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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Well, hey there, Wisconsin.
Good morning.
It is 6 0 6 on a Tuesday morning, August 19 2025.
It's a foggy but beautiful morning to have you here up north live from Lake Wissota from wherever you're spending your mornings listening across the civic media radio network.
And if you're joining us in some other way shape or form on social media through Facebook or YouTube through the app by podcast on the website.
However you got here, we appreciate you starting your Tuesday morning right here.
I got a question for you.
What is your superpower?
That thing that maybe you take for granted a particular skill or something that you have But that really comes in handy and it just might be you know your chocolate chip cookie recipe It might be how handy you are with anybody's car trouble.
I've just learned that mine is in tech support
I really ought to open up a help desk.
I should move to India right now and open a help desk as I'll describe coming up in just a bit.
On the program today, we're going to visit with Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation area.
We'll discuss how Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is coming to Western Wisconsin to help one of the Democrats trying to unseat Congressman Derrick Van Orden.
We'll look into whether Congressman Brian Stiles is signaling a willingness to help President Trump kill mail-in voting.
you know, that thing that's used safely and securely by hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters.
Trump, meanwhile, not only is attacking mail-in balloting after Vladimir Putin told him up in Alaska that it's not a good thing to do, he also yesterday hosted Ukraine's president.
which was strangely missing the red carpet.
It was missing the military flyover.
It was missing the ride in the presidential limo.
It seemed a little, didn't seem a little out of balance and yet we're trusting him to bring a fair and balanced peace to Europe.
Okay.
We'll also talk about how Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley is being criticized for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in trips during her time on the bench.
We'll talk to former state legislator Fred Clark about how ridiculous certain Wisconsin politicians looked in sending a letter to Canada to complain about, you know, their country burning down.
We're going to fact check the people who want to blame everything other than a changing climate for everything that's changing in our climate.
All of that and more along the way, we'll get an updated forecast, see if this fog is supposed to linger for very long.
And as always, we invite you to follow us and comment.
Can the Civic Media app is one of the best ways to reach out to us.
Just pull up any one of the radio stations where you're hearing us and use the text feature there and we'll see it and maybe put your comment up on screen.
But of course, we are on Facebook.
for both UpNorth News and Civic Media, and YouTube for both UpNorth News and Civic Media.
So you can reach us that way as well.
You can email us radio at upnorthnewswi.com.
UpNorth News is a separate entity from Civic Media, but it's a partnership we sure do enjoy on these weekday mornings from six to nine.
You can follow my team over at upnorthnewswi.com.
And you can follow the producer of this shindig Parker Olson down in Madison studio a2 By simply listening to him right now when I say Parker, what are you up to down there in Madison studio a2?
How are you?
rundown.
Oh
it's okay.
I see he'll be on 752 is that right?
In our way up north segment.
Yes.
All right, which some somehow I neglected to put on on your little piece of paper So
I get the important stuff in there
if I get Again like I said last week I just want to get the the songs from the history lesson in there if I get
because otherwise that's a whole lot of time to Tap dance.
yo
We'd have to sing the songs ourselves, Pat.
Can you imagine?
And I don't even know that our license covers that, so it's better this way, that we actually queue up the records.
Would it be fun if we actually had the records?
That would
the last time you played a record?
When was the last time you actually put a needle on a record?
We had a show at our college radio station in Whitewater, though.
We had...
Two record players, I think, actually, in our studio.
And we had a show, I think it was, I think it was called For the Record, and they just played records and talked.
I never listened to said show, but I'm told it was great.
See, again, it just, I can't believe it's now ancient history.
It certainly doesn't feel like ancient history to me.
But when I was working at the UW Eau Claire College radio station, you know, the first thing that you would do before if you were doing a music shift as opposed to a news or talk shift.
If you had a music shift, and you know, we all took turns with that, too, you'd go into this other room, you know, your typical office, you know, about the same size as the room that you're in right now, Madison Studio A2, maybe 10 feet by 10 feet, roughly something like that.
And it's, you know, got shelves all along it.
And it was just filled with albums, you know like like going into a record store and we would just go through and
just kind of pick ourselves.
What songs do we feel like playing today?
