Concerning radio formatting, there’s supposed to be a distinct difference between all-news and talk. I wish talk radio programmers understood that.

I have no problem with how smaller market talk stations program all-news during morning and/or afternoon drive. My problem is with talk stations that attempt to program excessive news and traffic updates around their regular talk programming. While attempting to offer the best of both worlds to listeners, such efforts often become a detriment to the overall talk format, at the expense of both the listening audience and the talk show hosts.

Listeners of Chicago’s two prominent talk stations, WGN-AM 720 and WLS-AM 890, should know full well how such detriment has affected their favorite talk shows. Both stations have made repeated attempts through the years to beef up their own news and traffic coverage in hopes of luring listeners away from the ratings and revenue all-news powerhouse WBBM-AM 780 (which simulcasts on WCFS FM 105.9 — which will soon have some real relevance for seemingly the first time ever). WGN’s traffic and weather on the seven’s severely impacted the overall quality of Spike O’Dell’s morning show and Steve Cochran’s afternoon show, while WLS’s traffic and weather on the fives was enough to hinder one of Chicago’s best talk personalities, Roe Conn.

While WLS is expected to lessen the amount of afternoon traffic updates once Steve Dahl makes his debut in November, WGN is aiming to make another lunge at WBBM. According to a Chicago Tribune piece last month, WGN is in the midst of tinkering with its overall news coverage in response to losing the Chicago Cubs to WBBM.  The hiring of longtime television anchor Anna Davlantes to report on trending stories along with the addition of “Business Lunch” to the 12 p.m. hour of Bob Sirott and Marianne Murciano’s afternoon show are two prime examples of how they are attempting to bolster it’s news presence. WGN is also aiming to expand their ability towards more original reporting. The ultimate end-game is to establish a more extensive news team that can potentially attract displaced news seekers once Cubs games pre-empt WBBM’s all-news format starting next spring.

At least such attempts are seemingly genuine, unlike the empty maneuver of re-branding the station as “News 720 WGN” back in 2010 under the volatile leadership of the late Kevin Metheny.

While I am not fully pleased with many of the past year’s programming changes made by WGN President and General Manager Jimmy de Castro, I have to give him credit for continuing to maintain a prominently all-live and all-local talk station. Even though I believe many of his programming choices (or choices that he ultimately approved of) have been absolutely mind-numbing, WGN is one of only a few unique talk stations in the country that have avoided much of the cutbacks, layoffs, syndication and brokered programming. The enhancing of its news department is one more example of WGN’s willingness to spend more money while every other station seemingly finds new ways to cut back.

However, I have to think that such attempts to win over WBBM’s audience may potentially turn into a wasted effort. While the Cubs will pre-empt WBBM’s all-news format on AM 780, its FM 105.9 simulcast will continue airing all-news uninterrupted. I reckon the vast majority of WBBM’s listeners in the Chicago metro area will have no trouble switching to 105.9 on the FM band — especially since the simulcast has been inexistence since August, 2011. Any regular WBBM listener should at the very least be vaguely aware that a FM simulcast exists. WBBM has gone out of its way to include 105.9 in its overall branding.

Asides from those outside the FM 105.9 listening range or those unable to or unwilling to listen via online, how many displaced AM 780 listeners can WGN realistically expect to gain?

According to the same Tribune report, WGN President and General Manager Jimmy de Castro said that they’re “going to put more emphasis and energy into news, particular while [WBBM is] doing baseball.” To me, that sure sounds like longer news updates at the top and bottom of the hour, which in all honesty, is just what the station does not need.

WGN’s top of the hour newscast, especially during morning and afternoon drive, are already long enough. Even with an older skewing audience, I think WGN in 2015 can still function healthily without trying to be the all-service station. Between the amount of time dedicated to news and commercials, it can make listening to their programming difficult, which is painfully obvious in the morning during Steve Cochran’s show (the saving grace for WGN’s overload of commercials is that WLS is seemingly far worse).

Interruptions in the talk format, regardless of their merit, are mere distractions. WGN can’t have it both ways.

As it is, WGN is barely juggling their talk programming around news and commercials. Any further tinkering, especially if that actually does mean more news in hopes of attracting displaced WBBM listeners, will potentially displace WGN’s existing listeners — an audience that wants to listen to long-form talk.

WGN’s talk format is what makes it so unique. WGN should be utilizing its greatest strength, which is their full cast of friendly, live and local personalities (whether you like or dislike their current assemble of personalities is a separate conversation). Diluting them with more news and traffic interruptions would be counterintuitive.

