The Wrong Man at the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
We chatted with Andres in the WFMT studio while he spun Gershwin, Copland, and a couple of oboe concertos. He juggled news, weather, ad spots, and CD liner notes with an effortless professionalism.
Andres swiftly justified their worst fears by turning his back on WFMT’s program guide and playing what he pleased. “People think what I play is what I am. But that’s not true. I like Brahms. Then Beethoven. I’m a romantic, actually . . . ”
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Andres didn’t bring WFMT a bigger audience. The audience at WNIB, which held Andres’s spot open for two months and then filled it with Carl Grapentine (from WFMT), did not decline.
What about the Lotto ad? we asked.
That conversation had left us wondering who’s manning the tiller at WFMT, and Jay Andres said nothing to reassure us. “It doesn’t have a firm direction right now,” he said. “Too many people are running it.” They’d include Antlitz; and Antlitz’s newly arrived superior, Tom Voegeli, who’s senior vice president for radio of the Chicago Educational Television Association, which owns WFMT; and William McCarter, president of the board of CETA; and the revitalized CETA Radio Committee, now expanded to include four new members endorsed by the Friends of WFMT.
