WBEZ and I go way back. In the mid-1980s, when I was freshly fired from the Wheaton Daily Journal and looking for any kind of work, Ken Davis gave a whistle and I started filing live reports on his Studio A program.
I didn't get paid, of course — taking advantage of the ambitious young is a venerable media tradition. But it was reporting on the radio.
I broadcast from inside the scoreboard at Wrigley Field, watching attendants slide big numbers into place. From a live poultry store, watching a chicken, its throat cut, upside down in a metal funnel, blood running out the bottoms, talons scratching uselessly against the galvanized metal.
Awkward situations made good radio. I broadcast naked from a sensory deprivation tank — quite the thing in the mid-1980s — on Lincoln Avenue.
After floating peacefully on heavily salted water in total darkness for nearly an hour, imagining myself an amoeba on an ancient sea, the door was ripped open and phone receiver receiver into my hands. Ken asked what I was thinking about at the moment he called. "How much I have to pee," I replied, blinking.
As the years passed, I'd circle back to WBEZ, first in the creepy old Bankers Building at Clark and Adams, with the radio tower on the roof, and then at their new digs at Navy Pier. For several years, the Tribune's ace columnist Eric Zorn and I would meet on Michigan Avenue every Friday and walk over to the pier to do a run-down of the week's news.
Or I'd be a guest on particular programs — Scott Simon's "Weekend Edition" or "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" or Jim Nayder's "Magnificent Obsession" — a quirky early morning show on addiction and recovery. It was periodically rebroadcast, and now and then I'd hear from someone who caught my segment and was braced in their struggle.
And that's just being on the station. I haven't even touched upon my experience as a listener. WBEZ reflected life in Chicago. Jazz at night in the city that practically invented jazz. Live feeds of important historical events — hearings, trials.
Plus lots of fun — Garrison Keillor's folksy "A Prairie Home Companion," a mix of humor and music. "Car Talk" with Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers — and if listeners today have a hard time imagining WBEZ running a show dedicated to car repair, well, let's say that station didn't take itself quite so seriously.
Then again, these are more serious times.
Last week, the U.S. House chainsawed $1.1 billion intended for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR's parent. The good news is WBEZ only gets 6% of its budget from the feds.
It's much worse nationwide. In swaths of the rural countryside, the NPR station is the only game in town, a key source of important local and emergency news. More than 120 stations get more than a quarter of their funding from the federal government.
I broadcast from inside the scoreboard at Wrigley Field, watching attendants slide big numbers into place. From a live poultry store, watching a chicken, its throat cut, upside down in a metal funnel, blood running out the bottoms, talons scratching uselessly against the galvanized metal.
Awkward situations made good radio. I broadcast naked from a sensory deprivation tank — quite the thing in the mid-1980s — on Lincoln Avenue.
After floating peacefully on heavily salted water in total darkness for nearly an hour, imagining myself an amoeba on an ancient sea, the door was ripped open and phone receiver receiver into my hands. Ken asked what I was thinking about at the moment he called. "How much I have to pee," I replied, blinking.
As the years passed, I'd circle back to WBEZ, first in the creepy old Bankers Building at Clark and Adams, with the radio tower on the roof, and then at their new digs at Navy Pier. For several years, the Tribune's ace columnist Eric Zorn and I would meet on Michigan Avenue every Friday and walk over to the pier to do a run-down of the week's news.
Or I'd be a guest on particular programs — Scott Simon's "Weekend Edition" or "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" or Jim Nayder's "Magnificent Obsession" — a quirky early morning show on addiction and recovery. It was periodically rebroadcast, and now and then I'd hear from someone who caught my segment and was braced in their struggle.
And that's just being on the station. I haven't even touched upon my experience as a listener. WBEZ reflected life in Chicago. Jazz at night in the city that practically invented jazz. Live feeds of important historical events — hearings, trials.
Plus lots of fun — Garrison Keillor's folksy "A Prairie Home Companion," a mix of humor and music. "Car Talk" with Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers — and if listeners today have a hard time imagining WBEZ running a show dedicated to car repair, well, let's say that station didn't take itself quite so seriously.
Then again, these are more serious times.
Last week, the U.S. House chainsawed $1.1 billion intended for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR's parent. The good news is WBEZ only gets 6% of its budget from the feds.
It's much worse nationwide. In swaths of the rural countryside, the NPR station is the only game in town, a key source of important local and emergency news. More than 120 stations get more than a quarter of their funding from the federal government.
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I think I know the sensory deprivation tank place you mean. For a while I kept meaning to try it and then eventually forgot all about it. Years later I developed pretty intense claustrophobia so I suspect the experience is one I’ll never have.
ReplyDelete“A Prairie Home Companion” and "Car Talk" as well as “Metropolis” with Aaron Freeman are all fond memories for me. I rarely listen to radio any more but perhaps this is the time to remedy that. Right now I’m going to send a donation to WBEZ.
I'm a fairly new listener to WBEZ compared to others, about 15 years or so. I became a sustaining member (monthly) when tRump threatened to slash funding during his first term. I enjoyed the in-depth and factual news coverage on WBEZ and didn't want that to go away. Little did I know we'd be in a worse situation now. I've got coffee mugs, tshirts and a license plate holder from previous donations but feel I no longer need anymore "stuff". I just give my donation without the tchotchkes. The only complaint I have is the exorbitant salary of the former and current CEOs. I still donate as there's no point in being stubborn to prove a point about, IMO, overpaid higher ups. Thank you for this timely column. I hope it brings in tons of money for WBEZ. They deserve it! Judy
ReplyDeleteWe are all in a tough spot. With the budget cuts, so many organizations will need donations. I chose the National Parks Foundation. That said, I do not freeload on WBEZ because I don't listen to it. I prefer print for news. I do subscribe to the Sun-Times. Does that help?
ReplyDelete