Which always gives you the false sense of that that's what radio is, that it's just a jukebox.
It's one of the first things that Professor Bailey had to say to us at UW-Clairs, you know, a radio station is not your personal jukebox.
But it was for those shifts.
Pick the records that you wanted to play and play them.
And then you made sure that you put them back afterwards.
You cussed if the needle skipped.
because somebody else didn't take as good a care of the records as you would, but they were there, you know?
They were there to play, but no records for you.
absolutely essential part of broadcasting, except in the broadcasting itself.
That is true.
thing.
I learned to swear, working at the UW Eau Claire College TV station, where as a beginning camera operator, you'd have the headset on, the director is giving you cues, and the director found all kinds of colorful ways to tell you that you were screwing up.
I mean, it was impressive, the words that I learned.
I want to say Mike Tomcheck was his name from like.
Pittsville or something like that, but don't don't hold me to it.
But oh, yeah, I I learned I learned some language.
Let me tell you and you you learn to be extremely Aware when we talk now about people sometimes say things and they don't realize there's a hot mic They don't realize that they're on social media or whatever.
I guess I understand it, but I just
And I did this when I was running for office as well.
They're like, oh, you got to watch what you say.
I'm like, I always watch to make sure that if you see a microphone within 50 feet of you, you just assume it's on.
However, however, I'll make an exception occasionally when you when you know, at least you you think it's not on.
But you never really know for sure.
In that whole guess rundown, I also failed to mention Dan Hagen from WJFW.
Watch 12 will be joining us today as well.
So should I add that name to your list as well?
You know the regulars?
Sounds good.
Let's talk Brewers and Cubs.
There was supposed to be a double header yesterday, making up for an earlier rain out.
They did play game one.
happened to game two?
game two.
Yeah, it was rained out.
Let's see.
Tony on YouTube.
I remember the first time I heard Pat curse.
It was shocking.
I was used to radio Pat.
I don't remember the context in that Tony, but I can understand.
If you've only, yeah, you've only ever heard somebody in one frame.
It's a little
traumatic experience for Tony.
Yes.
But hey, game one of that double header yesterday.
That was a lot of fun.
The little I saw.
fun.
Oh my goodness.
Seven to nothing.
Brewers.
Look at that.
I mean, Freddie Peralta's six innings, one hit.
Shutout ball first picture to 15 wins on the season.
What is he now 15 and four?
I believe I'm sorry 15 and five The Brewers improved to a major league baseball best 79 wins only 45 losses now they snapped the 14 game winning streak So now you kind of get that, you know, we've won so many of the last so many games So since the all-star break there've been 28 games 28 games since the all-star break the Brewers have won 23 of them
23 and five since the All-Star break.
And let's see, there were home runs by Bryce Durang and Caleb Durbin in game one and the Cubs fans, they were not happy.
They were
not happy with all the Brewers fans because usually it's the other way around.
You know, they always joke that American Family Field becomes Wrigley North.
Well, this was definitely American Family Field South yesterday and it.
It felt good.
And so then there was that very satisfying pause after game one and you're like, oh, let's do this again.
And, and then the rains came and just washed it all away.
So we are on the same schedule as yesterday when there was a doubleheader, a day night doubleheader.
So.
Last night's makeup game will be done this afternoon.
So again, pre-game at 12.45 across several civic media stations, and then there'll be a pause after the day game, and there will eventually be the evening game, and the pre-game there will start at 6.30 on several civic media radio stations.
Yes, I believe we have chased away chased away enough of the clouds here.
Shall we say to get something done?
So here was the question I put off the top in terms of what's your superpower?
Yeah, I learned last night and I've learned this repeatedly.
First with my my my late dad and now with my mom as well.
I can do tech support for for the for the elders really over phone.
You know, you think, oh, there's no way I'm going to be able to describe this.
But it turns out I was able to describe it so that when when my mom called to say that her Bluetooth speaker was not working, it's the the Bluetooth speaker.
She calls it her big hearing aid because it's connected directly to her TV.
And so she's got and she can't hear the TV from across the room.
So she's got this Bluetooth speaker on the little table right next to her recliner.
And that thing is blasted.
Let me tell you.
Well, they had a power outage yesterday in her neighborhood.
