I'm someone who needs the radio on as I fall asleep. I have a small transistor with earplugs on so my wife is not disturbed. The last two nights I was tuned to WGN.

I just wanted to state that DiGilio sounds like he is mentally unstable,seriously. Screaming constantly,bursting in uncontrollable laughter and constantly referring to ANYTHING as "The best one ever". I know it's the overnight shift but this fruitloop needs to get launched finally.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

Heard him around 4:20 while driving home...definitely has gone loco. I ptfb after 2 minutes.

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

I enjoy his movie review podcast with Colin and Eric, though their "ums" and "ahs" irritate the crap out of me. They've been doing their review segment for over 10 years. I would think they'd be able to put a sentence together without the vocal pauses. I would be, um, wrong.

WGN has really crapped the bed in terms of retaining talent in the past few years. I didn't listen much before but now I never listen. I still don't know why they messed with Milt Rosenberg late nights. He was kind of perfect for that slot

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

He's always pretty much sounded like that (screaming, bizarre laughter, hothead, etc.) IMO.

Does anyone remember Jay Marvin? He was a lunatic, and DiGilio's speech pattern often reminds me of him.

Wow! I thought I was old school!
I haven't heard anybody use the term "transistor radio" in a jillion years!!!

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Host of the weekly "We Fish ASA" podcast
Weekly columnist for the Northwest Herald
Bi-monthly columnist for Illinois Outdoor News magazine
Former host of The Outdoors Experience on WIND and The Great Outdoors on CLTV
http://www.wefishasa.com

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

They need to run off of those old oblong 9-volt transistor radio batteries or they don't count!

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Host of the weekly "We Fish ASA" podcast
Weekly columnist for the Northwest Herald
Bi-monthly columnist for Illinois Outdoor News magazine
Former host of The Outdoors Experience on WIND and The Great Outdoors on CLTV
http://www.wefishasa.com

Digilio went to the same high school as I did, and I thought he did pretty well for himself when he got the WGN gig on weekends. I figured he would eventually be promoted to a more prominent role. For whatever reason, he's just stayed in the same obscure slots.

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It definitely seemed like he was being groomed for a much more prominent role like you said, but I think his personality put the kibosh on that. I got the impression he thought he was too edgy to conform to what they wanted him to be. But, that's just a guess on my part.

I feel like we've had a dozen Nick Digilio threads in my time here, so I'm probably saying the same stuff I've always said, but hey, that's boarding.

Nick D might be Chicago radio's ultimate not-ready-for-prime-time player. As far back as 2004, I used to listen to him after Cubs games or if I was driving home from somewhere with my dad because it was something we could agree on. He had a good thing going as a weekend late-night/overnight guy as sort of a Gen-X Roy Leonard, especially when Garry Lee Wright sat in with him. I heard Wilco for the first time on his show. Obviously, he was the youngest, hippest thing at 'GN at the time, low bar notwithstanding, so everyone who cared about Chicago radio was always clamoring for Nick to get a bigger role at the station.

But something happened along the way, I want to say maybe seven or eight years ago, where it became clear that Nick had pretty much used up his whole trick bag over the years. I don't remember whether it was that they extended his hours (he used to be Friday overnights, Saturday night before midnight, and maybe had a Sunday shift in there) or listeners aging out or what, but it got to where his show was not only repetitive and tiresome in the long run, but sometimes within the span of a single show, just ranting about one stupid topic for hours at a time. I think this was also at the time that Randy Michaels and Pig Virus were running wild and giving any dipshit who could fog a mirror decent airtime (Mike McConnell! Greg Jarrett! Turi Ryder! Simon Badinter! Joe "I'm Comin' To Get You Obama" Walsh!) while Nick D was stalled out at the weekend graveyard shift, so maybe there was some anxiety there, I don't know. Point is, what seemed like a pretty cool show on an otherwise staid station had become lame as fuck on a station that had otherwise gotten even worse, and the whole talkin'-'bout-Chicago-radio community turned on a dime when it came to Nick's rightful career trajectory. I think at some point he ended up missing a bunch of time to dry out.

Now I think he has something like a 2a-5a weekday overnight shift in what feels like sort of an up-or-out move: they felt obligated to promote him out of his years of loyalty through the Pig Virus Bad Times, but they also knew they couldn't give him the entire five-hour overnight for five nights a week if he was already overexposing himself with two or three three-hour weekend shows, so they gave him the ass end of the shift for people who make it through Patti Vazquez's entire show and called it a step up. I haven't heard him in years but I suspect I could tune in and pick right back up where I left off in 2011.

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I like Nick, but his timeslot doesn't work for me.

He either LOVES something or HATES something, never much in between. When he LOVES something, he LOVES it hard, whether it's the new Mad Max, Felicity, Captain Whammo or Gilmore Girls. He also has a very eclectic taste.