Another Chicago-based entertainment company has been purchased by a larger New York competitor in yet another repeat of Chicago traditions. Jam Theatricals has been purchased by the Nederlander Organization of New York, the company that operates Broadway in Chicago. As is usual in Chicago, no one will rue its passing because no one was aware it was even here. Jam Theatricals started in Chicago in the late 1990's as a spin-off from Jam Productions, 

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The American musical extravaganza, begot in Chicago over thirteen decades ago, is alive and well in Las Vegas, Nevada; not that anyone in Chicago is aware of their City's cultural history. At the dawn of the nineteenth century's Gilded Age, a Chicago theater producer created a musical extravaganza, Arabian Nights, inspired by Christmas pantos he had witnessed as a child in England. It became a sensation!

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In 1996 the Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago-based Tribune Company (predecessor company to Trib Media), had a vision that he could create a media empire. There was a schism opening in the ownership of the Times Mirror Corporation, a similar conglomerate of newspapers and television stations based in Los Angeles, and this could lead, it was hoped, to a merger, actually a takeover, of the similar company if an offer was made that could not be refused.

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Chicago rarely wins when another company purchases a Chicago media company or cultural asset. Consider what happened to the Field Empire after its assets were purchased by Fox or how the Barn Dance and the Prairie Farmer were summarily killed as soon as the American Broadcasting Company got control of WLS's broadcast license. But perhaps the recent purchase of Trib Media by Texas based Nexstar will result in a big positive development.

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No one does historical or cultural documentaries as well as Ken Burns. The Civil War, Prohibition, the Vietnam War and now Country Music. It is detailed, extensive and enrapturing. And yet, there is much that Burns and his crew neglected especially in regards to Chicago and the influence of Chicago's country music industry on the genre and the business.  For example, in the very beginning completely unmentioned was Wendell Hall who preceded Jimmy Rodgers by four full years. Hall, who worked as a song-plugger for a Chicago publishing company, 

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George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue  the monster hit of 1924 as of January, 2020 is now in the public domain as is several of the greatest hit songs to ever come out of Chicago including  the Isham Jones and Gus Kahn song: It Had to Be You, a chestnut thereafter for lounge singers everywhere.  In 1924. Chicago was at its zenith as a production center of American music; it was the epicenter of the Big Band Era.

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 New City, the small twice monthly free zine, published an interview with the new director of the Art Institute of Chicago as its lead article in the March 1-15 edition. The visual arts' community in Chicago gets little attention with the exception of New City which is often alone in covering art news. Still the timing could not have been worse. It seems there was to be an election later in March and everyone's attention was on either the State's Attorney race or some South Side black democrat who had had the audacity to challenge his white boss.

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Chicago Art and Design WTTW

On Friday, October 4th, WTTW premiered their new art history program Art and Design in Chicago, sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Driehaus Foundation. Kudos for their good intentions but the show seemed to be more about "our values" than about "our art." It appears to be congruent with another Chicago tradition: the primacy of fine art, or high-brow, over commercial art or low-brow. If they are going to present the history of Chicago Art, they should present a complete chronicle.

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 It may be hard to believe now but a century ago many Americans who lived between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains obtained their news and much of their printed entertainment from Chicago-based companies. Several Chicago-based magazines were among the largest circulated magazines in the nation. In recent days with the news that Tronc (the silly name for the old Chicago Tribune company) had sold the Los Angeles Times to a West Coast investor and may itself be up for sale, Chicago will be completely void of any locally owned media companies with even a regional, much less national, import. The ever shrinking Sun-Times 

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 In an era of shrinking print media, Chicago is home to a new provincial magazine, Chicagoly, although hardly anyone seems to have noticed. First announced quietly last summer with the title of the Chicagoan which conjured memories of the last two glossy failures   

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