Ira let the cat out of the bag last night at a panel discussion in NYC that there will be no more “This American Life” on Showtime. This from the article:

“I don’t know if I can say this yet, but we’ve asked to be taken off of television,” Glass revealed.

So the question circulating the City Room is…”Is TAL coming back to Chicago?” Glass also said this:

When asked about the show’s relationship with New York after moving from Chicago and whether it affected the stories they aired, Glass replied with an emphatic no. “I don’t give a goddamn about New York,” he said, before backpedaling a bit. “I mean, it’s nice to live here.”

I asked Chicago Public Radio‚  GM Torey Malatia if he had any insight on the question of Ira coming back to Chicago.‚  His answer was “I would love to have them come back.”‚  What does that mean? I wanted to get Ira to comment, but he never gets back to me — so I’ll get him later. So it’s like a cliffhanger. Will Ira leave the big show? Has he become a true-blue New Yorker? Is Chicago a small town with nothing happening now? Will Daley try to get Obama to intervene? Would Ira’s return help Chicago’s Olympic bid? Does Ira even know we might get the Olympics? Cause that’s big-city.‚  More on this tomorrow.