Not wanting “to alienate anybody,” WGN-AM 720 pulled its Disney World promotion spot-featuring midday hosts Judy Markey and Kathy O’Malley-five days early.
The promo, about a new Disney ride and offering free trips to the Orlando park, featured the line: “If they really wanted a Tower of Terror, they should go to Water Tower at Christmas.”
The Keroff and Rosenberg advertising agency, which handles the Water Tower Place account, took exception to the reference and raised objections late last week with WGN general manager Dan Fabian.
“The agency was just doing its job,” Fabian said Tuesday. “What’s the upside of alienating anybody?”
Loop moves: Tribune Tempo editor Rick Kogan begins hosting a weekly three-hour talk show, “The Sunday Papers,” on WLUP-FM 97.9 at 9 a.m. Sunday. Kogan’s first in-studio guest: singer Dennis DeYoung. “That’s part of a host of weekend programming changes we’re planning at the Loop, including (porno star) Seka doing a show Saturday night,” said Evergreen Media President Larry Wert.
New guy in town: John Lansing isn’t coming to WBBM-Ch. 2 to perform miracles. Despite the CBS affiliate’s No. 3 status, the recently hired news director doesn’t “have a concrete plan in hand” for changing the station’s fortunes when he takes over for Mark Toney Oct. 3.
Since Lansing was responsible for turning Minneapolis’ WCCO-TV newscasts into a “family-sensitive” show, one of the rumors that WBBM general manager Bob McGann, another WCCO alum, had to knock down was that a similar change would be made at Channel 2.
Lansing cautions it would be “inappropriate to assume” concerns of Twin Cities viewers could be transferred to Chicago. “TV news ought to be about the audience it serves rather than what everybody else does,” he says.
Lansing’s journalism credentials impressed some WBBM staffers. “I’m encouraged because this was a guy who was on the street,” says Jay Levine.
Numbers game: “The Simpsons” reruns still carry a wallop. The opener of the syndicated version of the series had a 7.4 rating with a 14 share Monday, putting WFLD-Ch. 32 behind only WLS-Ch. 7’s “Wheel of Fortune” in the 6:30 p.m. time slot. . . . WGN-Ch. 9’s new “Morning News” has taken a slim lead over WFLD-Ch. 32’s also-local “Fox Thing in the Morning” in the competition for viewers from 7 to 8 a.m. After two weeks, WGN is averaging a 1.9 rating to 1.8 for WFLD.
On the road: WTTW-Ch. 11 host John Callaway takes “Chicago Tonight” out of the studio for at least 10 remotes, including four half-hours from Washington, D.C., Monday through Thursday. “I’ve always wanted to get the show out of the studio on a regular basis,” says executive producer V. J. McAleer. . . . WBBM-Ch. 2 expands its weather coverage starting Wednesday with Channel 2 WeatherNet, a system of remote weather stations located in 15 area schools. WeatherNet can provide viewers with specific information about severe weather from those 15 neighborhoods, while the schools’ science departments will be able to view data from any station on the system.
Personnel moves:Phil Wolf, a WBBM-Ch. 2 veteran since 1981, has been promoted from producer to executive producer for programming. . . . News reporter Rick Leventhal has left WFLD-Ch. 32 to join wife Penny Daniels, who quit WBBM-Ch. 2 to become “A Current Affair’s” L.A.-based correspondent. . . . Terry Sullivan, who prosecuted John Wayne Gacy and Patricia Columbo at the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, will be WGN-Ch. 9’s legal analyst when the O.J. Simpson trial starts Monday.
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