Clueless McBride speeded up departure

Radio is a tough business. It can be cruel. No two-week notice. You'll find out at the end of your shift that it's time to clean out your desk.

The decision to replace Jessica McBride had been in the works for some time, WTMJ management says. There is no reason to doubt that. She apparently had a small audience, and deservedly so.

But the station's general manager also acknowledged to columnist Tim Cuprisin that McBride's failed attempt this week to incorporate the drive-by killing of a 4-year-old into a comic routine(!) hastened her demise.

She may have been on the way out, in other words, but not this week.

McBride herself clearly didn't have a clue she was going anywhere. She introduced her disastrously unfunny "Left Side of the Moon" feature on Tuesday night, saying on the air and on her blog that it would run on Tuesdays and Fridays in the future.

 Actually, it only ran once, and that was the segment with a chicken sound effect substituing for Eugene Kane. Kane, who was on vacation, won the "debate" by a knockout without even being there.

It speaks volumes to McBride's lack of judgment -- and how clueless she truly is -- that she not only did the tasteless segment Tuesday night but was quite proud of it. So proud that she didn't just broadcast it, but wrote about it on her blog and posted a link to the offensive audio.

 If she hadn't done that, she might have stayed out of trouble. It was the post that caught the attention of Jim Rowen and other bloggers, before station management listened to it, found it "inappropriate," and took it down.

 She may have been gone in a week or two, or in a month, anyway.

 But McBride has no one to blame but her tone-deaf self for accelerating the date of her exit.