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WTMJ-AM plans to stay the course after firing program director

Duane Dudek
On TV/Radio
March 19, 2013
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March 19, 2013 0

WTMJ-AM is a heritage station with a statewide signal, and the temptation is to see enormous changes in every hire and fire. But the firing of the station's program director doesn't mean big changes are in store. »Read Full Article

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  1. Wow. 60% loss of share in Morning Drive since 2011? That's off-the-charts. TMJ forced John Jagler out the door in November of 2010. I am sure it's just a strange coincidence.

    Phil Cianciola. Jon Greene. Jon Jagler. Bill Michaels. Dan O'Donnell. Like them or hate them, they were personalities. All gone. Steve Wexler has sucked the life out of WTMJ/A. The numbers don't lie.

    I guess pushing veteran personalities to the side in order to free up chairs for Jodi Becker and Greg Matzek weren't such sage radio moves after all, in retrospect.
    Hide replies
    • Jagler was forced out? I thought he went into politics.
    • My "understanding of the situation" (ahem...) is that Jagler began to explore his options after watching his friend and long-time colleague, Phil Cianciola, get unceremoniously walked to the door after a dispute with Jonathan Greene. This was not the first time Cianciola pushed his luck with management, but it was the last.

      The story is that Jagler then worked without a contract for nearly a year (admittedly, it was a tumultuous time in the business of radio, consider the time-frame during which this all took place) before being offered a pay cut to keep his job by JBG management which presumably figured he didn't have many other options in radio at that moment in time.

      Jagler chose to leave on his terms, on top of his game. He landed a job as Director of Communications for (then) Assembly Speaker Scott Fitzgerald. His personal political ambitions rose as a result of his experience in the speaker's office during the unprecedented events of 2011.

      Or so I've heard...
  2. Where did the missing listeners go? TMJ's loss was whose gain?
  3. Doesn't surprise me a bit that they've lost listeners on morning drive time. Jodi Becker is absolutely awful and John Byman isn't much better. The sooner they send Jodi packing the better. She is an insult to journalists and on-air news professionals.
    Hide replies
    • I could not possibly agree more with your assessment.

      I sincerely feel badly for Gene Mueller, who is one of the classiest guys in radio, to be expected by management to somehow serve as "morning patriarch" to Byman and Becker's every trivial and humorless observation.

      Byman's life of Chicago-North-Shore white privilege and Becker's utter cluelessness and total lack of common sense aren't connecting with the listeners. The numbers reflect it.
  4. Someone got fired? Where's the uproar? Oh, wait. That only happens when Sue Black gets the ax.
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