After over 30 years in Chicago radio, Steve Dahl retired today from his morning drive slot at CBS Radio's "Jack FM" WJMK:
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/towerticker/2008/12/steve-dahl-out.html The first known morning drive personality on an FM rock music station who tried to play as little music as possible, Dahl started out his career being fired from a series of stations for breaking format before coming to Detroit, where he got national attention for a fake on-air suicide attempt. He then moved to Chicago and got some notice at WDAI before the station flipped to disco in 1979 and he quit in protest. He subsequently landed at WLUP-FM right when consultant Lee Abrams was purging the softer-sounding AOR station of James Taylor and Loggins and Messina, replacing them with metal bands--Dahl and his new partner Garry Meier immediately gained notoriety with their "Insane Coho Lips Anti-Disco Demolition Army," culminating in a promotion at a Chicago White Sox doubleheader (bring a disco record, get in for 98 cents, Dahl and Meier blow them up between games) that ended up in the crowd jumping on the field and tearing it up and the second game of the doubleheader becoming forfeited. What conventionally would be considered the ruination of a career instead made Dahl even more popular, particularly among teenage males--and then-dominant AM Top 40 WLS purged disco music from its playlists, even playing metal bands at night (and his parody record "Do Ya Think I'm Disco" even showed up on WLS' survey in the Top 10, although the station never played it on- air). Dahl went on and developed his broadcast persona of being a "real guy" in what was considered a phony medium of pukey-voiced "boss jocks" with fake names--he boasted that he and Meier were using their real names and their real voices and talking about real things that happened to them, often skirting the bounds of good taste. This, of course, was very similar to the approach of Howard Stern in New York (who was mainstreaming without the leftist politics the acts of Pacifica station WBAI "free form" personalities Bob Fass and Larry Josephson) and the two of them would often attack each other of stealing their acts, but the safe view would be to say that they were independent of each other). Among his most frequent targets was televangelist Ernest Angley and the entire air staff of Chicago radio behemoth WGN, particularly morning drive host Wally Phillips and lisping staff announcer Cliff Mercer (of which Meier did a pitch- perfect imitation--Mercer happened to have passed on a few weeks ago). But then in 1981, Abrams stopped consulting WLUP and a new general manager fired Dahl and Maier for "violating community standards." They landed on their feet in afternoons at WLS-FM, the former WDAI, which had been hurting in the ratings since Dahl's departure. John Gehron, the WLS-AM programmer who had been given the FM station as well, clearly needed Dahl and Meier more than they needed him--and they did not hide their contempt for him and the Top 40 format they were supposed to follow, refusing to follow format and often backing up commercial breaks and running overtime (the same shtick Stern did in New York). Still, they were successful in spite of everything. When Gehron decided to make the proper strategy of making WLS-AM more around personality talk, they were moved to the AM station and complained about it. Then, when morning man Larry Lujack, a frequent Dahl and Meier target, was moved to afternoon drive at his request, they expected to get morning drive--instead, midday man Fred Winston got the nod and they replaced Winston in midday. After one scabulous midday shift, they were suspended and then fired. Dahl and Meier returned to WLUP--but in a pattern that continued for the rest of his career, Dahl's bosses basically built talk radio stations around him, only to tear them apart and leave him by himself. First was WLUP-AM, where he and Meier did morning drive (Meier left in the mid-90s in an uncomfortable parting, which he repeated a decade later with partner Roe Conn at WLS-AM). By the late 90s, the station had become all-sports WMVP and Dahl was not providing the mainstream bounce that Don Imus was providing at WFAN in New York. Dahl went to FM station WCKG, where once again a talk format was built around his afternoon drive shift (this time by his old WLS nemesis John Gehron, with Stern in morning drive). By now, Dahl was not the hot-headed prankster of his youth (his occasional music choices tended to be either Jimmy Buffet or Hawaiian music) and some of his old fans accused him of being the kind of "sellout" that he attacked at the beginning of his career--but he continued to draw solid male demographics and ad revenue. But then Stern left for Sirius satellite radio and CBS' corporate-ordered "Free FM" rebranding pretty much brought the station down. When WCKG switched formats of AC "Fresh" last year, Dahl was moved to Jack FM as their only live personality and never really meshed with the much younger-skewing format, which is why he retired today. And now, a little bit of an irony--with Lee Abrams, the man who helped propel Dahl into Chicago radio stardom, working at the Tribune Co., would he bring Dahl out of retirement to work at WGN--the station that Dahl mercilessly attacked for over a decade? Of course, most of Dahl's particular targets retired or died years ago, but still... --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
