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Jim Dedelow (JED) - Hammond, IN
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Lunch on Lin

11/15/2019

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Two legends - Lin Brehmer of WXRT (seated) and Jimmy Bannos, acclaimed chef and owner of Heaven on Seven.
​​Friday morning, 5am. I’m having a little trouble pushing off the pillow to get ready to do a two-hour radio show. I have no idea if there’s any guests or not. It’s better that way. 
 
Yesterday, I drove to downtown Chicago and had lunch with Lin Brehmer, the venerable Chicago rock jock for the last 30 years. Lin gave us a tour of all of the stations owned by Entercom. It’s in the old Prudential building, which is right next to the old Standard Oil building where I worked when I was 24 years old. I read patents to make sure the grammar was right. Even then I liked making sure that no one used an exclamation point.
​Friday morning, 5am. I’m having a little trouble pushing off the pillow to get ready to do a two-hour radio show. I have no idea if there’s any guests or not. It’s better that way. 
 
Yesterday, I drove to downtown Chicago and had lunch with Lin Brehmer, the venerable Chicago rock jock for the last 30 years. Lin gave us a tour of all of the stations owned by Entercom. It’s in the old Prudential building, which is right next to the old Standard Oil building where I worked when I was 24 years old. I read patents to make sure the grammar was right. Even then I liked making sure that no one used an exclamation point.
 
Studio envy. As the three or four of you know, we built some amazing studios in the Purdue Commercialization and Manufacturing Excellence Center. I am proud of these studios. There’s glass and a producer’s booth and robotic cameras and a backdrop of big trucks rolling down Indianapolis Boulevard. But it ain’t shit compared to the studios on the ninth and tenth floor of the Prudential Building:

  • 93 WXRT
  • US 99
  • Newsradio 780
 
and a whole lot more. You wouldn’think it, but the thing I was most envious of was a wall of audio processors.  On June 23rd, we start our own FM radio station, 104.7 FM. We need to buy an Omnia Volt to process the audio so it sounds as good as it can. This and a few other pieces are quite expensive. I felt like ripping one of their processors off the wall and taking it with me. 
 
Lin took us to lunch at Heaven on Seven, the Cajun stronghold on the seventh floor of a nearby building. I had the same catfish lunch that I ate many times as a trader at the Board of Trade. The fish tasted the same, but instead of five beers and a boisterous table of traders in pink jackets…  I drank one beer and talked calmly with Lin about music, radio and getting your finger caught in the car door. 
 
“Here, you wanna see the scar,” Lin said as he showed me this lizard-looking mark on his pointer fingers. “Still got it.”
 
This was in response to my comment – “Let’s get this out of the way. My favorite ‘Lin’s Bin’ was when you got your finger caught in the car door on a trip to Florida and your brothers showed you no mercy.”
 
“That’s odd that you say that. I just read that one to a bunch of students on Friday.”
 
If you don’t know what “Lin’s Bin” means or even who Lin Bremer is, then forget it. I’m not gonna explain it to you. Suffice it to say that he’s as genuine and affable in person as he has been on Chicago radio for the last 30 years. Thanks to Tom Roach, the head of the Purdue Northwest communications department, for setting the whole thing up.
 
…. We were walking through the WXRT sales department and I saw a sign on the wall – Joel Ratajack. I did not know that Joel worked for XRT. He went to school at St. Thomas More with my daughter Jeanie. We talked for a while and then he said something I didn’t expect.
 
“Okay, goodbye Mr. Dedelow.”
 
I was confused for a moment. I looked around for my dad. He wasn’t there.
 
…. It’s a busy day. I’ll do the morning show, eat lunch with Pete Korellis, try to sell advertising on the phone for a while, then I’ll drive to Merrilvvile and announce the regional championship game between Merrillville and Warsaw. I haven’t announced football in a few years. I can’t remember the last one. This should be interesting. 
 
It’s been a while since the three or four of you and I have talked. Please forgive me for taking a break. We’re doing a lot of shit and sometimes you just gotta take a deep breath and figure out which direction you’re headed. Talk soon. 
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    I run radio stations and a streaming video network in Hammond, Ind., and write this blog.

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