The Internet voting booth opens June 14 for the latest class to enter the Chicago-based Radio Hall of Fame, which features pioneering shock jock Howard Stern on the list of nominees.
Anybody can vote, with details on how to register available at the Hall of Fame Web site as we get closer to that June 14 date. Voting ends Aug. 1.
Stern, now heard only on Sirius Satellite Radio, is one of the choices in the "National-Active" category that also includes money talker Bob Brinker, NPR veteran Carl Kasell and syndicated country countdown host Bob Kingsley.
Kingsley's show airs from 8 p.m. to midnight Saturdays on WMIL-FM (106.1)
In the "National -- Pioneer" category is Barry Farber, a conservative talker who began on New York radio in the 1960s; the "Music and Spoken Word" program featuring the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which launched in 1929 and is the nation's longest-running radio show; Notre Dame radio voice Tony Roberts; and the old "WLS Barn Dance."
Chicago radio's Steve Dahl -- who's now a full-time podcaster -- is on the list of nominees in the "Local or Regional -- Pioneer" category. Other nominees include Cincinnati radio legend Gary Burbank, country music's Ralph Emery, who began his career at Nashville's WSM-AM, and Boston FM pioneer Charles Laquidara.
Completing the ballot is the "Local or Regional -- Active" category: Leslie Fram of New York's WRXP-FM, Terri Hemmert of Chicago's WXRT-FM, Ronn Owens of San Francisco's KGO-AM, and Luther Masingill, the morning guy on Chattanooga's WDEF-AM since 1941.
For the record, two Milwaukee broadcasters are in the Hall of Fame, Milwaukee Brewers voice Bob Uecker and WTMJ-AM (620) veteran Gordon Hinkley.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
