I am and have been a big Brandmeier fan for sometime, as a disclosure. But I really cannot stand this time of the year for sports - especially in an Olympic year. There's nothing going on that I am really even remotely interested in. Bulls are done for the year. Hockey is in an Olympic mode which is fine, but the games are being decided typically while I am at work. Too early for baseball, and too late for football -- or too early, depending how you view free agency/draft. Which means I am prime for some non-sports talk in the morning and Brandmeier is awesome.

I just read a lot about how people are done with him, and if you are, great, there's Bruce Wolf, the WGN girls, the Big Country John guy, and you have your XM peoples, etc. I think he is entertaining still, and enjoy the listen with him and Buzz, and can switch during commercials to the AM offerings. I'm glad they haven't forced him to go into a sports mode, and I really think they can make a hybrid type station work.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

Is Pirranha Man still alive?

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I'm on board too. Football is over so SCREAMY! and Laughy are useless. Don't care about what Golic's wife told him the other night so they're out.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Gotta be better than what the Loop has now. I went over to The Maxwell Show the other day and it was Maxwell calling John Szahor a "stupid Aspie" for, not shitting you, like fifteen minutes, about saying "thank you" in public or something. It got to the point where they knew it had gone too long and made it part of the joke, but the joke was never funny.

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Why limit yourself to those terrible choices?

There's a whole world of (mostly) commercial free podcasts out there that can be listened to anytime?

Was the John Szahor guy a B&B intern? His twitter feed is a carbon copy of Bernsy's. There are clones ruining other stations.

He was part of the Score in some sense, because there was some well-worn drop where Ranger wanted to punch him in the face. I don't know what he did. I thought maybe he was an engineer at remotes.

Rob Hart is basically Bernstein on anything sports, too, but he's a really talented radio guy. (I interned for his college roommate, incidentally.) He was a rising star at WGN but ended up being the big get for FM News, then got stuck at the Loop when that abortion finally ended. Can't fault him for making the jump when he did, but he probably would have ended up with a regular shift at WGN if he had stuck it out.

EDIT: haha, googled myself because I thought I touched on this before, this from 12/3/12:

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Been listening to JB since he jumped from AM to .FM. Mindless, silly fun for the morning coffee, plus the wife likes him.
Then off to work, where I will generally put on Mac. Stern in the afternoon mostly, usually after PTFB on B&B by about 1:45. Nights on the road it's SiriusXM music.

So, I'm in for JB, out for Kap, Harry, Spike, MiniKap, and will play wait-and-see how the lineup shakes out over the next year.

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Not a mult.

I never gave Johnny B a chance since most of the asshats I knew in high school liked him. Automatic turn off. The few times I have listened, I must admit, I don't really get it. I do like Buzz though. Clueless old burnout.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

He was. Last fall someone texted The Maxwell Show and commented on his parroting whatever Dan Bernstein says and if they wanted that they'd tune into WSCR. He got kind of flustered and said he was an intern for B&B and that he was influenced by Bernstein. Like Dan, Czahor is fond of calling everyone racist while often saying racist (or hipster racist...whatever) things himself.

When I first stumbled across their show I listened quite a bit but that's tailed off as I've gotten tired of several bits like Hart's Jim Morrison and Maxwell's Orion Samuelson. Czahor is the main reason I would PTFB button, though. Waaaay too much of a Bernstein clone.

He was out sick for a few days around the holidays and the shows with just Hart and Maxwell were really good.

*edit* Sorry to derail your thread, newper.

Don't think the hard core WGNers liked it when Johnny B played the old people like it was his old show.

You have to hold long boring conversations with them like Meier.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Bringing Cochran back was clearly the right move as this whole skewing younger demo was a nice idea on paper, but people know WGN is for old people. People have been literally raised for decades that the WGN station is for old people. So, getting rid of Kathy and Judy, Cochran, etc. and trying to go young isn't going to cut it -- especially when they were still trying to hold the old people demo and add the young folks. I get what they were trying to do, but I don't think they did it in any way that makes sense whatsoever.

With this new "sports" network, you are basically starting from scratch, so no preconceived notions about how it goes. Johnny B skews to the younger end of the older folks, and that's exactly the older folk market that you are looking for. I'm not totally sold on Brandmeier being Brandmeier for three hours and then hardcore sports the rest of the day will work, but definitely can focus on a male talk oriented station, which would include a large amount of sports. I guess we'll see how it shakes out, but I could see a Mac moving over after his summer off with the muskies, and coming back as a sports/Dahl hybrid type which he is very suited to.

So far, I like that they haven't forced Brandmeier to focus on sports -- he's not totally anti-sports, but I wouldn't do a five sentence summary of his show style and probably include any reference to sports. Loved the calls to the Lakers (I think) where he would pretend to be a coach saying that there was a "jump around" in 30 minutes... and his call to "Bryon" Scott. Also love the lack of commercials, although I assume that is temporary. Nice to be able to leave it on a station for 20 minutes, jump to the AMs for about 90 seconds, then jump back and you have another 20 minutes of programming.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

newper, you're better at radio than anyone at WGN was during that Randy Michaels era. I'll never understand the quickness to dump the older demographic; they're the ones who listen to the radio all day and have disposable income. And what was their attempt at getting younger? A morning newsman from out of town who'd mispronounce every Chicago shibboleth you put in front of him? A French guy with a gimmick broader than a pro wrestling villain? Mike McConnell? God, WGN really sucked for a while.

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I should like to lodge a complaint about how they framed the Ted Nugent story earlier today ... not because of the content (what a raving asswipe, btw), but because they played "Cat Scratch Fever" prior to Buzz reporting the story - which made me think that, my God, it's Friday, there's Johnny, there's Buzz, and now there's Chet Chit Chat ... which there was not.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

A good listen!

Nice that there aren't commercials every 6 minutes.