Posted by chicagomedia.org on November 13, 2008 at 18:55:19:
Robert Feder on TV ... not covering it
Robert Feder, the long camera-shy former Chicago Sun-Times TV/Radio columnist, has agreed to sit for an interview with WTTW-Ch. 11's John Callaway that will air Friday night at 7:30, repeating at 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.
Feder last month accepted a buyout from the Sun-Times after 28 years at the paper, noting that "covering the minutiae of the broadcast business isn't as much fun as it used to be."
The interview is scheduled to be taped late this afternoon.
WMAQ-Ch. 5's Carol Marin, Feder's Sun-Times colleague, noted in one of the many tributes his announcement occasioned that: "Feder never went on television or did radio. I mean, he refused to even be interviewed. Rob believed that if you cover something critically, you can't belong to it. It's a conflict of interest."
A few fans may recall "Radio Faces," a 1989 "WTTW Journal" documentary from my cousin Tom Weinberg and Joel Cohen, introduced by Callaway, that included rare broadcast interview with Feder, explaining the business of radio.
"You have to try hard not to turn a profit, especially in Chicago," Feder says in the video, which is available online, offering outstanding time-capsule video of Bob Collins, Tom Joyner, Dick Buckley, Terri Hemmert, Steve Dahl, Garry Meier, Buzz Kilman, Jim deCastro, Kevin Matthews, Marv Dyson, Eddie Schwartz Nancy Turner and Jonathon Brandmeier.
(Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune)