Jim Bartlett’s Blog

From 1998 to 2000, Sports Night was one of the best shows on TV, and it remains my favorite sitcom ever. It was the first TV show developed by Aaron Sorkin, who later created The West Wing and The Newsroom. In one episode, one of the characters, Dan, was trying

Next week, public-school juniors all across Wisconsin will take the ACT. If it seems like I haven’t been on the radio all that much these last six weeks, it’s because I have been traveling around the state helping kids prepare for the ACT. I work for a company that presents

Last weekend I did something I hadn’t done since 1980 (I think): I was on the radio while the Super Bowl was on. While thousands of people in the Madison area were watching the game and/or waiting for the halftime show, I was hosting Sunday at the 80s. I didn’t

The snowstorm this week reminded me of the years I worked at a radio station in small-town Iowa. It was a 70-mile round trip commute from where we lived, so whenever I would otherwise be snowbound at the office, I had a standing invitation to stay in town with the

If you watch the NFL playoffs this weekend, you’ll see various performances of the National Anthem. As the games get bigger, so do the stars who perform the anthem. We’re used to pop performances of that song now, and we’re mostly happy to tolerate stars who put their own twist

Here’s something that’s not a news flash: we have lost a lot of famous people in 2016. It seems like there have been more losses in 2016 than ever before, although a scientist crunched some numbers and concluded that 2016 may not be so unusual. What’s different about this year

The weather forecast for the Packers/Bears game on Sunday says that the high temperature might be one below. That would  make it one of the coldest Packer games in history, up there with the famous Ice Bowl in 1967, when the game-time temperature in Green Bay was 13 below, or

There’s been a major brouhaha the last few years over the phrase “Happy Holidays.” Some people consider the phrase fightin’ words, claiming people should say “Merry Christmas.” On the other hand, you may have seen the meme that notes how the world’s seven major religions celebrate 29 different holidays between

On Thanksgiving Day 1981, I was a little baby disc jockey at KDTH in Dubuque, Iowa. My show was nearly over when a listener called to ask why I hadn’t played any Thanksgiving songs yet that morning. It was not a playful query. The tone of her voice indicated that

A few years ago, I went into the archives and looked at some of the morning-after Election Day editions of the Wisconsin State Journal. Here’s some of what I found: On Wednesday, November 8, 1972, the State Journal punned, “Nixon Makes It, Perfectly Clear: McG Yields in Landslide for President.” Inside, the