Feder: WGN Radio Walk of Fame turns into station giveaway

There's a new twist to the strange saga of the WGN Radio Walk of Fame.

Launched in 2014 as a promotional gimmick to honor current and former personalities of news/talk WGN 720-AM, plaques for dozens of inductees were embedded in the pavement outside Tribune Tower, then home of the Tribune Broadcasting radio flagship.

With the sale of Tribune Tower in 2018, the plaques were removed with talk of eventually securing a "new, suitable home" for them.

At some point they wound up in a makeshift graveyard at WGN's transmitter site in northwest suburban Elk Grove Village.

Now comes word WGN has given up on finding a new site and has begun offering the plaques to the inductees. (The idea surfaced after a report here that Marlene Wells, a WGN sales promotion coordinator and 2019 inductee, already had her plaque in her garden at home.)

"While we hoped to find a suitable place to display the plaques, when we realized that the honorees would rather be in possession of them, we felt it would be a more fitting tribute to grant their request," Mary Sandberg Boyle, vice president and general manager of WGN, said Tuesday.

No word yet on how many have accepted the offer.

Get the full report, and more Chicago media news, at robertfeder.com.