Certainly - though perhaps just not in this thread?

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

the game lost the game because they werent on a full powered am station with mike north at the helm.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

Right on cue...

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-- source

Compared to what ike normally writes, that's like it's right out of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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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

Greg, before I saw your post, I thought the same thing.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

It's fair to ask the hosts that followed Johnny B, " Where did his lead in go when you turned on your mics?"

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That's pretty much my point. Finfer and the update girl have this idea of "Yeah, nobody is listening to us, but we should have these jobs for life despite that cuz we're nice people. And fuck Robert Feder for reporting we're going out of business before we knew."

That's their attitude.

My point: It's not like the Tribune and Decastro had the following idea: "Let's hire these no name idiots, lose lots of money and fire them in 9 months for the fun of it." It hurts DeCastro that this went under. Goes to his reputation. He was the GM of this station and WGN. So he loses money in salary I would imagine. Granted, not fired, he still gets more time to fuck up WGN. But Finfer and the update girl act like their company wanted this to fail. They gave them a chance. They sucked. So it's over.

Let's not get lost in how they learned of it. So what? Feder tells them or the boss tells them 1 hour later. It's over either way. They're upset either way. They'll get over the fact that they learned of it on twitter. That's not the story. Them sucking is the story.

No. Your point is trying to manufacture a narrative about how Finfer is upset because he lost his job, and not because of the way in which he lost his job. The problem here is Finfer is on record as saying he knew the station could collapse (he acknowledged explicitly that ratings were down during his rant), but his main problem was the lack of basic professionalism on the part of his bosses when it came time to let staff know they'd be laid off.

Much like your anti-Drinky stance, you probably won't let the facts get in the way of your narrative, so have at it anyway. Finfer is actually a somewhat sympathetic figure (at least at the time of his rant, not so sure about afterwards) in the story so it is incredibly annoying to read you trying to twist this just because you can or because you're bored or something.

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

I agree with with vegan here. You're barking up the wrong tree on this one kid. Time to change the tinfoil to winter grade. Finfer works in what is the epitome of the mass communications industry so I don't think he's out of line for being upset that his bosses didn't tell him beforehand. Thats the weakest of sauces and all on DeCastro.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Finfer clearly stated that he was upset for both reasons. And he also complained later on about not being able to afford some creature comforts going forward, like living downtown, because of the loss of his job.

In reality, when Finfer is out of job on 1/1, the biggest sting will come from a lack of income, not how he ended up without the money.

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The Game failed for a number of reasons:

1. The frequency. Many older radios did not tune to 87.7 - thus wiping out possible listeners.

2. The signal. Too limited a range. Perhaps it would have been better as a low-powered AM station instead?

3. Brandmeier in the mornings. Not that I had a problem with his show (I actually listen to it once in a while now), but it is problematic from a programming and financial standpoint. First, mornings after Bears games, people are going to be looking for sports talk, not Brandmeier. Second, WSCR tried to turn Mike North into the next Don Imus and it did not work. Maybe that would have worked with Johnny on WSCR when Shaer and Memolo were replaced (have Johnny B. in there instead of Buffone and Van Lier). But that's 16 years too late. Plus Johnny and Buzz had to be making good coin on this - not sure what the WGN contracts were but there's no way the ad revenues on 87.7 were covering this.

4. Too many shows in too short a period/too many hosts. We look back at WSCR when it debuted on 820. You had Shaer and Tom Webb as the news anchor/sort-of-sidekick. That was from sunrise to 10. Jiggs and North from 10 - 2. Mac and Boers from 2 - sundown or 6 PM. Murph during the summer from 6 - 7:25 or whenever.

As soon as they went to 1160 shifts ran 5-10, 10-2, 2-6, 6-9, 9-1, 1-5. On The Game they have 5-9, 9-12, 12-3, 3-7, 7-10 and then the overnights. I'm not sure why The Game didn't just go with four-hour shifts for the entire day. Would require fewer hosts, fewer producers and the like. I would have scheduled a 9-1, 1-6, 6-10, and had another 10-2 AM show for live, local talk.