And when the power finally came back on, it had become unpaired.
And at first, I thought there is no way I'm going to explain Bluetooth pairing
80-year-old woman.
And yet I tried, I said, well, there's this little thing hanging off the back of the TV and then this little button on the speaker.
And, you know, she's like, I can't push both buttons at once.
I said, no, no, no, you don't have to, you know, you push the one, then you go over and push the other and they're both in pairing mode.
They're like lovers running across the grassy field toward each other.
And eventually they pair up and then I had no idea whether she could, I was expecting a callback going, I can't, your sister's going to have to come and fix this.
And instead.
phone rings couple minutes later.
I'm like, oh, here it comes.
She's like, I did it.
It's like, this, see, this is great.
I was I said, you know, Sherry said to her mother-in-law, you were the most technically accomplished 80 year old in the Twin Cities right now.
Congratulations on that.
So so good on her.
But that's one of those things that I've been able to help.
I have no mechanical skills whatsoever.
But I can provide some tech support.
I mean, I typed up Sherry's papers when in college because I knew typing.
And now I know Bluetooth pairing.
So I got that going for me.
Wow.
And I can talk and I'll do some more in just a moment.
Right after I tell you that from the heart of America's Up North live from Lake Wissota, I thank you for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
Over at Up North News, we have a couple of different newsletters, one on the weekdays, one on Sunday mornings about Wisconsin politics, and other things like our question of the week, and the question that I asked this week dealt with what Donald Trump's next job title should be.
This was inspired by Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, saying Donald Trump would really love to be transportation secretary.
So I asked, well, what do you think his next job should be?
I thought people might say McDonald's Fry Cook simply because of that photo op that he did.
Remember during the campaign last year where he pretended to work at a McDonald's that had actually been shut down and wasn't serving actual customers, but Trump was doing the whole posing for the cameras thing?
Nobody's said that.
There have been a lot of things related to either migrant labor on a farm.
or incarceration, but you can share your answers and get our question of the week before anybody else on Sunday mornings by signing up for a newsletter head to upnorthnewswi.com and click subscribe up in the top banner.
There's going to be a corporate name change in the media world and I'm befuddled by it and I can't imagine that Parker or anybody else wouldn't be a little confused as well that
MSNBC's name is going away.
Now MSNBC, correct me if I'm wrong, probably one of the more recognizable names on the cable dial.
Wouldn't you agree?
Yeah.
I mean, there's going to be very few people.
I mean, you say CNN, you say ESPN, you know, and I think most people, if you said MSNBC, they'd say, Oh yeah, it's one of those news channels, one of those news and talk channels.
This one's the liberal leaning one compared to all the ones on the right.
Yeah.
And yet
MSNBC's name is going away.
And it's all part of a, you know, typical corporate move, a corporate, I don't know, divorce, I guess you could say, because Comcast, the big cable giant, which eventually bought NBC and Universal Studios and so ran it as NBC Universal, is now having a split up so that
They will still Comcast the parent company will still have NBC and they'll still have Universal Studios But they've decided they want to spin off the cable company cable channels into something separate for whatever reason and so that company has
been formed and announced the changes that it's going to make.
And as a result, both MSNBC and CNBC, the Cable News Business Channel, they will no longer have the little NBC Peacock that identifies them.
And for MSNBC, it goes a step further.
They're changing the name outright to get NBC out of there to show a true break with NBC News.
And so the new name of it is
my source news opinion world, my source news opinion world, or MS now for short, instead of MS NBC, it's MS NOW MS now, to which I say MS what, or, or MS WTF or MS, huh?
I don't get this one at all.
Especially when you're keeping the MSN.
you know, the MSNOW.
MSNBC was originally a partnership between NBC and MSN.
Does anybody remember MSN?
Parker, you remember MSN, don't you?
No, you don't.
You've never heard
of
MSN,
have you?
No, no.
This, this goes back to the dot com bubble days.
in the mid to late 1990s when there was no Parker Olson around.
And during the dot com days, you had all these different entities that were forming on the web and they were trying to get into the synergy with TV.
And so Microsoft, which was known just for an operating system, started operating a website and a news channel.
And MSN was like Microsoft News, kind of like Yahoo News, as you know it today.