Email: blowtorchpress [at] gmail.com | Twitter: @MartinHawr

Since posting this entry earlier this morning, the WLS-AM website has removed Roe & Roeper from their program schedule. Earlier this morning, Conn appeared on ABC 7/WLS-TV’s “Windy City Live,” confirming that yesterday was their final show. It appears that Conn’s career at WLS radio has come to an end.

In response to the news that Steve Dahl is returning to terrestrial radio at WLS-AM 890, veteran Chicago radio executive Michael Damsky wrote on Facebook, “this is the radio story of the year. Only Robert Feder gets this scoop.”

The news broken last night by Feder was so big and surprising, that my mother-in-law texted and called me to discuss it.

Steve Dahl, the soon to be WLS afternoon host.

It’s been known that the contracts for Roe Conn and Richard Roeper, the current afternoon hosts at WLS, were expiring towards the end of this year. There wasn’t much optimism that either would be back.

While the station has not officially announced Dahl’s hiring or any surrounding details, Feder did not specify whether Conn or Roeper will continue hosting until the change takes place. The WLS website is still promoting their Friday, Oct. 31 “Roe & Roeper’s Nightmare on Clark Street” event. [Update: All references to Conn and Roeper, including the “Nightmare on Clark Street” event, have been removed from the WLS website.]

The contracts for Bruce Wolf and Dan Proft, the current morning hosts at WLS, are also believed to be expiring near the end of this year. Does the Cumulus-owned station plan to reinvent the rest of the daypart or are they content at sticking with the status-quo? It’s not like mornings at WLS are setting the world on fire. Does a scenario exist in which Conn, with or without Roeper, moves to morning drive? At the moment, my initial guess would be no.

Roe Conn, the iconic. and now seemingly former, WLS afternoon host.

Even though I don’t think it will happen, I think it’s worth mentioning when considering that WLS is still reeling from the loss of their iconic morning duo, Don Wade and Roma. While Conn’s afternoon ratings haven’t been good, he too is an iconic personality there, having just celebrated his 25th anniversary. Reasonable executives might understand that outside of the afternoon show, the station is an utter mess.

Despite Conn’s swelled ego in recent years, along with his rampant stammering and stuttering, he provides a highly intelligent and reasonable perspective that is also entertaining while discussing the news of the day. Unfortunately, the excessive commercial time and the horrendous traffic and weather on the fives format have made his show practically unlistenable.

Since we’re speaking of Cumulus, I suspect they have little care about station heritage or that their fingerprint smudges are largely responsible for Conn’s poor ratings performance. The notoriously cheap company will likely part ways with Conn, allowing him to resurface elsewhere, with WGN-AM 720 as the seemingly most obvious choice — which I would be more excited about if that were to happen without Roeper.

Putting the excessive commercial time and traffic and weather format aside, I haven’t been a huge fan of Roe Conn’s afternoon show since the arrival of Roeper as co-host. I don’t think he adds much as far as content to the overall show. Obviously, the loss of Garry Meier as co-host was significant, but I eventually became comfortable with the combination of Conn, Bill Leff, Jim Johnson, and to a lesser extent, Christina Filiaggi.

As for Steve Dahl, I’m not a fan. I don’t appreciate how unnecessarily vile he is when insulting someone — while the circumstances in which Dahl criticizes someone may be warranted, there is a fine line between constructive criticism and being excessively mean. His recent lashing at WGN and his choice words towards Leff and Wendy Snyder, the station’s afternoon hosts, are just recent examples.

I also don’t think that listening to Dalh talk to wife on the air or his personal musings to be of interest. As a previous paid subscriber of his podcast (which allowed me to better sample his product in hopes of finding an alternative to bad terrestrial radio), I was turned off at the excessive amount of such musings that dominate his show, drowning out some otherwise interesting content, such as discussion of a Blackhawks playoff game from the night before.

While I’m not a fan of Dahl, I of course will be listening to him on day one at WLS. And that is whole idea. Hiring Dahl will, at least at the beginning, re-energize the older radio audience, bringing in new listeners, whether they are a fan of his or not.

On the flip-side, such a hiring only reinforces just how damaged the radio industry is. Instead of grooming young radio personalities into superstars, radio companies every now and then resort to shelling out decent to big money towards such re-treads like Dahl.

