A Christian takeover of the Loop?

I remember being a pre-teenaged kid back in the early days of WLUP-FM when it was at its late ‘70s peak – when Steve Dahl was a young smartass rather than his cranky aged self and before he tried turning Comiskey Park into a funeral pyre for bad music.

Back in the days when Lorelei’s lips gave many a 12-year-old boy a wet dream.

AND BACK WHEN “the Loop’s” listenership would have been people inclined to listen to “the Devil’s music” of hard rock ‘n’ roll!

So what should we think of the fact that the radio station formally brought its programming to an end this week, and on Saturday will officially be taken over by a company that desires to turn the 97.9 FM radio frequency into one that broadcasts Christian-themed programming.

Is this The Lord himself trying to purify a radio frequency that the hard-core ideologue fanatics would say for four decades has given Chicago various forms of Satan’s tunes?

Is it truly some sort of bad irony that the station would become Christian? With Dahl himself publicly suggesting that the final tune he thinks should be played on the station before it becomes religious in them is “Highway to Hell.”

AS THOUGH WE really need another playing of AC/DC before the new owners turn it into a sister station of Arlington Heights-based WCLR (The Educational Media Foundation now owns both, along with 342 others across the country)!

Should one of these t-shirts go on exhibit at the Chicago History Museum?

Personally, I think too much is made of this theme. The reality is that the radio business is ever evolving and changing. The fact that the WLUP format and image survived from 1978 to the present means it had a long run.

One much longer than many other radio stations can even dream of having.

For all the crackpots who are eager to say WLUP ultimately failed, I’d say its successes put it at a level that make it an image permanently a part of Chicago. Although I think that now-unemployed broadcaster Mancow Muller overstates his significance when he says he can now go off to broadcast retirement like past Chicago iconic figures like Ray Rayner and Bozo the Clown.

One-time WLUP competitor also now has religious image

ACTUALLY, WHAT THE WLUP situation makes me recall is another hard-rock radio station of my Junior High school years – the old WMET-FM. I can remember being a 13-year-old listening to my fellow students quarrel over which station was better.

WMET ceased to exist in Chicago decades ago. The call letters are now used by a Washington, D.C.-area radio station that is part of the Guadalupe Radio Network.

As in it offers up programming meant to appeal specifically to Catholics. The two rockin’ images of the late ‘70s on the radio are now in the hands of people determined to serve God.

I still remember when I did a stint in college in Washington in the mid-1980s and being shocked to hear the “MET” call letters in the use of the Lord. Even though none of my non-Chicago counterparts in D.C. could appreciate the irony.

From the Beatles to Rush (as in Limbaugh)

I MUST CONFESS to not having actually listened to “The Loop” in years. I don’t doubt the people writing broadcast eulogies who say the station reached its peak in the late ‘70s and failed to adapt to the changing times.

But the idea of “the Loop” going religious isn’t the biggest abomination that could have occurred.

That, in my opinion, occurred many years ago when the one-time “Music Radio” WLS-AM that gave us Top 40 rock ‘n’ roll with its “Silver Dollar Surveys” of the top records decided to become a serious talk radio station.

The concept of Rush (as in Limbaugh, not Geddy Lee) filling the Chicago airwaves’ same frequency that once gave us Larry Lujack (and sidekick ‘Lil’ Tommy Edwards)? That’s more abhorrent than any programming change taking place now at “98 FM.”

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To Mancow and Drew, Oh be quiet!

The next time that radio “personality” Mancow Muller claims his critics ought to shut up because they don’t appreciate the “wit” he brings to the airwaves, we ought to remember what happened this week on his WLS-AM radio program in telling him where he can stuff his complaints.

I’m referring to Wednesday, when Drew Peterson used the telephone at the Will County Jail to make a collect call to the downtown Chicago-based radio station, which not only accepted the charges, they put him on the air.

FOR ABOUT SEVEN minutes (according to the Associated Press), they did a “jailhouse interview” with Drew – the one-time Bolingbrook police officer who likely breathed a sigh of relief earlier this week when officials announced that a body they found in the Des Plaines River was NOT that of his most recent wife Stacy (who has been missing for over a year).

There’s no evidence to connect Drew to that disappearance, so all the criminal charges he faces are related to the death of another of his wives – Kathleen.

Now it is not uncommon for news organizations to go to the jail and try to talk to inmates whose stories might be unusual enough to warrant public interest. There are times when a legitimate (if macabre) story can come out of the thoughts of an inmate.

And I also realize that Muller is not a reporter-type by any means. He is an entertainer.

SO ANY DISCUSSION he would have with Drew is not going to be about the great legal issues involved in the case, or trying to get the perspective of a one-time cop who may very well be in the same jail with people he helped lock up (which is why Peterson is being kept in solitary confinement these days; Will County officials don’t want a jail riot if at all possible).

But the content of that “interview” was so ridiculously trashy as to be pointless. It was a waste of radio airtime, particularly from the station that once gave us “Uncle” Larry Lujack and Lil’ Tommy (as in Edwards).

While some people might argue freedom of speech and Muller’s right to air whatever he thought appropriate (so long as his boss approved), I’m now using my right to freedom of expression to write this commentary that says the interview was stupid.

I never expect anything particularly highbrow from Muller, but this bit was just so crass that I have a hard time believing that anyone in the portion of the public that comprises the Chicago area found it to be entertaining.

IT CERTAINLY WASN’T informative.

Or do you really think the thought of “Win a Conjugal Visit with Drew” to be intriguing? I’d hate to think anyone would seriously take Peterson up on such an offer.

That is about the level of humor that was achieved during this entire bit, while also maintaining his innocence of any criminal activity in the death of wife number three (whom officials originally thought died by accident, but later ruled to be a homicide).

In fact, only one part even came close to giving me a chuckle.

THAT WAS PETERSON’S crack about the quality of food served to inmates in the Will County Jail. I’m not going to repeat his line, but the implication is that it causes inmates to put heavy wear and tear on the jailhouse toilets.

Isn’t this the same Drew who a couple of weeks ago wisecracked that one of the perks of his new situation was “three (free) square (meal)s a day?” Now, he gives us bathroom humor.

I outgrew that kind of wisecrack at about age 12. I’d like to think most of us did as well.

The ironic part is that I can easily picture in the past that when Peterson was a police officer, he likely would have been the type of person who would have lambasted “the media” for airing such trash.

MOST COPS I have known during my life can’t stand the inmates getting too much attention. It can go a long way toward humanizing people who may (or may not, there is that presumption of innocence) have made a stupid mistake in their lives and must now pay for it with loss of freedom for a time.

About the only thing I can think of that this “interview” accomplishes is that it humanizes Drew Peterson by showing him to be a nitwit (although he has said in a serious tone that his use of sarcasm in humor is his way of dealing with the stress of his incarceration).

So I don’t blame Peterson so much for making the call and acting like a buffoon on the radio. But I really have to wonder about the level of common sense that went into deciding that he was worthy of putting live on the air.

That lack of sense goes a long way toward undermining any credibility that Mancow the broadcaster ever had. That offends me more than any toilet joke told by Peterson.

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