After 16-plus years as pretty much the face of Chicago sport-talk radio station WSCR -- the score -- Mike North has been relieved of his duties as morning drive-time host.
In The Locker Room, the view is that it, indeed, was time for him to go.
North deserves a ton of credit for stretching his 15 minutes of fame into 16 years. But the truth is, he carved out his radio niche being the voice of the common man -- the hot-dog vendor, if you will. Only, over time, he no longer was the common man.
And when he crossed that line from common man to elitest, the ball game, so to speak, was over.
Same thing actually happened to longtime Chicago radio personalities Johnny Brandmeier and Steve Dahl. While they both are still around, there ratings are infantismile compared to back 15-20 years ago when they RULED the airwaves. Now, they are time and space fillers.
Both of them, like North, carved out their niche as the common man. And then, due to their success, they weren't so common anymore.
The only radio guy who actually was able to pull off that common-man thing after striking it rich was the late Bob Collins on WGN. Don't know why he was able to pull it off, but he's the only one we in The Locker Room can remember being able to do it.
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