With the cancellation of Garry Meier’s online WGN.FM show, in-conjunction with the announcement that The Game/WGWG-LP 87.7 (FM) is being dismantled at year’s end, I just had to rant about everything that’s happened this past week.
Length of Audio: Approximately 30 minutes
Discussion Points:
- Reviewing the news of the week — the immediate cancellation of Garry Meier’s online show from WGN.FM, what’s up with Jonathon Brandmeier’s show and the dismantling of The Game 88.7.
- How much it meant in May, 2013 when then Tribune Company hired Jimmy de Castro to preside over WGN-AM 720, and why there was reason to be optimistic about the station’s future. This discussion morphs into where and how things started to go wrong.
- Garry Meier’s treatment by Jimmy de Castro since May of this year, and how ultimately, it led to Meier’s WGN departure. It bears repeating… Garry Meier got screwed, and there is no plausible explanation that de Castro can give to the WGN audience.
- Despite the dismantling of WGN.FM into what will likely be re-branded as “WGN Plus,” it makes no sense to cancel Garry Meier’s show. Tribune Media will pay Meier a lot of money to stay home for the next 10 or 11 months, despite his success and popularity. Meanwhile, the company is attempting to workout a deal that would allow Jonathon Brandmeier to continue doing his show, online only, even though the company has no further obligations to him (Brandmeier has been working without a contract).
- Discussion of WGN Radio’s future and why, despite my previous blog where I called for de Castro’s firing, I will reluctantly root for him to succeed.