And then they paired up with NBC.
And so MSNBC was this Microsoft NBC partnership.
Well, Microsoft left that partnership a long, long time ago.
There's been no MS for Microsoft involved in forever, but MSN is still around, but NBC is not.
Excuse me.
So Comcast is spinning off all the cable channels, MSNBC, CNBC, Golf Channel, E, Oxygen, Sci-Fi and all of that.
And somewhere in my basement is videotape.
I have
no
idea what format if
it's recorded
and sure if it's
high
eight or what.
But I rolled tape on the very first minutes of MSNBC back in 1996.
There was this, you know, hours long, you know, countdown with all these little clips from NBC news and things like that.
And then eventually I think it was at 8am or 9am.
The channel fired up and somebody appeared some anchor appeared and
you know
a new news channel was born And I was working at the NBC station at the time an Eau Claire Channel 13 So I thought well this is a nice little historic moment.
So I rolled tape on it.
I've got it somewhere I don't know it's in a box in the basement along with I mean, there's so much other stuff I need to I need to retire now
digitize all these old tapes and still have some fun with
I know.
And I embrace it.
I absolutely.
So yeah, I have that.
So let's see.
Alicia says, yeah, MS now really doesn't roll.
Tony says, not E. Where will we watch the Kardashians?
Oh, those still be on E. That just it's got not a different, you know, a different corporate parent is all.
There was no date given for the spin off other than
some time this
Yeah, whatever.
So, so they felt a need to do that.
I think in part to allow the wave of mockery to subside, because there's a lot of it right now
Oh, you think that was an interesting rebranding?
Tom.
Let me tell you about a little something called New Coke.
New Coke?
Oh my.
Huh?
Parker.
Oh
boy.
All right.
Parker and I got to
talk while you listen to the Midwest Farm Report and then we'll have more on this beautiful Tuesday morning.
Foggy, but beautiful.
It's always beautiful up north.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
635.
Nice to have you along here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Crightlow, founding editor of Up North News.
You can find our work at UpNorthNewsWI.com, a part of Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy newsroom.
We have so many weighty matters we could discuss.
There's the Trump-Zolensky meeting.
There's Trump going after mail-in voting.
There's a sitting Supreme Court justice being criticized for
booking all kinds of travel that's paid for by right wing, you know, think tanks and things like that.
And I want to get to all of that.
But right before the break, we learned that somebody born in this particular century was not familiar with the phrase New Coke and the controversy over the time that Coca-Cola
its formula.
Way way back in the olden days, you know 1984 85 something like that.
was like one of the big
I mean, this would be like me not knowing about World War II, even though it happened 20 years before I was born.
This was on a World War II basis in terms of pop culture and the things that we ingested with our bodies.
And when Coca-Cola...
decided that Pepsi was such a threat because Pepsi was growing and Coke was looking like the old stale product and so they completely changed their formula.
They changed the formula.
Imagine your favorite beer just deciding we're not going to be that beer anymore.
We're going to be something else and we're going to call it that.
That's what Coke did thinking we're going to be, you know, now we're going to be new and fun and everybody's going to love us.
And nobody loved them.
It was the greatest corporate marketing disaster.
I mean, it made the Edsel.
Well, you don't even know what the Edsel is.
Never mind.
Nope.
There's got to be something.
I'll come up with it later.
And finally, after a few months, they had to rebrand it as Coca-Cola Classic and bring back the old formula.
And the new formula went away until a couple of years back with Coke Zero.
which is not exactly the same as new Coke, but close enough.
And it's why I drink Coke Zero every day, Coke Zero sugar, because I'm one of the few freaks that loved new Coke back in that spring of 1985, when this all took place.
just ditched there.
They just ditched Coke and said, here's some new ingredients put together in a cola.
And we're going to call that Coca Cola.
You look so confused.
Like, how would anybody do that?
And that's what we said at the time.
How would anybody do this?
Tony,
a fan of Coke Zero.
Well, that's OK.
Hey, you know what?
Alicia says, I was too little, but I did hear
about it from
my mom.
That's
great.
She used to be a huge Coca-Cola lover, and she tried to do Coke and hated it.
And I never heard the end of it.
You see?
