Jocks and the Jockless

Another Chicago radio legend is back on the air on WZZN, the "true oldies" station left standing after Real Oldies 1690 perished. According to Chicago Sun-Times media columnist Robert Feder, Dick Biondi, who first lit up the nighttime airwaves on WLS in the early 60s, is doing nights at the station, which also recently added John Landecker to its lineup. Rumors are flying that Fred Winston might be the next on board.

(Thanks to Willie--who has started blogging and podcasting--for the tips.)

Poking through Feder's archives, I saw a story from last week that Chicago's WLIT-FM launched its all-Christmas format on November 2--two-and-a-half weeks earlier than last year. WLIT scores big ratings when it goes all-Christmas--but c'mon. November 2? The people I feel sorry for are the jocks. Poor bastards.

Speaking of jocks: If you've visited my station lately, you may have noticed the lack of jocks. On November 1, The Lake bagged the phrase "timeless rock" in favor of "everything classic," and both broadened and deepened its music library considerably. (Heard recently: "Absolutely Right" by the Five Man Electrical Band and "The Slider" by T. Rex.) The station is currently going jockless during the week, although the jocks are on the air on weekends. This will apparently continue for a while, although we've been assured it's not permanent.

Couple of housekeeping tidbits:

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 recently, and you'll want to upgrade to it for a couple of reasons. First, Microsoft will badger you incessantly if you don't, and second, this blog will finally look right if you do. When viewed with earlier versions of IE, the sidebar drops to the bottom of the page, but that doesn't seem to be happening with IE7. Of course, if you've been using Firefox like I do, everything has always looked right.

And also: Since I've started posting mp3s regularly, this blog has finally been listed at the Hype Machine, a website that aggregates music blog posts from around the Internet. It's a small thing, but if it brings in some more eyes and ears, I'm for it, because I'm a whore like everybody else.