On Tuesday, in his online blog "Eric Zorn's Notebook", Tribune columnist Eric Zorn busted WLS-AM's Don & Roma for borrowing content without permission or attribution. The morning duo converted an essay by Tribune columnist Leah Eskin from the Sunday magazine into a scripted rant between them. Check out Zorn's transcript. Amazing Hubris.

The November TV rating sweep begins tomorrow and runs through the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This means no reruns of your favorite network shows for 4 weeks and lots of important sweeps stories on the late news. Enjoy!

John Hilkevich's "Getting Around" column on Monday about the CTA was uncharacteristically critical of some proposals to close their budget gap. Sure, the criticisms are minor and he tends to favor the powers in charge (Kreusi/Daley) but it's nice to see some insight and suggestions for a change.

An "Atta-boy!" goes to Robert Feder for his Monday column on the #1's in Chicago radio. While it starts out mocking the fact that many stations can claim victories from the last rating book, his column showed that even though a show or station isn't strong with one audience, it can still be called a success if it is strong with the target audience. I was under the impression that Mancow beats Howard Stern and that no one listens to Steve Dahl. Wrong on both counts. This column was a great way to showcase rating wins for the average reader who doesn't understand ratings. I hope he continues to do this type of piece after every radio and TV rating book.

I loved the Sun-Times' editorial Monday about prescription drugs, "Americans shouldn't have to pay more for medicine". The big reason is the little bit of info that I hadn't heard before:
"'We'd love to let you save money on your medicines, but it could be dangerous.' If the argument against the re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada has a familiar ring, it should. We heard it all before, just over 20 years ago, when the Food and Drug Administration dragged a case involving federal approval of generic drugs all the way to the Supreme Court."
Wow. I really hate a lot of things our federal government does these days. When's that election?

Rick Bayless is starting to freak me out.

Check out the video for the new single from nerd-rock legends REM at: http://www.morningteam.com/. It's a good parody of local AM news shows & news channels. Love the crawls.

Check out this good article on big media & the press at MediaReform.net.

I got lots of feedback about my October 9th column on Jay Mariotti. All over-freaking-whelmingly positive. I even got some off-the-record comments from a few journalists. Stunning. Next week I shall continue what I started.

I've expanded the Chicago columnist links on the website to include just about every columnist that does something weekly. Is this a good thing or should I return to just linking to columnists I like? Do you have any link suggestions? Any suggestions on how I grouped things? Did I miss anything? Let me know.