Elgin Newspaper Columnist Angry About WGN-AM

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: WGN: A loving radio family turns into angry arguers : : Column: A member of our family is dying. She's called WGN Radio. : When I wake up in the morning, when I'm driving to or from work, when I'm taking a bath at 3 in the morning, WGN has almost always been in the background. It's been that way since I was in my 20s. I have come to know personally a few of the station's present and former hosts, like Floyd Brown and Roy Leonard and Nick Digilio. Brown, of course, lives in Elgin. Some other on-air staffers, like Orion Samuelson, Tom Petersen and Matt Bubala, live in our area. : Longtime afternoon host Steve Cochran gives a stand-up comedy show every New Year's Eve at The Hemmens. Late-morning host John Williams once rescued a kitten from an Elgin home heating duct while he was on the way here to give a speech. : But new station managers, including former Howard Stern associate Kevin Metheny, are making major changes. : On the WGN we have loved, the hosts listened to callers and talked to them in a civil way. They were warm and personal, to the point that we knew the names of their children and spouses. They came with a whole spectrum of political and religious views but didn't shove those into our faces. Sometimes they talked about politics. More often, they talked about comic collecting, or great TV episodes, or whether women should wear panties with their pantyhose. : Keystoning the lineup were a succession of true superstars on the "morning drive time" shift, all of whom specialized in comedy. From the 1960s through 2008, we were able to wake up with a refreshing dose of "upbeat," laid over news and information, from first the sill-ily inventive Wally Phillips, then the brilliantly down-to-Earth "Uncle Bobby" Collins and finally the nice-guy-next-door Spike O'Dell. : But under the new bosses, people like that are being replaced in an effort to get younger listeners. When O'Dell (who then lived in Aurora) retired 18 months ago, everyone expected him to be replaced by Cochran, whose almost constant little joking tied with knowledgeable, middle-of-the-road politics would have been perfectly in line with the Immortal Morning Three. Instead, wake-up time has been taken over by a stuffed-shirt named Greg Jarrett, who delivers news and interviews with nary a trace of humor or personality. : At least Jarrett is just bland. After drive time, Metheny's strategy seems to be to fill the air with males who have strong, mostly right-wing political opinions; who talk mainly about politics (goodbye pop culture, goodbye panty hose); and who argue with or even ridicule listeners. Metheny's model of an ideal talk-show host seems to be Rush Limbaugh. : Last May, Metheny fired morning hosts Kathy O'Malley and Judy Markey, whose proudly trivial talk about day-to-day women's lives had attracted an army of "girlfriends." They've been replaced for now by a demoted John Williams. Williams already also has begun hosting a show on a Minneapolis station. : Then, two weeks ago, Cochran was fired. He will be replaced Aug. 9 by a right-wing political ax-grinder named Mike McConnell. : To host the evening drive, Metheny has added former Steve Dahl sidekick Garry Meier. Meier at least tries to be funny, but his exaggeration and sarcasm are so dry, I can't tell when he's being serious. One hot day, he told about how he doesn't have air conditioning, so he and a buddy opened up a fire hydrant like they used to do as kids. A day later, he was talking about the settings on his condo's air conditioning. : Next, Metheny & Co. canceled Dave Kaplan's "Sports Central" show and added a political-talk show hosted by Jim Laski, a dese-dems-and-dose lunk whose biggest claim to fame seems to be having served time in prison for political corruption. Laski rants about one perceived slight after another in a fingernails-on-the-chalkboard Chicago accent. : On weekends, pop culture expert Digilio is being edged out by the likes of French-born ad exec Simon Badinter, whose accent is so thick, it takes a focused effort just to decipher what he's saying. One statement I could decipher was that Simon gets "upsetted" when he has sex with a woman and she wants to sleep with him; he has been robbed too often by women like that. : Can our overnight sleeping companions Steve King and Johnnie Putman be far behind in the exit lane? : Whoops. I just noticed this column is turning into an angry rant. I apologize for not being a little more pleasant and friendly. : But maybe that does qualify me for a job at the new WGN.

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