Hot Type, for the week of February 3, 2006 -- continued Malatia's not so sure. He thinks Glass might find out that a better idea is to do all six shows he owes Showtime this year before switching back to radio. At any rate, if a gun's pointed at Glass's head, Glass is the one holding it. A couple of years ago, after negotiations with Showtime got under way, the contract between This American Life and its distributor, Public Radio International, was rewritten to let Glass deliver only 20 new shows a year instead of 26 if he found himself trying to create a TV pilot at the same time. Last year he created the pilot and did the full 26 shows anyway. Now, says Malatia, PRI has agreed to let Glass go 12 months without creating any new radio shows at all. "The pressure's not coming from some contractual agreement," says Malatia, "but from Ira's desire to keep a radio presence going." And, it seems, from his need never to catch himself working less than 70 hours a week. (He and a collaborator are also doing a screenplay for Warner Brothers.) The radio show's a "dream situation," Glass told me. "We're fully funded forever if we want to be. The funding is an engine that drives itself. We have this massive audience -- 1.6 million people a week -- and we have complete editorial control. There's seven of us, and when we decide we want something on the radio we put it on the radio." His TV audience -- and this is something Glass didn't at first understand about cable -- will be a lot smaller than what he's used to. "A show on Showtime will be seen by half a million to a million people," he said. If he becomes famous on TV it'll be because he was already famous on radio. Showtime can pull the plug after the first six shows, and if that happens Malatia will want This American Life back in Chicago. But the contract is for 30 shows over four years. Money from Showtime will cover WBEZ's expenses in New York and pay the station about $100,000 a year on top of that -- serious compensation for no longer being able to brag that This American Life is being created down the hall. "For anyone who's a reporter or editor," Glass said, "New York is where the people are in the way that the movie business is in Los Angeles and chicken production is in North Carolina. I know so many people in New York. So many writers on our show and so many editor friends." Is this a day he knew would come? "It doesn't feel inevitable at all," Glass said, "but I'm going to move there and be in a community immediately." News Bites We were at war, the Senate was torn in two over who Samuel Alito was and what he believed -- but the American media found massive resources to throw at a story where the truth was at stake. Shame on you, said Oprah Winfrey to James Frey on live TV. The next morning front-page headlines in the Sun-Times shouted: "Oprah: 'I Feel Duped.'" "Roeper: It Was One of Her Finest Hours." Even so, the Sun-Times was waxed by the Tribune. Tribune banner headline: "Oprah shreds Frey in a million pieces." Page two: John Kass on Oprah. Editorial page: "Don't mess with Oprah." Back page of section one: nothing but Oprah, including columns by Internet critic Steve Johnson and media columnist Phil Rosenthal, who normally don't show up in section one. Front page of Metro: Mary Schmich on Oprah. Online: Eric Zorn and Charles Madigan. That's six Tribune columnists. Why? Because Frey had jerked Oprah around, she looked bad, and now she wasn't happy. Back in the 60s Lyndon Johnson said he knew he'd lost the Vietnam war when he lost Walter Cronkite. There aren't many guests of the stature of James Frey for Oprah to pick on, but maybe she could lower her sights a little and invite somebody like Donald Rumsfeld. At the Reader we knew that a deal between Ira Glass and Showtime would mean a move to New York because his wife, Anaheed Alani, works as an editor here. She'll continue editing a bit for us from there, but we're sorry to see her go. Send tips, tirades, and comments to hottype@chicagoreader.com Copyright © 2006 Chicago Reader, Inc. All rights reserved.