WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

I wanted to break a little news on the ole' blog today: I was just named Executive Producer of Midday here at WBEZ. It's true.  What's that, you ask? Well, it's a new position charged with overseeing and developing all of our midday programming, including Eight Forty-Eight, Worldview and, yes, a new afternoon vehicle hosted by Steve Edwards.  It's a great opportunity to shape and grow our locally produced shows, to further integrate our radio and digital platforms, and to work with the many talented hosts and producing WBEZ talk programming.

So what does "Midday" mean? Well, it really means the time between 9am and 4pm. Right now we run a series of national programs and our goal is to add more Chicago-originated shows to that mix over the next few years.

What does that mean for my role on the web? Right now, I write a daily blog and I edit the blog network which includes stars like Achy Obejas, Lee Bey and Claire Zulkey. Might I take them with me to air? You know it.  And I will find a way to continue to have this space to punch up Chicago's news.

I'd like to give a quote for other media to use:

"I'm excited about taking over programming for a place as legendary as WBEZ.

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Oh, folks in Pilsen awoke this morning to a white wet Christmas. That's not snow, kids. That's water. A water main broke and flooded streets in the near Southwest neighborhood this morning. Our Flickr pool came to the rescue as Connie Ma grabbed these great photos in the wee hours.

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Here's a picture taken early this morning of the WBEZ City Room:

This is a good week for you to catch up on WBEZ talk shows. Why? Eight Forty-Eight and Worldview each have produced a series of special encore/best-of editions for the holidays, which showcase some of the better material during the past year.

A story: This weekend story was kind of hilarious. So Catholic bishops met with Governor Quinn to essentially tell him to stop telling people he's Catholic if he doesn't actually follow their strict guidelines. I've never noticed it, but Governor Quinn calls it out a lot. When he has to make a hard decision, he references his faith. And a lot of those hard decisions lean left and liberal, especially when it comes to women's issues.

So a reporter asked Quinn how the meeting went and Quinn responded by saying it went well, they really didn't talk much about their differences and instead talked about how everyone could help the poor. Standard pol-speak.

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The Chicago Bears. That is supposed to mean something. But right now, I'm not sure it does.

Instead, it shines brightly as a symbol of incompetency and joke football. Is it the heart? Is it the soul? The brains? But more times than not this season we have watched football on par with the Indianapolis Colts - even with Cutler and Forte healthy. And then there were flashes of brilliance, that same feeling you had when the Bears beat up the Seahawks last year in the playoffs. That is the Bears we signed up for. We signed up for a team that had swagger, that had talent, that had heart. We showed up for the Bears team that stuck it to Atlanta on opening day. And/or the Bears squad that pummeled Michael Vick and the Eagles. We showed up when it dismantled the Lions. We've showed up ever since. Too bad the team didn't.

It's the mark of a coach, too. Because I remember the coach of all coaches (Da Bears) getting handed crappy quarterback after crappy quarterback and still grinding out 10-0-type wins. Nope, not this squad. When the chips were down, this squad sputtered, flopped, choked and gave up. That's not a glowing endorsement of the head coach, whose job is to motivate players to play.

But guess what? The NFL has changed.

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Sam Hurd wasn't as much a football player who dealt drugs. I think it's safe to say that Sam Hurd was a drug dealer who dabbled in football. The little tidbits of rumacts (rumor/facts) are coming out. I've heard (no pun intended):

• Hurd was one of the biggest drug dealers in Chicago.
• Hurd was selling to other NFL players.
• Hurd was investigated by feds days before signing with Bears.

Regardless of what I've heard, WR Sam Hurd is looking at 8-103 in prison. Oh wait, sorry, those are how many catches and yards he has on the season. My bad, I read that wrong.

Any which way, this Bears season kind of went south quick, didn't it?

Let's quickly review: Cutler out. Forte out. Rumors have Martz out. And now a back-up WR is the area's biggest dealer? My favorite aspect of the story has to be the "ask the other teammates" angle. Most say they didn't hang out with Hurd or that they had no idea.

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On Tuesday, my Facebook feed was flooded with a "Save John Knefel" post. John is an old buddy of mine who I met while touring with Schadenfreude 10 years ago. He and his sister Molly now live in New York and both are very active in the Occupy Wall Street movement. I just saw them last month when we were there for Bazer's Interview Show in Brooklyn. 

John has used his Twitter feed and a podcast to document and discuss the movement and has developed quite a following doing so. On Monday afternoon, John was accompanying protesters to Winter Garden, an indoor private shopping/play area in New York City, when the NYPD forced the protesters out and arrested some. They also arrested John.

The police probably got more than they bargained for because John is a popular voice of the movement and cries of "NYPD arrested journalists" rang through the rest of the country. John is now the leading voice for the #Occupy17, as those who were arrested are now being called.

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So Rahm is done cracking skulls at City Hall and is moving his way up Elston to the TAXI COMPANY!!!! The mayor wants stricter guidelines and regulations on Chicago cabs, as well as a fare increase. The cab lobby can't be happy, because they've had frozen fares for a few years now.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not sure a fare increase would be the right move, since cabs here are already as expensive - if not more so - than they are in New York and other big U.S. cities. I think what needs to be regulated, more than safety, is the add-on fees. Every time I get in a cab, I feel like the base $2.25 turns into $4 with add-ons before the tires even move.

Is there anything in the new regulations that will stop cabbies from riding the gas pedal like my grandma?

This is a perfect opportunity for WBEZ to open up the airwaves for my new show, Taxi Time, which is really just putting a live microphone outside that Wok Diner on Halsted, just before the river, where a lot of cab drivers hang out. That would be must-listen to radio.

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