- Details
-
Published on Friday, 28 June 2013 18:08
Even more changes are coming to WGN-AM next week. Starting on Monday, "The Noon Show" is gone from the schedule. That show's host, Carol Roth, is now gone from the station after just over six months there.
On January 2nd, WGN-AM
brought back the "The Noon Show," which was heard each weekday from Noon-1:00pm. Only this time, the station hired Carol Roth to be its host. The idea behind the new "Noon Show" was to take longer looks at the top news stories of the day, along with lifestyle segments. Additionally, one of the few remaining longtime veterans of the station, Orion Samuelson, provided daily business and agricultural reports.
Unfortunately, Carol Roth was a radio novice, who had not worked in the industry before except as a guest and doing a few fill-in roles at WGN-AM a few weeks prior to being hired. To those listening in... it seemed obvious. On her very first show on January 2nd, her first guest uttered a swear word which was clearly heard and not "dumped" from the broadcast. No apology was offered by the host, either.
The other problem was that traditionally, these type of news programs feature stories and business insight free of bias. Unfortunately, Roth could not, or would not, conceal her very strong conservative political leanings. She often skewed conversations toward conservative talking points and frequently featured conservative guests from FOX News and elsewhere.
Not surprising, Roth's one hour each weekday did not connect well with enough of WGN Radio's listeners.
Roth, a north suburban Chicago native, is a former investment banker, who is now a business strategist and the New York Times bestselling author of "The Entrepreneur Equation." She is regular guest/contributor on the cable and network news programs. In fact, just this morning, she was in New York to appear on the "Today" show.
"The Noon Show" would give midday host Mike McConnell a one-hour break between his two two-hour shifts. With "The Noon Show" now gone, starting Monday, McConnell's shift goes from 10:00am-2:00pm, with no long breaks.
For the time being, the one hour between the end of McConnell's shift and the start of Garry Meier's shift (2:00pm-3:00pm) will be a variety of different hosts and programming.
This is all just the latest in a handful of new changes that have taken place in the last few days, which include the
exit of Turi Ryder, the cancellation of "WGN Sports Night," and the
addition of "The David Kaplan Show" (which included the re-hiring of Mark Carman).
Plenty of additional changes and shifts to the current schedule are expected this summer, as new station management looks to strengthen the programming.
