and unattributable fear and loathing, I was astonished to receive E-mail from "John Myron AKA Pugs." "I haven't really been speaking to anyone on this subject," said Pugs, "but I think it's time I start."

And for 500 words Pugs went on about Steve Dahl. "Growing up he was my hero. Other kids had Ryne Sandberg or Walter Payton but I had Steve." However, "Steve Dahl has become an angry, bigoted egomaniac whose insecurities, jealousies and complete distrust of others has eroded his once rabidly loyal fan base....He attempted to publicly humiliate and professionally stigmatize me as someone that can't be trusted. Steve Dahl is a very influential man in Chicago radio and the blacklisting I fear this has caused will follow me throughout my career."

Pugs pointed out that Shemp had just been fired and Kelly was eight months pregnant when his chat with her occurred. "To say that Steve Dahl was on our shit list would be an understatement," he acknowledged. "Venting your frustrations to someone you trust in what you perceive to be private seems a fairly common form of workplace therapy."

And so it is.

You guys mock Mike North,but at least he doesn't sit in his basement like a fat troll for 20 years and charge people money to listen to his mostly dead air rants.

Two shows I heard bits of: one was Jason somebody and ex-Bear Jason McKee.

Jim Memlo and Todd Hollansworth 8-11 Sunday ...the MLB radio network morning show team goes local

I guess Stern was right about Dahl: small time regional bitch!

The Game should have gone after Mark Grote. He's in the demo, he's not a bernstein clone, and he's more complete than work-in-progress. They probably did, but he might be harboring some vestigial allegiance to the Score after the rehab thing.

I tuned into The Game earlier today & heard Jason Gotch & Jerry Riles! Both of them are good, with Gotch from Yahoo Sports Radio, which was recently sold to NBC Sports, & Riles, who you old time Scoreheads surely remember. Good stuff.