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History Of The Score: Chapter III - The AM 1160 Years

By Daniel I. Dorfman-

It was supposed to be a great new era for the Score. The 1160 frequency would allow the station to finally broadcast 24 hours a day. Yet as everyone connected found out instantly, no matter how good a station is, the people have to be able to listen and that just wasn't the case.

"The very first night they had a big thing out in Palatine and I was out there with the show with Murph (Mike Murphy) and I jumped in my car (to go to the station) because they wanted me to do the updates," remembered former Score update man Fred Huebner. "I turned on 1160 and I couldn't hear the station."

With corporate ownership needing to sell a station to adhere to FCC regulations regarding how many stations one company could own in a market, the decision was made to sell off 820 and move to 1160. Former General Manager Harvey Wells anticipated trouble was ahead, but given the FCC situation, the ownership moved forward.

As Wells feared, the nighttime signal could not be heard in much of the Chicago area and even the daytime signal was not as strong as 820. The targeted listeners were left out and they went out looking for other stations.

"The ratings fell apart," noted one time Program Director Ron Gleason. "Our strongest areas of listenership men 25-54 were in the northern suburbs and DuPage County. We had upscale listeners and our demographics were similar to WBEZ."

Gleason emphasized that played into a misperception regarding the Score's listeners.

"We are the epitome of the white collar audience," Gleason said. "The people that call in, a lot of them are blue collar. Our guys sound blue collar but it is a white collar demographic that listens to us and they are in DuPage County and Lake County. 1160 didn't reach them at night and it annihilated us. Hundreds and hundreds of calls: 'We cannot hear you.' It was the most frustrating thing and it has taken the Score years to get that back."

The 1160 frequency issue occurred during tumultuous times at the Score.

Mike North brought the Score some national attention when following a playoff game between the Bulls and Miami, he asked Heat coach Pat Riley during a postgame press conference, "If God came down and said the only way to win the next four games would be to shave your head, would you do it?"

Critics of the Score and North had a field day about the silliness of the question. Score reporter Dan Bernstein felt the wrath as he was assigned a less than desirable seat for the next game, yet he successfully lobbied to get his regular location in time.

Station management conceded North's question was a unique ploy to generate publicity.

"I was embarrassed when I saw it, but the next day I realized what he was doing," Wells said. "Mike North is a lot of things but more than anything he is cunning and it took me a little bit of time to figure it out what he was doing and why he was doing it."

North maintains the publicity was worth it and he only received plaudits from executives. "They loved it because it was all over the papers and everything," he said. "It was a great thing for the station because everybody benefitted when somebody did well there."

A few months later, afternoon host Dan McNeil pointedly questioned Bears quarterback Erik Kramer in a live interview why Kramer was smiling on the sidelines after he had been pulled from a game.

At one point Kramer said about his grin: "If people got a problem with it, screw 'em." That set McNeil off and the two had a heated exchange for several minutes.

"There are very few things that got as much reaction on the air as that had through the years," McNeil said. "I don't know how many voicemails I had when I got back to work the next day. Probably half telling me to go to hell and probably half telling me thumbs up. That's pretty good and I'm OK to split the middle if people feel that strongly about that."

Those two episodes showed the rambunctious nature of the Score, but the mood switched to poignant on an early February 1999 day.

All of Chicago was stunned when Walter Payton, who was still the NFL's all time leading rusher at the time and one of the city's most beloved figures, announced he was suffering from a rare liver disease. (Payton would die later that year.)

Payton had been serving as a Score football analyst during the Monsters of the Midday program before his health problems were known. Therefore, Jiggetts and North were sitting next to Payton when he tearfully acknowledged his situation in a press conference following their show.

North had suspected something had been wrong with Payton for some time, but only received official word just before they went on the air with him.

"That was just a bummer," North said. "We had to try to keep our composure. I remember Jigs and I shedding a few tears as it was only natural as he was our friend. He wasn't just a guy we were working with on the radio. We had been hanging with him."

Given the awkwardness of the situation, Gleason still cringes when he sees the Score logo when he watches tape of that rough day. "It was so sad," he said. "But he really enjoyed being on with those guys so much that he wanted to break this story to the world with them and I think he wanted something to fall back on to help him get through it as well as (his son) Jarrett."

That particular Payton show aside, most of the remotes have been fun for all involved. From 1992 to today, they are an important part of the Score's identity.

Certainly these appearances don't go without their challenges given the extra work for everyone involved. While the overwhelming majority of fans that turn out at remotes are just people looking to have a good time, a few shall we say, eccentrics, always seem to make their presence known.

