Posted by chicagomedia.org on October 29, 2007 at 10:44:15:
By Phil Rosenthal
Tribune media columnist
8:30 PM CDT, October 27, 2007
CBS Radio is set to confirm Monday that longtime Chicago radio star Steve Dahl is moving from afternoons on WCKG-FM 105.9 to mornings on sister station WJMK-FM 104.3, effective Nov. 5, sources said Saturday.
The company is not yet ready, however, to announce a new format for WCKG, which is weighing both Spanish-language and adult contemporary format known as Fresh FM, a top CBS executive said.
To promote Dahl's move to so-called Jack FM, WCKG plans to pre-empt nearly its entire programming schedule with "Best of Steve Dahl" clips, beginning Monday night. Dahl also is set to continue to do his afternoon show on the station through Friday.
Mortgage specialist David Hochberg, whose Townstone Financial is a major advertiser on the station and hosts a weekend program for which he buys time, said on the air Saturday it was his "second to last show" on WCKG.
And in advance of WCKG's format flip, Chicago Bulls basketball broadcasts are headed back to WMVP-AM 1000, their home before the team opted to buy time on WCKG beginning last season.
Fresh FM, which targets women between the ages of 25 and 49, can be tailored to fit any specific situation, according to Greg Dunkin, the former radio program director, now at Vallie Richards Donovan Consulting, who developed the Fresh FM format.
"It is a positioning, programming and marketing platform and it can vary from market to market, depending on the opportunities that exist," Dunkin said. "If there were to be one in Chicago, it may or may not be like any of the fresh stations that exist. … For example we're talking to companies about top 40, urban and even country approaches to Fresh."
Rumors of a format switch have long been circulating at WCKG, which has never fully recovered from the body blow it suffered almost two years ago by the loss of Howard Stern's syndicated morning show to Sirius Satellite Radio. The speculation began to gain momentum in April, when Dan Mason replaced Joel Hollander atop CBS Radio and got rid of brother Les Hollander, who had overseen WCKG from New York.
It was the Hollanders who replaced Stern on the station with the ill-fitting Shane "Rover" French, who moved his syndicated program to Chicago only to crash and burn in seven months. They also saddled the station with other syndicated fare that never connected locally, much of it bounced altogether or to less important slots with Mason's arrival.
Mason and Rod Zimmerman, who oversees CBS' cluster of Chicago stations, felt the need to make their moves well in advance of next year's arrival of Portable People Meters, Arbitron's new method of measuring listenership.
Left uncertain is the fate of most WCKG staff, including Garry Meier, Dahl's long-estranged one-time partner now doing mid-mornings on the station.
"My plan is to go in Monday and see what that brings," Meier said. "They haven't officially given me any date or anything. I'm just going in Monday, and that's as far as I've gotten. All this stuff keeps swirling, but I don't have anything official on anything. … I'm doing my show and until I hear not to, I'll keep doing it."