And it's, yeah, they made it way sweeter.
because, again, they were trying to compete with Pepsi at the time.
And you like what you like at the time.
I mean, look, when I was in college, I drank so much Mountain Dew.
I mean, I can hardly touch Mountain Dew now.
that.
Yes, exactly.
Well, I mean, these energy drinks, do you drink any of the energy drinks that are out there now?
No, I don't.
guy.
No, you're not.
You and you and your water.
And that's, I mean, that is to be saluted.
And yet we mock it anyway, because that's what we, you know, that's our trade in stock here.
But yes, it's a good thing that you do that.
But yeah, I look at these energy drinks and I just, I can't fathom having more than one of them.
Yeah.
I'm a little surprised more people don't just drop dead on the sidewalk as a result of ingesting these things.
Can't be good.
Yeah.
Alicia's saying the reason I like Coke is because Pepsi is just too sweet.
And you got to love.
the reactions of people in restaurants, and the way that the waitresses always say it, or the waiters, when you order a Coke or a Diet Coke, and they always say the same thing, is Pepsi okay?
Like they're apologizing in advance, like is Pepsi okay?
And I like Pepsi for like a hot minute, tried to do an ad campaign based on that, like no, be proud that we're serving Pepsi, but it didn't really catch on, so.
But then again, neither did new Coke, and now Parker knows.
All about New Coke.
Hey, there's always something we can learn.
You know what I learned yesterday?
I learned that Congressman Derek Van Orden came to old Claire last Friday.
There wasn't
a town
hall.
No, there wasn't any big announcement.
There weren't any protesters there because
Most people didn't know about it.
Apparently you had to be a member of the Eau Claire Chamber to hear about it, but there I am looking at the leader telegram.
And the headline is Van Orden talks about one big beautiful bill with local businesses in Eau Claire.
The story here is by Michael Bowman and says that representative Derek Van Orden sat down with local business leaders at the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce Friday for a discussion about blah blah blah blah blah blah and of course then we get all the you know the the positive things about it we hear about these tax breaks and these investments and then of course we've got Van Orden telling this
lie essentially about it saying if we hadn't passed the one big beautiful bill the majority of these companies here would be stuck with a 43.5% tax rate which is devastating.
That's not what was going to happen and Congressman Van Orden knows this.
So what was he talking about?
Okay, we're back to the first Trump term and the first Trump tax giveaway, which again, locked in all these corporate tax breaks.
And then a few little tax breaks to the middle class, which had some people fooled like, oh, look, he's really looking out for me.
The middle class tax breaks expired after a couple of years.
The corporate tax breaks stuck around for the entire length of the bill.
But that meant they were about to expire.
Had they expired, yeah, all those corporate tax giveaways, they would have reverted back to what it was before the law.
And of course, they would frame that as a big tax increase rather than going back to the way things were before Donald Trump gave you this big gift that all the rest of middle class America had to foot the bill for.
So what happened?
Well Trump somehow got back in office again and so they just picked up right where they left off and Trump called it a one big beautiful bill and it was one big bloated boondoggle and it continues to be so to this day.
And once again there are big corporate tax sweetheart deals in there and big tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and little tax breaks for some folks in the middle class and it won't last.
But also in that bill are budget cuts.
Huge budget cuts to Medicaid to nutrition programs and other things.
Do they kick in next week?
No No, they don't kick in until after next year's midterms so that from now till then Derek Van Ord and others can go around saying you see look nothing's happened Nobody's benefits have been cut because they kick in after the midterm It's absolutely diabolical from a political standpoint, but they knew exactly what they were doing
and holding off on the painful parts.
Kicking in, of course, the tax breaks now, which only do what to the deficit?
Boom.
Just send the deficit right up into the stratosphere.
Van Orden said, quote, the Democrats in the state of Wisconsin are saying that we cut Medicaid.
In fact, in the one big beautiful bill because of vertically integrated government between the Republicans in the House and the Senate in DC and in the Senate and Assembly in the state of Wisconsin, we got an additional $1 billion a year for the state of Wisconsin for badger care.
You can't make up a bigger lie than what they're saying.
It's just a fact.
And when the Democrats are fear mongering with our seniors and those most vulnerable amongst us, I don't have a lot of time for it.
