WWL AM-870 and FM-105.3 morning man Bob DelGiorno announced his retirement from the station today after 34 years on the New Orleans radio airwaves. He will be replaced by frequent morning-show fill-in Tommy Tucker, who has hosted the 8 p.m.-to-midnight shift when not subbing for DelGiorno during morning drive.
(Ha! And I bet you thought this was going to be a post about Jim Henderson!)
On the one hand, it's reassuring to know that, in Tucker, WWL has filled the slot with the one radio personality mean and blockheaded enough to actually make the show less informative, if such a thing is even possible. On the other hand, nobody stupids up the morning news like DelGiorno.
I realize it's the general fashion in any corporate news setting to pretend the incomplete or skewed information being presented is actually unbiased, "balanced" reporting but most long time professionals are much smoother at pulling off this act than Bob ever was. If we were ever to see Paul Krugman's famous "Views differ on shape of Earth" caricature frame come to life, Bob would be the man to deliver it. Probably while shouting the words "I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T KNOW IF ANYBODY KNOWS!" over the protestations of his guest or caller. It was a lot like listening to an argument where one party would plug his ears and say "Lalalalalala" until the other stopped talking. Here's a perfect example of that from back during the Wisconsin labor protests last year.
But I think my favorite Bob moment was this bizarre conversation he had with Charlie Melancon during the Health Care debate. Bob continued to insist that the bill was unavailable for him to read while ignoring Melancon's continued attempts to explain (very very poorly) that it was in fact available on the internet... which neither man appeared to know how to use very well. But Melancon could have been Tim Berners-Lee up there and it wouldn't have mattered. There is not a single set of facts that Bob DelGiorno could not nullify through the sheer force of his aggressive willful ignorance. He will be sorely missed.
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