A few added thoughts…

– For those criticizing Robert Feder for releasing this scoop on the first day that his blog is jettisoned behind a Chicago Tribune paywall, do you not have any idea how journalism works? The timing of specific news pieces happens all the time, whether you like it or not. I suspect that those criticizing Feder for releasing the WLS/Dahl news today are people who already have a beef against him.

– Feder is not perfect. I have previously criticized him for often making it too obvious who he’s friends or foe with in Chicago media — and how that has  shaped how he narrates certain stories (i.e. WGN’s mishandling of Garry Meier last spring) — also a common function in journalism. That said, such scoops such as Steve Dahl joining WLS is what makes him a must read if you have any care in the world for Chicago media. You just never know when Feder has an ace up his sleeve.

Is WGN-AM 720 unfairly quieting angry Garry Meier fans from its Facebook page or were they left with no choice? That is the question in response to Susan Vethacke, who claims to have been blocked from WGN’s Facebook in posts on the Chicagoland Radio & Media message board.

Vethacke identifies herself as the creator of the Facebook group, Bring Back Garry Meier — a group that has 1,400 likes. I composed a mini write-up of that group here on June 13. The removal of Meier from the terrestrial AM 720 to the online-stream WGN.FM has been a controversial subject for the 90 year old news/talk station.

While I previously wrote that I admired the efforts of the Bring Back Garry Meier Facebook group, my opinion have changed. It seems that no matter what WGN posts to their Facebook, the comments area are hijacked by Vetacke and other angry Meier fans. I thought it was mildly inappropriate, for example, when fans hijacked a post that was designated to congratulate the newly engaged Karen Conti, a frequent WGN guest and legal expert. When any fringe group crosses a certain line, they start to hurt their cause rather than help it. Whether hijacking a thread about one’s marital engagement is considered crossing the line is left to individual opinion.

Another point worth making is that WGN blocking Meier fans from commenting on their Facebook is not a freedom of speech issue. Freedom of speech applies to the protection of speech from the government via the First Amendment. You can’t call your boss a “jack ass” and expect not to get fired because of freedom of speech. WGN has the right to dictate comments on its Facebook, just as I have the right to dictate reader comments on this blog.

If the moving of Meier was all political, even at the potential expense of ratings and advertising revenue, then it seems even more unlikely that WGN management would reverse course, even if the move does pan out to be a mistake.

As a long-time fan of Dan McNeil, I hope he resurfaces somewhere on the Chicago sports radio circuit sooner rather than later. There’s been zero news concerning McNeil since his final June 13 broadcast on WSCR-AM/670 The Score. As alluded by Larz at Chicagoland Radio and Media, and by McNeil himself previously on the Chicago Sports Fan message board earlier this year, the long-time sports talk host seems content with enjoying summer and recharging his batteries before making any decisions on a comeback.

While there isn’t any new news, persay, Robert Feder sums up nicely the current scenario and potential options ahead for McNeil. The easy guess, in my opinion, is that McNeil resurfaces on his Score midday show sometime before Bears season.

In all honesty, I wouldn’t be heart broken if McNeil were to change co-hosts or even stations. While I’m not anti Matt Spiegel, McNeil’s co-host on The Score since 2009, I think McNeil would benefit from the rejuvenation that he would likely get with a new co-host, especially if he were to turn up in the afternoon on the still relatively new WGWG-Lp/87.7 The Game.

I would prefer McNeil be paired with a co-host that is younger and perhaps edgier. I don’t have anyone in mind, necessary, but I haven’t been a huge fan of the McNeil and Spiegal pairing since day one. I still believe Spiegal is at his best with his former “Hit and Run” co-host and frequent Score fill-in host Barry Rozner.

While I would be very surprised if McNeil moved to The Game, I would welcome it, ensuring that there is some long-term security for him, considering we don’t know what the future of the station might be (87.7 LP goes away towards the later end of 2015). McNeil’s not moving to a jumpstart venture, such as The Game, unless it is for an afternoon drive spot, which he is on the record of badly wanting. As a long-time McNeil fan, there’s nothing like some good ol’ Danny Mac sports talk in the afternoon after a long day at the office.

UPDATED 6/30/14: Earlier today, Dan McNeil tweeted the following:

Not in a contract holdout, as @RobertFeder wrote. @MitchRosen670 approved time off before negotiations. Nonetheless…I remain mercurial!

— Dan McNeil (@DanMcNeil670) June 30, 2014