Posted by chicagomedia.org on May 15, 2009 at 11:32:40:
In Reply to: Re: Steve Dahl at WGN posted by nipsy on May 13, 2009 at 10:41:19:
Steve Dahl, whose CBS Radio contract keeps him off the air until June 2011, had a meeting Tuesday at Tribune Tower with some people at the Chicago Tribune, which runs his occasional columns.
Garry Meier, his former radio partner, was broadcasting from WGN-AM 720's showcase studio in the Tower at the time.
You can imagine what happened.
And if you can't, Dahl has blogged about it:
"Tuesday afternoon I?m walking up Michigan Avenue to go and see a couple of people at the Chicago Tribune and my route takes me right by the WGN Radio studio on the street. I knew that Garry Meier would be on (unless he was pre-empted by the Cubs) because it was 2:55 p.m. and he?s on from 1:00 until 4:00. I know that when one broadcasts from WGN they have the option of the Michigan avenue studio or a more secluded studio back in the bowels of WGN. I knew that Garry was a street studio kind of guy, so I was readying myself to look in and say hi just as a booming voice said ?Dahl!? over a loudspeaker. It was as if Garry was the Wizard of Oz, and I was Dorothy in deck shoes.
We carried on an off-air conversation for a few minutes via the dangling crowd microphone that the WGN engineers have mounted out on the street, and Garry invited me in to be on the air. I told him I didn?t think that being on the air was a good idea, since I?m still getting paid by CBS, but I told him that I?d return after my meeting at the newspaper. After my time in the tower I headed back out to the street and parked myself in front of the studio window again. Garry saw me and sent his producer around to the front to get me. It was the first time in my life that I had been inside the WGN studios, and it was especially weird to be visiting Garry Meier there.
Sitting as far away from the microphones as I could, I had a good chat with Garry. There?s a lot of news, traffic and what-have-you on WGN, so he had plenty of time for off-air chatting. In the 20 minutes that I was in the studio, he only had to take two phone calls about penny candy. It was really hard for me not to jump in and add my two cents worth (pun intended), but he has Jim Turano in there, so it wasn?t like he was just talking to himself. It?s still very freaky to be in a room with Garry, because we still have the same comedic chemistry and it seems natural to just participate. I really had to sit on my tongue to not jump in. It?s been a while since I?ve been allowed to speak."
(Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune)