Author’s note: Roe Conn wooed my alter ego, Bruce Wolf, whose ego was crushed at the altar in ’04 after Bruce thought he was going to replace Garry Meier as Roe’s partner on WLS-AM. Bruce is still bitter, I’m sure. I am not. There is no schadenfreude whatsoever motivating the following suggestions.
Roe Conn, who makes a reported million or so dollars a year (that is, until the company he works for, Citadel, goes bankrupt in a few months), has disappeared in the radio ratings. Actually, the station he works for, WLS (890AM), vanished in the September ratings period. This is amazing since WLS is a conservative talk station, and though anti-Obama fervor probably peaked in August, you’d think there would have been at least some trickle down benefit in September.
Maybe it’s because with the exception of Rush Limbaugh, WLS isn’t really very conservative at all. Mancow is a libertarian. And Roe, well, he’s more a rock ‘n’ roller than anything else. And can you really blame him? Rush Limbaugh has succeeded nationally because he pounds away like a Top 40 radio disc jockey. He mentions the “drive-by media” as often as Felicia Middlebrooks gives the time and temp on WBBM (78o AM)(see WBBM radio news anchor to be hoisted up to Wrigley building clock, a previous post in this blog), and almost as often as Howard Stern of blessed memory mentions the word “breasts.”
But Roe is too smart and too eclectic to be yoked to such formats. And recently he lost two of his on-air staffers because of budget cuts. So he’s probably very lonely now. No listeners. No one in studio. (well, there is Jim Johnson, who can be fun.)
So to help Roe out I’d like to be his virtual friend. He can pretend to converse with me. (Conversation is pretty much a one-way thing with Roe anyway.) He can use this column for ideas. He can even steal these ideas if he wants. Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, I always say. So herewith some suggestions for today’s Roe show:
1) Playboy is going to have Marge Simpson as its centerfold. No, I’m not kidding. I’m not the boy who cried “Bruce Wolf” on this. She’s scheduled to be featured in the November issue. Aside from your garden variety double entendres (the magazine is going “blue”; shouldn’t the name of the magazine’s new CEO be Ned Flanders, not Scott), what are the cultural ramifications? Have we come full circle-jerk to Esquire’s “Vargas girl” illustrations?
2) Clewless Lazare in today’s Bright One reports that the local Emmys are being downsized to the Park West, with a cash bar yet. Why doesn’t Emily Barr, the only tv news exec with cash (she’s WLS-TV’s general manager), have the Emmys in a bigger venue, say Mark Giangreco’s tie closet at Channel 7?
3) Or speaking of the Park West, why not combine the Emmys with your own Newsapalooza, which was held at the very same Park West just last weekend, and according to Pulitzer Prize-winning gossip columnist Bill Zwecker (see Zwecker wins Pulitzer for outing William F. Buckley, Jr., a previous post in this blog), featured news anchorettes Amy Jacobson, Marion Brooks, Natalie Martinez and Ginger Zee doing a version of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” dance number? Wouldn’t such a number have jazzed up the Emmys? It could have been the best moment in local Emmy history since the offstage announcer bouyantly proclaimed, “And the winner is: the Laurie Dann massacre,” and the band jubilantly struck up ”Hold on, I’m coming” as several tv newsbeings came to the stage to accept the award for their breaking news coverage of a mentally ill woman who shot four schoolchildren, killing one.
4) Speaking of the newschicks dancing, Zwecker reported that your web site, roeconn.com, had more than 250,000 views (at least 125,000 of which were not from Andy Avalos), and your site even crashed. But a cursory check of the site shows that you have no advertising on the site, Roe. Did you actually blow a chance to reap revenue? You have to be portable nowadays. You have to go where the audience is at any particular moment.
5) How’s about blackmail? Why don’t you threaten NBC5 with greater exposure of the video of their leotarded newscastresses? Yes, the video seems harmless enough. But then NBC5 actually fired Amy Jacobson when she was innocently caught wearing a bikini top by a Peeping Tom camera from Channel 2. NBC was absolutely right in firing Jacobson. NBC5 appeals to many women viewers. Women, after all, are the ones whom advertisers are trying to reach. And though women like to say they are thoroughly modern Millies, their visceral reaction is to abhor such displays. Especially if the women viewers themselves don’t look as good as the anchorettes. You could capitalize on this, Roe. I’m thinking there’s at least a nightly commentary in this for you on Channel 5 if you play your cards right. And if you can bring in a sponsor. Have you thought about contacting General Electric about buying time on its own station? Might be more worthwhile than the money they’ve spent lobbying for cap and trade legislation.
Anyway, these are just suggestions. I know it can be lonely these days on the radio. But you can use me as your virtual friend. Kind of the way zaftig Oprah uses svelte Oprah as a friend now that Oprah’s imaginary friends (that is, viewers) are abandoning her. (see 7-year-old schizophrenic interviews Oprah, a previous post in this blog)
Best of luck, my dear Wormwood, er, Roe.
