(no subject)

[ksmith]

Only Chicago-area readers can address this, I know, but was WGN (both TV 9 and the AM station) always Fox-lite, or have they taken a hard turn to the right over the past couple of years? I've reached the point where I really wish they weren't the station of choice for the Cubs and Hawks, because I want to stop supporting them.

I know it's all the Tribune company, and the Trib is a conservative paper. But the on-air filtering, out of line opinions by newsreaders, and opinionation of their radio personalities just seem to have gotten worse over the last year or two. Or maybe I just wasn't attuned to it before.

Comments

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I haven't been watching the WGN news that long. But if it has turned Fox-lite, it's Fox-ultra-lite. I can't stand Fox & have no trouble with WGN at noon. I had been watching WLS or WMAQ, then WMAQ hired Bob what's-his-name after he was released from WTTW. I told WTTW they would get no more money from me until he was gone, & there must have been more folks like me.(I don't give them much.) Result: I won't watch WMAQ lest I see him.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

On WGN TV in the morning, I heard Tom Negovan, one of the anchors, tut-tut a foreign policy comment and agree with political analyst/guest that McCain obviously had more foreign policy chops. When they discuss the election even at this point, care is taken to play up McCain. On the radio, Steve Cochran, their afternoon host, regularly has Lou Dobbs on his show and vice versa, regularly toes the neocon line (people really should have taken more individual responsibility when it came to the Katrina clean-up. It wasn't all the Feds fault. No time to cast blame, etc etc). They hosted two authors who wrote books claiming to tell the truth about Obama--of course, these were controversial, unfavorable books. Milt Rosenberg has hosted conservative I-have-no-words Mark Steyn. I just don't recall all this several years ago. Granted, Cochran is now calling both McCain and Obama 'knuckleheads" and the morning guys, Bob Collins and now Spike O'Dell, have often made comments that indicated their conservative bias. It just seems a lot more obvious now, and I don't know if it's because I'm just picking it up because I think in the other direction, or because it's simply become more obvious.

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard those broadcasts! oh, bleep! And the Trib has announced the editors have decided to endorse Obama, the first time the paper has endorsed a Democrat for President since it was founded, to be on Sunday's editorial page. And I think you're right, it is more obvious now.

I haven't listened to Spike O'Dell - I knew he was too conservative for my blood pressure over 10 years ago, & never listened to Bob Collins either. But I found Wally Phillips too conservative too. When I listened to AM radio in the morning, it was WBBM, then in later years -only- WFMT. Five minutes of news was all I could take. Of course while away in summer, I'm an NPR listener from rising to sleep, too far north to hear Radio Marvelous. I -could- hear WGN there but don't.