Last week in this space I criticized my home town, which resulted in (a media outlet in) my hometown criticizing me.

The next chapter comes this morning when I appear on said Madison media outlet, WTDY, and its Sly in the Morning show at 8:35 a.m.

A little Madison media history: WTDY is the former WISM, which was Madison’s top 40 station in the 1970s. WISM’s FM was an automated station playing euphemistically misnamed “beautiful music” while WISM was rocking. And then in 1983 WISM-FM became WMGN,  “Magic 98,” and WISM became what initially was known as “Today Radio,” WTDY, now a news–talk station. (They should have kept the great WISM call letters for Magic 98.)

Back in the late 1980s, the University of Wisconsin decided to have one provider of football and basketball broadcasts instead of letting anyone who wanted to broadcast into the Camp Randall Stadium press box. The decision and the network’s selecting WTSO as its Madison affiliate eliminated WIBA and WTDY from carrying Badger games, which were still a valuable property despite the sinking Badger fortunes. WIBA’s response was to start carrying Notre Dame games back when the Fighting Irish were one of the country’s best teams. WTDY’s response was to start carrying, of all teams, Iowa.

Sly worked for years at WIBA-FM, Madison’s rock station. His morning show featured a talk segment, “Social Dilemma,” and “Vinyl from Hell,” featuring songs bad enough to make your ears bleed.

Perhaps the first thing we can discuss this morning is where on this blog I specifically advocated for the secession of Madison and Milwaukee from Wisconsin. (As opposed to asking what Wisconsin would be like minus Madison and Milwaukee.)

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