"There are groupies who are crazy fans who would stand in front of the broadcast for four hours," recalled former Sports Director Dan Zampillo. "I didn't think anyone would pull a gun but I thought some of those guys were creepy and so weird. We used to call them the droolers. They would stand there and just stare and then during breaks they would say certain things about stuff they were hearing."

But Zampillo emphasized the remotes played into the Score's success. "We were regular guys and why it took off is those guys would get out into the crowd and shake hands and talk to those people. Even the droolers."

But all the remotes and apparent good times on the air could not mask the problems behind closed doors in the late 90s and not just because of the 1160 frequency issues.

Going back to the 820 days, trouble was percolating, according to most involved. What at first was an "all for one, one for all" attitude slowly began to slip away. With the paychecks getting bigger as stations both in and out of Chicago courted the Score talent, there was a palpable sense of unfriendliness creeping onto Belmont Avenue.

"One of the dilemmas we ran into was guests," Gleason said. "Who is going to get what guest? And we came up with a system and everybody had to tell us who they wanted and our executive producer would make the decision this show is going to get this, this and this. That caused a lot of problems because every show wanted all the great people and how do you deal with that?  Is one show more valuable than another? No, they were all valuable. So that would create some problems and some friction between shows as well."

Other problems involved pointed comments made during transition segments and other jabs one host might give another. The tension increased and the changes occurred.

In 1997, after being teamed with Jim Memolo for a time, Shaer left as morning show host after not being able to come to terms on a new contract. He was replaced by a combination of former Chicago players Norm Van Lier and Doug Buffone in a partnership known as the "Bull and the Bear" that would last a couple of years.

In August 1999, the duos that had been so closely identified with the station, the Monsters program and "The Heavy Fuel Crew" were abruptly split. Bernstein was teamed with Terry Boers, Mike North went solo and Dan McNeil would partner with Dan Jiggetts.

That lineup was installed after management pondered a wide variety of names to bring new voices on the air. Some of the personalities considered included Kevin Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Steve Cochran and even then Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti.

"It would have been great or they would have killed each other within the first hour of the show," former Sports Director Matt Fishman said of a possible Mariotti/North combination.

With most of Chicago's teams struggling in 1999, interest in sports waned. To compensate, management allowed the conversations to get away from sports, which only led to other issues.

"That was a bit of a nightmare," Fishman added. "We were told to broaden it but instead of being specifically told what to do and what not to do it was wide open. So people got into politics and saying things you would never want to get into instead of staying in guy topics. That is where the Score lost its focus and took a long time to get back to."

But management believed it was time for a change. Executives, along with some producers, thought much of the daily product needed reinvigoration and the most popular hosts needed to be on the station for more of the day.

"We felt it was time to do something a little bit different," Wells said. "We felt that things were getting a little bit stale around the edges. We were concerned that there had a little bit of friction between some of our talent and we felt we needed to change things up. It was a difficult decision because we had been doing the same thing for so long. Most of it worked, but unfortunately some of our talent didn't agree."

Out in front in terms of his displeasure with the new lineup was McNeil. He didn't want to be partnered with Jiggetts and he didn't like his 4:00 – 8:00 time slot.

"We just had decidedly different viewpoints on what made for good radio," McNeil said of why he didn't believe his partnership with Jiggetts would work. "Specifically, Dan is too nice for my taste. You can say maybe I balanced it because I had a ton of venom coming out of my pores for those 14 months and maybe that is accurate but I wasn't comfortable with it."

(Jiggetts declined interview requests for this series.)

The new lineup came as the Score was once again preparing to move to another frequency. After another purchase of radio stations, corporate ownership was once again forced to sell a Chicago station to adhere to FCC regulations. The decision was made in 2000 to disband the longstanding WMAQ and move the Score over to 670, which would solve the signal issues since 670 is a 50,000 watt clear channel frequency.

But the switch to the new frequency was not enough to prevent McNeil from leaving the Score in October 2000. McNeil lobbied unsuccessfully to be assigned to a different shift, those requests were denied, and McNeil was gone.

Wells, who has fond memories of attending a Led Zeppelin concert with McNeil, does not back off from the decision of the original talent shakeup.

"Dan didn't agree and that was his right but to this day Boers and Bernstein are still together so that one worked out pretty well," he said.

At the end of the day, management had made the changes. There were new combinations and a new frequency which meant everyone could hear the Score. Yet for the station, all those new things didn't necessarily mean listeners were interested.

Chapter IV: The 670 years

About This Series

Daniel I. Dorfman is a Chicago-based writer who has maintained a freelance relationship with WSCR since October 2010.

Dorfman was permitted to pursue any line of questions he believed to be appropriate for this series.

Many current and former WSCR employees were approached to give their reflections on their time at WSCR. Some chose to participate, some did not.

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