Joe Ahern, who used a term maintaining successful moves of his predecessors as general manager at Chicago ABC-owned WLS into a job trying to rehabilitate CBS-owned WBBM in Chicago, is out just a few weeks after moving the station out of the old horse show arena on the Near North Side (where the famous Nixon-Kennedy debate of 1960 was telecast) into new HD facilities in the Loop (and a marble private bathroom for him)--unfortunately for him, his old nemesis at the Chicago Sun-Times Rob Feder hasn't started his voluntary retirement yet and gives Ahern a don't-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass farewell:
http://www.suntimes.com/business/feder/1220776,ahern-cbs-101408.article WBBM was journalistically and in the ratings at their peak in the early 80s, when Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson's no-nonsense, classic CBS "*The* 10 O'Clock News" broke stories every night and defeated WLS' aggressively happy-talk newscasts. At WLS, Dennis Swanson came back by taking out the most obvious vestiges of happy-talk (including letting weather clown John Coleman stay at "Good Morning America"), increasing the on-air reporting staff, hiring Chicago news veteran Floyd Kalber for 6 p.m., putting "Wheel of Fortune" on after that newscast and hiring a young Oprah Winfrey to take over the "AM Chicago" talk show. WBBM responded by bringing in sleazemeister Bill Applegate to tabloid up their newscasts--Kurtis quit to become a producer and the voice of A&E, Jacobson joined the nascent news operation at Fox-owned WFLD (a relative bastion of hard news compared to what Applegate was doing) and WBBM's ratings went into the toilet. By then, Ahern had taken over at WLS, where status quo, a policy of doing live coverage of as many ethnic parades as he could find (and another policy of banning outside broadcast gigs for employees, whether it be on a panel for a PBS station chat show or weather reports on a radio station) had kept the station at the top (where it still is today--there are many Chicagoans of a certain age who leave the TV on from "GMA" to "Nightline" on WLS and never change it). The Trib's Phil Rosenthal tells what happened to Ahern at WBBM without the vitriol and talks about his replacement: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/chi-wed-rosenthal-1015oct15,0,5908867.column --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Like TV only smarter. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
