Jim O'Donnell: AM-1000 trying to look back up with lineup changes
WAS IT FRANZ KAFKA or Jim Morrison and Robby Krieger who wrote:
"I've been down so very damned long that it looks like up to me?"
The Doors earned royalty rights from the line. But it might as well be the renewed playing mantra at Chicago's ESPN AM (1000).
First-year programming chief Mike Thomas announced lineup changes that set the town on fire in much the same way reports of an overturned hot dog cart in Albany Park would.
Thomas is an earnest enough fellow who generated significant sports talk success at his last stop in Boston.
But the revamping of AM-1000 simply underscores the fact he and Craig Karmazin - whose Good Karma Brands has been trying to resuscitate "WDOA 1000" since last winter - are chasing revenue dollars with programming pennies.
Biggest "win" for the guys from Good Karma is that they finally freed the station's primary morning-drive hours from the air-sucking stranglehold of ESPN's national numbing agents.
Biggest "low wow factor" for the duo is their new 7 to 10 a.m. team will be David Kaplan and Jonathan Hood.
Hood retains that valuably immeasurable tag of "promising."
Kaplan is yesterday's baldy sour, a diluted Chet Coppock knockoff who rode the most diminishing decade in the history of Chicago sports media to multi-flanged repetitiveness.
After that, the "new" AM-1000 will include recycled Carmen DeFalco and John Jurkovic from 10 a.m. to noon, Mike Greenberg's reborn national ESPN show from noon to 2 p.m., and ground-saving Tom Waddle and Marc Silverman from 2 to 6 p.m.
Youth - which in Chicago sports talk means anyone under age 50 - gets a text alert at 6 p.m. with Chris Bleck and Adam Abdalla, both of whom showed specks of snap and sizzle as frequently dissonant caddies on Kaplan's most recent dirge orbiter.
The core reality of sports talk in Chicago is that it was a growing irrelevancy before the pandemic.
Now, with the COVID-19 plague a daily depressor, the niche itself is battling for survival.
Listening to "market leader" WSCR-AM (670) is like being thrown into a Serlingesque ring of pandering nonsense peopled by carbon-dated yelp chasers.
At AM-1000, at least Mike Thomas is trying to introduce "fresh."
Even if the station has been down so very damned long that occasional relevancy would look like up.
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• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.