News at noon: Anna & Kori on the rise at Fox Chicago

Anna Davlantes and Kori Chambers

Robservations on the media beat:

• No one is supposed to know it yet, but the anchor team of the future is taking shape at Fox Chicago: Anna Davlantes and Kori Chambers, who host opposite halves of the station’s Good Day Chicago morning show, are expected to be named anchors of Fox Chicago’s revamped noon newscast, starting in September. Meteorologist Bill Bellis will deliver weather. Insiders say Davlantes and Chambers also are in line to anchor a new 5pm weekday newscast that’s on the drawing board for 2013. Davlantes joined Fox Chicago in 2009 after nine years at NBC 5. She currently anchors Good Day Chicago from 7 to 10am with Corey McPherrin. Chambers, who joined the station in 2008 from WDIV-TV in Detroit, anchors Good Day Chicago solo at 4:30am and with Dawn Hasbrouck from 5 to 7am. Former noon news anchor Jan Jeffcoat, who left last month after her contract was not renewed, is slated to host The List, a syndicated magazine show premiering this fall. Look for Patrick Elwood, who still anchors at noon, to return to full-time reporting duties.

•  “Radio is important, and the next steps it takes are critical to its place in American life. We need to give it our honest best effort.” With those words, Tom Taylor signed off Friday after five years and three months as the industry’s indefatigable daily columnist of record for Radio-Info.com, the Chicago-based website published by Rick and Diana Fleming. With the Flemings’ decision to retire and turn over the site to Talkers magazine’s Michael Harrison, Taylor chose to step back and take his first vacation since 1995. No word on where he’ll turn up next. Taylor recently delivered 20 boxes of radio trade publications — spanning his decades at Inside Radio, M Street Daily, M Street Journal and FMQB — to the Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland. Here’s hoping he’s soon back on the beat he covered better than anyone in the business.

• Geraldo Rivera will host the 2012 National Radio Hall of Fame induction ceremony November 10. The event will be broadcast live from the new Museum of Broadcast Communications. This year’s inductees are Howard Stern, Gary Burbank, Ron Chapman, Art Laboe, Luther Masingill, Jack Cooper and Fresh Air hosted by Terry Gross. Best known as a television host, news anchor and correspondent, Rivera last week launched a nationally syndicated daily radio show via Cumulus Media Networks. Tickets to the Radio Hall of Fame gala are at museum.tv.

• Chicago’s classical music station isn’t in any rush to hire a new program director. Peter Whorf resigned last month as program director and vice president of content and project management at WFMT-FM (98.7) to become station manager of WKAR-AM/FM, the public radio stations of Michigan State University in East Lansing. But WFMT boss Steve Robinson says parent company Window to the World Communications has put hiring a replacement on hold while he implements other plans, including thematic programming. “I want the wonderful music we play day in and day out to be tied together in a way that is a bit more logical,” he said.

• Meteorologist Megan Glaros told Facebook fans she’s returning to CBS 2’s morning news show on August 27. “Getting my hair done tomorrow to get ready to go back on the air soon,” she wrote last week. “I guess I'll have to find my hair dryer again huh?” Glaros, who’s been on leave since May, gave birth to twins in June.

• Keep an eye on Glenn Marshall. After two years as a desk assistant and multimedia news associate at NBC 5, the Northern Illinois University graduate has landed as a general assignment reporter at WICS-TV in Springfield, Illinois. He starts at the ABC affiliate Monday.