Lee Abrams was until recently the “Senior Vice President and Chief Programming Officer” for XM Satellite Radio, and he was highly instrumental in the hiring of Bob Dylan to do his wonderful “Theme Time Radio Hour” show. Earlier this month he became “Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer” at the Tribune Company, a media behemoth which owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, sundry other newspapers and media thingies, and operates twenty-three television stations.

Of-course print media has been going through a rough time and it seems to be only getting rougher, especially for the old mainline newspaper giants. Never fear; Abrams has the answer. And it is — you guessed it — Bob. As reported at this link, Abrams says:

BOB DYLAN & Tribune? Had a great meeting with the Dylan folks. There is big potential to have Bob on our team. The guy DOES know how to write.
Got me thinking—-Are we creating our own stars? we have them…and we should continue to recruit them. Online, on TV and In print. We live in a celebrity era…columnists CAN be stars IF we position them that way.

Well, this is funny to contemplate, but count me as highly skeptical. I can see there being a “great meeting with the Dylan folks” on it, but, with all of his other outlets, I can’t see Dylan personally really wanting the platform or the aggravation of writing some kind of regular column. Now, I could be wrong, but I think that whereas “Theme Time Radio Hour” is a natural fit with what Robert Spencer has called Dylan’s “deep love of tradition, and [...] interest in passing it on”, and his desire for “giving credit where credit is due”, I just don’t see a regular column serving those same purposes of Dylan’s. And he does have two more volumes of memoir still to complete. But, what do I know?

One thing’s for sure: If anyone can save the struggling old broadsheets, it is Bob Dylan — the true King of All Media.

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