Still on the Air: Nick Digilio, Radio’s Last True Movie Believer

Radio legends have become an endangered species, their voices fading beneath algorithms and playlists. But every so often, if you know where to listen, you still hear one. In Chicago, that voice belongs to Nick Digilio.

For more than four decades, Digilio has been a constant on the city’s cultural frequency. A film critic, broadcaster, podcaster, live-event host, and unapologetic movie obsessive, he represents a particular Chicago ideal: deeply knowledgeable, relentlessly curious, and profoundly human. In a wide-ranging conversation with Tom Barnas, Digilio reflects on a life shaped by cinema and radio, two mediums that taught him how to listen, how to watch, and how to connect.

Digilio’s career spans over 35 years in radio, much of it at WGN, where the station once felt less like a corporation and more like a family kitchen table. He recalls an era when broadcasters weren’t brands but neighbors, trusted voices keeping company with late-night insomniacs and early-morning commuters. That sense of community, he says, is what made radio matter and why its loss still stings.

Movies, however, were there first. Growing up in Wrigleyville, Digilio was the kind of kid who didn’t just watch films, he studied them. Seeing John Carpenter’s Halloween wasn’t merely frightening, it was formative. It taught him how direction works, how tone is built, how a filmmaker’s choices ripple outward. Long before he had the language of criticism, he had instinct, curiosity, and a love that never faded.

That lifelong devotion now finds its fullest expression in Digilio’s new book, 40 Years, 40 Films, a deeply personal and sharply observed collection that functions as film criticism, cultural history, and memoir all at once. Organized one movie per year, from Albert Brooks’ Lost in America (1985) to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (2024), each chapter pairs Digilio’s favorite film of the year with a snapshot of his life at that moment.

The result is intimate without being indulgent. These essays are funny, incisive, and emotionally grounded, revealing how movies didn’t just entertain Digilio but accompanied him through sobriety, upheaval, reinvention, and survival. Alongside the essays are full Top 10 lists from every year since 1985, plus selections from his pre-critic childhood, when moviegoing was pure discovery.

This is not simply a book about films. It is a candid biography told at 24 frames per second.

Digilio writes openly about triumphs and failures, about losing jobs and rebuilding identities, about the quiet resilience required to stay creative in a shrinking industry. The COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted radio and accelerated many of its long-simmering changes, forced him to pivot yet again. Podcasts, film screenings, live events, and direct audience engagement have become his new airwaves.

Still, Chicago remains the constant. Digilio speaks of the city not as a backdrop but as a collaborator, a place that shaped his voice and continues to sustain it. That love is echoed in the book’s framing, with an introduction by legendary Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick and a foreword by filmmaker Don Coscarelli, creator of Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep. It’s a gathering of kindred spirits, bound by art, endurance, and a belief in stories.

In an era that rarely makes room for elders, Nick Digilio endures not because he chases relevance, but because he never stopped caring. About movies. About radio. About Chicago. About the audience on the other side of the mic.

Legends, it turns out, don’t disappear. They just find new frequencies.

For more Stories From The 78, follow @tombarnas78 on Instagram and @storiesfromthe78 on TikTok.