Some random notes this a.m. -- so till Merten decides to get back in gear with his Virtual Coffee, how 'bout a First Smoke of the Day? Like this puff (piece) from New York magazine concerning New York City Opera's new director, some guy named George Steel ... sounds familiar, can't quite place it, it's coming to me, ohwaitrightIremember. Dallas Opera's director of artistic administration, Jonathan Pell, most definitely looks forward to the day we don't: "It's like Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower in Dallas, and it turns out the whole previous season was a dream. Six months from now, people aren't going to remember he was here." ...
Clear Channel apparently feels the same way about Tom Joyner: In Chicago, the radio monolith has unceremoniously dumped the Dallas jock's radio show and replaced it with former Dallasite Steve Harvey's morning jam. Joyner, of course, first appeared on Chicago radio in the mid-1980s, as he flew back and forth between KKDA-FM (104.5) here and WGCI-FM in Chicago to earn the monicker "The Fly Jock." Said his latest program director in Chicago, "Tom Joyner has been a great partner with V103 for the past 13 years, making it difficult to part ways." But, apparently, not impossible. ...
And on an not-entirely unrelated end note, GlobeSt.com analyzes the nation's office-space market, and finds Dallas and Houston in a good news-bad new situation. As in:
Both metros saw employment growth in 2008 and are each expected to lose upward of 20,000 office jobs in 2009. ... Some 4.1 million square feet of new construction (2.3% of inventory) in Dallas along with its office job losses could push the vacancy rate to 27% from 22.3%, pushing rents down as much as 20%.
