Sports radio guy in Chicago finds out station is closing while on the air

It's happening right now. The recently created 87.7 FM The Game is apparently shutting down at the end of the year, cut loose by the Tribune Company.

The guy on the air right now just found out about it on Twitter during a commercial break, and he's been going off pretty good for a bit now.

 

He better hope the tweet was accurate.

 

His partner is part of management and found out last night, and apologized for letting him find out that way.

 

OK, fair enough then.

 

He just got his layoff letter and is reading it for the first time on the air.

 

Being on the Beethoven end of the FM dial has a lot to do with it.

 

A lot of people left what seemed like good steady gigs at WSCR to jump over to The Game. I hope they land on their feet.

 

I blame Cutler.

 

If he played as well as you played that everyone would love him.

 

A similar thing happened to me in sports radio, pre-Twitter.

On a Friday, at the end of my three-hour morning show (I also ran the board), I hit the station ID in the final commercial break.

"The ALL NEW 730"

Up until then, we had been "ALL SPORTS 730".

I thought something was askew but... in the final 30 seconds of my week (before going off to my TV job), I signed off, promised a good show ahead on Monday.

Still, hearing a different voice and a different name for the station was odd.

The mystery ended 30 seconds later when the program manager came in and said, "sorry, guys, this was the last day. Format change."

I walked into the GM's office, sat quietly and asked for severance.

He laughed, "why should I give you severance? You were at-will."

"This will be on the front page of the sports section tomorrow. You also fired the newspaper's columnist."

"Oh."

He gave me three months severance which was great as I was going to hand in my two-week notice at the end of the month anyway as Mrs. Ex and I were expecting our first kid.

 

And who could have guess that years later that story would end with you using the extra dough to take your kid to see the Royals in the playoffs?

 

http://deadspin.com/the-moment-chicago-radio-hosts-found-out-on-the-air-tha-1661673605

Really gets going about the 4:15 mark.