Well, make time, Derek Van Orden, because here's the thing.
We know what a lie that is.
We know that the reason there's an extra $1 billion a year had nothing to do with you working alongside Governor Evers in securing that money.
We know that it was big cuts that were coming to the states through this bill that forced Wisconsin legislators to act quickly to pass a budget before that ax came down from you.
so that money could be raised to help make up for the big cuts in Medicaid that you voted for.
And you can say, till you're blue in the face, that Democrats are fear-mongering and Democrats are lying, but you can't argue with the numbers.
And the numbers ain't lying.
The numbers tell us just how bad the cuts are gonna be.
The numbers tell us how bad it's gonna be for rural hospitals.
The numbers tell us
how tax burdens are shifting away from your wealthy buddies and to your constituents.
It's why there are three Democrats already wanting to run against Derek Van Orden next year.
Why one of them, Becca Cook, is already getting some firepower coming in this week from members of Congress, including Bernie Sanders, who's coming into town at the end of this week, I believe.
We're going to talk to Dan Schaefer about that later in this show.
But underlying all of this for Congressman Van Orden is that he still doesn't have the guts to schedule a town hall.
He's got to sneak in, just talk to the business community.
I don't know what the email looked like.
I get an email from the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce that advertises events that are coming up.
I went back and looked yesterday.
I didn't see anything advertising a forum with Derek Van Orden.
I could be wrong, but I went back and looked at several emails and I saw nothing.
Now, I'm not a dues paying member of the Eau Claire Chamber, so I'm sure those folks get a different set of emails.
And I'm not, I am not casting aspersions on the Eau Claire Chamber.
That is their right.
They can do things for members only.
My beef isn't with the Eau Claire Chamber.
It's with Congressman Van Orden who, you know what?
While you're there.
Thanks for coming to Eau Claire, by the way.
Glad you could still find it on a map.
But maybe double up your pleasure in the Chippewa Valley.
Yeah, have your nice, friendly chit chat with some business leaders and give your spin however you want.
Then do what I had to do and so many other people.
Head over to DeLong Middle School or maybe to UW Eau Claire, maybe maybe the Sonic Tag Center.
Well, it's brand new.
And maybe that'll hold enough of your constituents.
who want to have a few words with you about what you decided was worthy of our tax dollar investment, tax breaks for millionaires, and what was not worthy of our tax dollars, healthcare, nutrition programs, a whole new generation of clean energy jobs, support for our farmers, getting them new markets, conservation programs for those new farmers throughout your district.
Those were not priorities for you.
Neither was holding a town hall to explain why you think it's such a good idea.
You love popping off on social media, Congressman Van Orden.
Hundreds and hundreds of tweets per month where you get to just talk at people.
Kind of like I'm doing here.
I get paid for this.
But I get to tell Congressman Van Orden, I'm not an elected official.
You are.
I've been an elected official.
I've held listening sessions.
I've held over a hundred of them.
I know what that's like.
Some days they're good, some days they're not so good, but that's what you get with the job unless you are just so frightened of having people explain what a terrible thing you did in supporting Trump in 100% of the way.
At no point did you stand up to Donald Trump the way that you said you would saying you'd be an independent voice for the Third Congressional District.
You didn't do that.
So it's no wonder you're too afraid to debate Mark Pokan or debate anybody else about the job you're doing.
You can't.
Which is why we had to find out about it and talk about it now, several days later.
Today's history lesson is next.
You're up north.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Oh, he's doing it again.
He's playing Chicago again, isn't he?
Yes, he is.
Welcome to today's history lesson where the number one song this day in 1972 was by Chicago.
Now, I will say there's something cool about hearing them play that song Saturday in the park.
I think it was the 4th of July and actually hearing it on the 4th of July at Summerfest in Milwaukee as we did last month.
Yes, that was a musical celestial arrangement, if you will.
On this same day in 1972, the Midnight Special debuted on NBC.
Now at first it was just a one-off special presentation with featuring these rock acts, but then the next year it was launched as a regular show with Wolfman Jack serving as an announcer on Friday nights after the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
It was...
It was a big deal because it was it was network television in the early 70s, which is trying to avoid all those hippies and all that stuff.