Additionally, I don't understand why they went with the three-man booth (Griff, Quigs and Finfer, and also Jarrett, Harry and Spike). There are two additional salaries that were being paid for no reason (Griff left and I would have shown Spike the door).
The evening show should have been hosted by one person, not two. I would have maybe let Connor hosted 6-10 PM solo, and then put someone on 10-2 to follow him (try to draw some listeners in later instead of switching to NBC sports).

Had they done it my way, they would have had two fewer hosts but four additional hours of programming daily.

5. The update women were bad, bad, bad. I'm not sure why the hosts just could not have given updates - save the money.

Great points all around. The sheer number of hosts is a particularly salient point: all these people, but so few names. Kaplan was the biggest name on the roster; why wasn't he featured in afternoon drive? Why was Jarrett Payton given top billing on the afternoon show? Why was he there at all? Doesn't it just encapsulate everything that sucks about Chicago sports fandom that someone would give Walter Payton's kid a talk show as if merely being Walter Payton's kid conferred any sort of charisma or expertise? That's some 1985 dick-sucking that manages to be first-class and second-generation. I'm not sure what niche the Finfer/Quigley/Griffith show was supposed to fill; that show was the one show too many.

One of the things that WKQX did well during its exile to 87.7 was market its frequency as a feature rather than a bug: their marketing was about how they were way to the left of the dial, that not all radios could pick them up and if they couldn't, it must be because they're lame old dads or something. The Game never used their dial position to be anti-establishment. If anything, they were more establishment than even the Score. They have Dave Kaplan, for God's sake.

The only thing I'll take issue with was having an AM station instead. I don't think that would have been an option due to Tribune's ownership of WGN-AM. I think they were limited to taking an LMA with an FM station.

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can't believe you all haven't pointed out this brilliance.

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no doubt the first thing that popped into your head, fag

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

How many dicks did you swallow last night?

This city loves it some nepotism. I'm not entirely sure how one buys a piece of fruit anymore without knowing someone that knows someone.

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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

but even without the Payton name, he does have credentials that seem coveted for sports radio/tv personalities despite having nothing to do with actually entertaining

He played big time college football, had some time with the NFL/pro leagues and he is from Chicago.

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

I only buy mangos endorsed by Chus.

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-- source

Entirely irrelevant to his being marketable ... although it does perhaps start to "explain" why Jim Belushi keeps getting work.

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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

The rant certainly will do nothing to help him find another gig. Did management handle things poorly, in not sitting down with the employees there and telling them this was a possibility? Perhaps, but it wasn't certain yet, so that may have been inappropriate. They probably want to keep everyone doing their best to grow the station, while there is any chance still for survival. Once employees are told it's over, the effort is not going to be the same, as evidenced by Finfer after he was informed (correctly or not) on Twitter. His reaction was unprofessional.

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Go Cubs!!!!

You have to admire Abattacola's prescience for staying at the SCORE and avoiding disasters like WEBIO and the GAME.

How about maybe that he wasn't asked? Pretty easy to stay when no one else wants you. Its why Im not at the MSFMB.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Phil Rosenthal writes about Ben Finfer and the horrible injustice that was done to him. Jesus Christ. I mean there are bad things in the world. C'mon. This doesn't even crack the top 1000 of this very month.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ct-rosenthal-bosses-bad-news-strategy-1130-biz-20141129-column.html


Ok. We all got it. You learned on twitter. Boss should have told you. Though he was planning on doing so after Finfer's shift. The evil Robert Feder beat the boss by one hour. So what? Finfer has become know over this nationally. He's made several popular web sites and the moment he learned of it is on youtube with over 200,000 views. Finfer finally got his 15 minutes of fame that he never got at THE GAME.

I do like this line:

Transparency, to the extent that it is possible, is in the best interests of everyone.

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

Alex Quigley gone from WGN. The company man who kept his friend's employment news secret gets the axe. I'm glad to see this corporate stooge go.

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So he end up getting fired anyway. Which is why he should have told Finfer a few minutes after he heard about it.

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he sucked!

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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.’”

I wouldn't care even if he was the greatest host ever. He played the bootlicker role to perfection, and still got chopped.

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