sinicalypse wrote:
btw CH, for me the absolute epitome-of/one-image-that-symbolizes the randy michaels era was when i read that he got caught throwing parties in colonel mccormick's personal office, including that oh-so-damning part where he specifically went and lit up a stogie in the old man's office. that's symbolically taking a big shit all over the holistic/hallowed legacy of the tribune empire right there, and once i read about that i knew the guy was toast and that a lot of oldschool people would do everything in their power to make sure the guy is nothing but a complete abject failure for the rest of his time in chicago, let alone @tribune.
I think there was a definite element of making sure Randy Michaels failed with Merlin Media, but I'm not sure he needed the help. FM News was sort of a good idea in terms of having a news radio station on the FM side, but positioning it as news radio for women whose delicate ladybrains couldn't process the big serious voices talking big serious stories on WBBM was offensively dumb and ensured his failure. He then buried himself even deeper by trying to pre-record the news/weather/traffic updates, but apparently their board ops were even more retarded than the ones who work at the Score, because they'd run traffic reports from previous hours and weather reports from previous days.
So while it's a little perverse that Feder has been obsessively cackling over every Randy Michaels misstep up to 101.1 going back to alternative like nothing happened (I mean, it's hardly as if Robert Feder had spent two and a half years lamenting that he can't hear Smashing Pumpkins), I can't feel too sorry for the guy. He was Bad At Radio. His defenders, wherever they are, always say something like "Randy really loves radio, he knows radio. If you mention a set of call letters, he can tell you where that station is and what their format is." Okay, he memorized callsigns, but he's still an idiot. That's like saying that you have great people skills because you read a phonebook: not only does this not denote the skill you think you have, it fundamentally decreases the likelihood that you have that skill.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.