Jim Johnson (born 1945) is a retired personality on '' The Roe Conn Show'' on

WLS (AM) WLS (890 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Chicago, Illinois. Owned by Cumulus Media, through licensee Radio License Holdings LLC, the station airs a talk radio format. WLS has its radio studios in the NBC Tower on North Columbus Drive i ...

890 in Chicago, where he was a news reporter and occasionally participated in the on-air discussion with the other on-air personalities.

Personal life and education

Johnson grew up in Chicago and the

North Woods The Laurentian Mixed Forest Province, also known as the North Woods, is a forested ecoregion in eastern North America. Among others, this terminology has been adopted by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Similar, though not n ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

. His father was also in the news business working at the

City News Bureau of Chicago City News Bureau of Chicago (CNB), or City Press (1890-2005), was a news bureau that served as one of the first cooperative news agencies in the United States. It was founded in 1890 by the newspapers of Chicago to provide a common source of local ...

, that with the ''

Chicago Sun Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...

''. When the family lived in the North Woods, they built and operated a hunting and fishing lodge. This lodge was a popular vacation spot for Chicago politicians, judges, policemen, and firefighters, including then

Mayor of Chicago The mayor of Chicago is the chief executive of city government in Chicago, Illinois, the third-largest city in the United States. The mayor is responsible for the administration and management of various city departments, submits proposals and r ...

Richard J. Daley Richard Joseph Daley (May 15, 1902 – December 20, 1976) was an American politician who served as the Mayor of Chicago from 1955 and the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party Central Committee from 1953 until his death. He has been cal ...

and his son and future Mayor,

Richard M. Daley Richard Michael Daley (born April 24, 1942) is an American politician who served as the 54th mayor of Chicago, Illinois, from 1989 to 2011. Daley was elected mayor in 1989 and was reelected five times until declining to run for a seventh term ...

. Jim married his college sweatheart, Denise. Their daughter, Alexis, following in her father and grandfather's footsteps, is a TV reporter and weekend anchor in

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...

. Johnson has a bachelor's and master's degree in communications from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

Career

Johnson began his broadcasting career as a television

news anchor A news presenter – also known as a newsreader, newscaster (short for "news broadcaster"), anchorman or anchorwoman, news anchor or simply an anchor – is a person who presents news during a news program on TV, radio or the Internet. ...

Champaign, Illinois Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in Illinois outside the Chicago metropo ...

. He is known as a veteran of Chicago Broadcasting taking part in television and radio news for more than 3 decades. He entered the Chicago news business at the age of 23 in 1968, perhaps one of the most turbulent years in Chicago history with

Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7 ...

starting riots and the

anti-war protests An anti-war movement (also ''antiwar'') is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term anti-war can also refer to pa ...

. In the late 1970s, Johnson worked as reporter at

ABC 7 Chicago WLS-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains studios on North State S ...

in addition to his work with the radio. The 1980s saw him working as a fill-in news anchor at the Steve and Garry Show with

Steve Dahl Steven Robert Dahl (born November 20, 1954) is an American radio personality. He is the owner and operator of the Steve Dahl Network, a subscription-based podcasting network. Dahl gained a measure of national attention after organizing and hostin ...

and

Garry Meier Garry Meier (born December 2, 1949) is a Chicago-based radio personality who has been active in Chicago radio since 1973. Meier is well known for being part of the highly successful radio duos " Steve & Garry" and " Roe and Garry", but he also ho ...

. Johnson then began to work for the Roe and Garry Show. He continued to work with Roe Conn as co-hosts changed throughout the years. According to Johnson, some of his major achievements include creating the Canarbale Wagon and the Jimism. The 'Canarble Wagon' being a segment airing on '' the Roe Conn Show'' every Friday on at 5:00 pm. It is a time when the cast of the show order alcoholic beverages from the Canarble Wagon. The name 'Canarble Wagon' comes from Johnson's early days in journalism. When he was a reporter at the

City Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

press room, veteran reporters told a story of a newspaper reporter who would come back from lunch drunk. This reporter could not pronounce the word cocktail; instead, the word canarble was heard. Johnson added the word wagon to canarble and the Canarble Wagon was made. The Jimism being "the practice of botched news reporting". If a listener "catches" a Jimism, they can call in to the station and report it. If Johnson did say a Jimism, the caller will win a "I Caught a Jimism" T-shirt. On Tuesday, April 30, 2013, Jim announced on air during the Roe & Roeper show that the will retire when his current contract expires in June 2013. His final newscast was at 6:30 p.m. on June 28, 2013. He was replaced by news anchor Susan Carlson.Robert Feder: "Carlson Moves up to Full Time at NBC 5"
April 1, 2014

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Jim Living people 1945 births Radio personalities from Chicago