Chicago Sun-Times

In his headier days as chairman of Wrapports LLC, Michael Ferro often touted the delivery of high school sports content as a potential billion-dollar business. Now his company’s one remaining daily newspaper is shrinking its coverage of high school sports — and Ferro has disappeared from the masthead to boot.

Free-lance reporters were notified last week that the Sun-Times no longer would cover prep sports as extensively as in the past, starting with softball and other spring athletics. Continue reading →

Newton Minow

The only thing missing is the proclamation declaring it “Newton Minow Week” — and that’s probably on the way.

Window to the World Communications, parent company of public television WTTW-Channel 11 and classical music WFMT FM 98.7, will mark its 60th anniversary this week with a gala salute to its former board chairman, who’s also the subject of a new hourlong documentary.

Minow, 89, is the prominent Chicago lawyer and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission famous for calling television “a vast wasteland” in a 1961 speech. As WTTW board chairman a decade later, he is credited with recruiting William J. McCarter, the visionary leader who served as president and CEO for 27 years. Continue reading →

Bill Bellis at Draft Town

The May sweeps opened with a bang on WFLD-Channel 32 Thursday when an intruder dropped an F-bomb live on the air.

During a remote from Draft Town at Grant Park, meteorologist Bill Bellis was delivering a seven-day forecast at the end of Fox 32’s 9 p.m. newscast when an unidentified man rushed up behind him and said: “F— her in the p—.” Continue reading →