Chicago airwaves are changing

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: City's airwaves are a-changin' : Add radio veteran Steve Dahl to the list of stars out in 2008 : With the media universe squeezed by mounting economic pressures, some of its biggest stars are flickering, fading and falling from sight. : Here and across America, familiar faces, voices and bylines that became synonymous with their cities and their outlets have vanished in recent months in favor of less costly replacements. Their old media compensation no longer syncs up with digital-era math, especially when advertisers are making cuts of their own. : Some leave voluntarily, others are shown the door. A few - such as Steve Dahl, a Chicago radio star for more than 30 years bumped Friday from WJMK-FM 104.3 - get to continue drawing checks, at least for a while. : But newspapers and TV and radio stations scrutinizing every dime they spend are finding it more difficult to reward outsize personalities with outsize pay in the face of receding revenue, even as those stars sometimes are all that allow splintered audiences to differentiate one media option from another. : "You could argue, going forward, talent is going to be more important," said longtime radio executive John Gehron, who helped build Oprah Winfrey's satellite radio but left last month. "But when there's so much fragmentation, you can't pay what you once did because the numbers aren't as big." : Media outlets, Gehron said, "are willing to pay if the results are there, maybe not as much as they used to, but there are still going to be people doing very well if they can deliver the numbers." : Dahl's recent numbers were hurt by CBS Radio switching him to mornings on an otherwise all-music station and Arbitron switching its methods for compiling the audience estimates used to set ad rates. : An innovator whose style influenced a generation of radio stars, Dahl will continue to collect more than $1 million annually off the air from a contract that runs through mid-2011 as Jack FM goes round-the-clock with its jukebox format. : "It turns out that music gets better ratings than we do with this new ratings system, and guess what's cheaper," Dahl explained on the air. "The music." : Overall, though, the music isn't the problem in this year's game of media musical chairs; it's the rate at which the chairs are being removed. : Eddie Volkman and Joe Bohannon, a morning team for 20 years, were bounced from WBBM-FM 96.3. : Sports talker Mike North couldn't come to terms with WSCR-AM 670 and moved to the Internet en route to cable TV. : Diann Burns, the city's top-paid newscaster, at $2 million per year, was dropped this spring by WBBM-Ch. 2, which didn't see enough of a ratings improvement in return. : Last month it was columnist Mike Downey disappearing from the Chicago Tribune's sports section. Last summer, longtime Chicago Sun-Times sports star Jay Mariotti gave up a contract and cash in leaving the paper, saying that the Internet is the industry's hope for salvation while leaving vacant one of this year's many newspaper jobs that will not be filled. : "There's no question there is a realignment [going on] according to the economic realities in today's market," said Rod Zimmerman, who oversees WJMK-FM, WBBM-FM and WSCR-AM among other Chicago stations as CBS Radio senior vice president and market manager here. "This is just a sign of the times for all media that things are different than they were a couple years ago, and certainly compared to five or six years ago." : As budgets tighten in a bid to hit the financial benchmarks still expected of them—by corporate management, investors, lenders—no matter how much money carmakers, airlines and other advertisers take out of circulation, media outlets are being pushed harder than ever in recent memory to justify the big bucks given to those who had shown they could attract an audience and ad dollars in the past. A big salary is a big target when it seems nothing is worth what it used to be. : "The days of the overpaid morning star and everybody else making chicken feed may be over," Volkman said last month. : Dahl was given a rare opportunity for radio in acknowledgment of his standing, the chance to say a final "aloha" to his fans. His bosses, in fact, said he could stay on the air until Christmas. Dahl took a pass. : "They were saying, 'Well, do a couple of weeks, a farewell,' " said Dahl, who also is an occasional columnist for the Chicago Tribune. "I said: 'It's not a farewell. You guys are taking me off the air. I'm not retiring.' … I still have 2 1/2 years left on my deal so, quite frankly, I'm not letting them out of it." : Those kinds of paydays, like those kinds of stars, are going to be increasingly hard to come by in the future. : (Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune)

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