Finally embracing rock and roll.
I mean, like real rock and roll, not Pat Boone remakes, but actual rock and roll.
And you'd hear that now on Friday nights.
It would eventually be replaced with something called Friday night videos back when music videos became all the rage when MTV first launched.
And now.
I don't know if there's really anything that takes its place.
We're on a weekly basis.
You're going to see a couple of really good contemporary acts.
I don't think we really have.
It's kind of like our discussion yesterday about
shows.
There's just not really a venue for that anymore.
like, here, we put everything on stream.
You pick the stream that you want and choose what you like.
That's true.
On this day in 2006, Drake made his professional debut.
He did a 30-minute set in Toronto opening for Ice Cube and earned himself $100 back this day in 2006.
He's made a little more money since then.
All right, welcome to the Irving Berlin segment of today's history lesson two items.
First off, I don't know here in the 21st century, I don't know what we would call the song sensation of the century.
Don't know maybe maybe one of the Taylor Swift album.
Yeah,
I
don't I don't know but in 1911 in the early days of the 20th century variety magazine Which was a thing back then called this new song the song sensation of the history it was by Irving Berlin
Irving
Berlin's song sensation of the century
Wow.
This day in 1911.
But now we're going to fast forward 72 years to 1983.
And that was the peak at number nine on the charts by a cover of an Irving Berlin song done by Dutch musician
Taco.
This
Oh, come on.
this was a very popular song in 1983.
Irving Berlin was still with us at that point.
He was 95 years old, which made him the oldest living songwriter ever to land a top 10 hit because the song had peaked at number nine this week in 1983.
OK, that's kind
of
cool.
By the way, Taco still with us.
I don't recall him doing any other hits, but he turned 70 last month.
I think I remember seeing him on the birthday list on one of the weekends.
Let's see.
The late Johnny Nash was born this day in
1940.
A couple of former Brewers at birthdays today.
JJ Hardy is 43 years old today and former manager Ned Yost turns 70 today.
He was Brewers manager from 2002 to 2008.
And I'd entirely forgotten about how when he was fired in September of 2008, it's because the Brewers were falling fast and people were getting tired of these late season collapses.
He's fired.
There were still 12 games to play left in the regular season.
Dale Swame was named the interim manager.
The Brewers clawed back and they won a wild card spot for their first playoff appearance since the 1982 World Series.
Uh, no, I would
Sabathio was me.
Was he 2050 or
it 2008?
I'm pretty
be.
I was just focusing on the Ned Yost angle on it.
Yost did go on to manage the Kansas City Royals and then he retired after the 2019 season.
Singer Leanne Womack is 59 years old
today.
Former President Bill Clinton is 79 years old today.
Let's see singer Christina Perry is 39 and the late Matthew Perry would have been 56 years old today.
Passed away back in 2023.
This is National Photography Day.
This is National Potato Day.
This is National Bowtie Day.
Have you even worn like a clip on bow tie?
I was I'm not gonna ask you if you ever tied a bow tie because I think that answers now literally nobody ties a bow tie
have
I have.
Look, with the right thing with the tux or whatever, a bow tie can be very nice.
The folks who wear it is kind of like, I'm being different in my everyday wear, you know, wearing it at work or whatever.
It doesn't work for me, but it's OK.
My brother's
bow tie guy.
And it's National Soft Serve Ice Cream Day.
And you go, what is so special about soft serve ice cream?
Well, it's made using a special machine that churns the ice cream mix at a slightly higher temperature.
So it gets a little melty and introduces more air, resulting in a smoother and creamier consistency.
Yeah Leave it of course the Eagle Scout Luke Mathers to tell us on the text line The only kind of bow ties I wear are the ones that you have to tie yourself And he has about a dozen of them.
He does it right.
Dang it He's such a Renaissance man, you know, I mean all we can do is live in his shadow
Well, and he's handsome and he's capable and he's listening.
He's always listen, you know who else is listening?
Oh, Greg Bach.
He says it was 2008 for CCCBathia.
Thank you, Greg.
Appreciate that.
All right, the record is clear.
We'll have much more for the next two hours here on these mornings, powered by Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Kraitlum.
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