Changes at WLS in Chicago

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Fred Stiening

Sadly, the news is out about Don Wade & Roma. Don has a malignant brain tumor and won’t be returning to the air – their contract is up this month, and since WLS is now owned by Cumulus, I was expecting their ABC Radio era contract to not be renewed unless they wanted to swallow another huge pay cut. The same may happen to Mark Levin.

Don Wade & Roma had a great radio act – never lose sight that radio is show business. Don & Roma did a Conservative/Liberal act, with Roma reading from her Little Red Book and irritating Don – concealing from the audience until the late 1990s that they were married to each other and had at least two children together. Don had has brain seizure in New York while he was there for his daughter’s wedding. It’s a very sad ending for everyone.

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7 Responses to Changes at WLS in Chicago

  1. Dusty says:
    December 14, 2012 at 9:50 pm

    Hi Art, Can you expand on your passing mention of Mark Levin? I don’t understand the context. Thanks.

    • Art Stone says:
      December 14, 2012 at 10:48 pm

      Mark Levin started with ABC Radio – he is now on his third employer. ABC was sold by Disney to a company named Citadel which went into bankruptcy about a year later.

      People from the “good old days” of ABC Radio had nice contracts. The guy running Citadel was a bean counter and used the bankruptcy to force the talent to accept new contracts on cheaper terms. A few refused, but most saw the handwriting on the wall – that nobody else was going to pay that kind of money either.

      Then Cumulus Media came along, and from everything I’ve read, Lew Dickey is extremely frugal. Once he had control of the former ABC AM radio stations, he dumped anything that was costing him money. It is expected as soon as Clear Channel takes over WOR-AM, Rush and maybe Hannity will get the boot from WABC-AM, replaced by Huckabee and a player yet to be named.

      I don’t know anything specific – other than Levin is the last big ABC carryover – and he can’t be at all happy with Savage joining Cumulus. So far they are ignoring each other on air.

      Some day (don’t know when) Cumulus is going to face renewing Levin’s contract. If Lew Dickey stays true to form, Levin will probably face a demand for working for even less money and something like having to do VoiceOver work for Sweetjack advertisements. Levin may well be agreeable to work for minimum wage for all I know 😉

    • Art Stone says:
      December 17, 2012 at 10:29 pm

      I enjoyed listening to Milt. Oddly, since moving back to Chicago, I haven’t listened to the radio at all.

      Tribune owns WGN – they are emerging from a 4 year long bankruptcy. They already want to dump the Tribune newspaper. They already spun off the Chicago Cubs back at the beginning.

      WGN is one of a kind – owned by a newspaper, no syndicated programming, AM station not doing 24 hr news that has extremely strong ratings.

      • foyle says:
        December 18, 2012 at 10:03 am

        I haven’t listened to WGN much since moving back to the south, but when I lived in West Michigan I listened nearly every day. I enjoyed their lineup of hosts (including Rosenberg) and loved hearing the Cubs all season long.

        WBBM-AM Chicago was a 24 hour a day news station back then (I assume it still is?), but late at night (Midnight or 1 AM I think) they took a break from news and played an hour or two of old radio shows (Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, Fibber McGee,The Shadow,etc). That show introduced me to many classics of the golden age of radio that were way before my time.

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