Final Update This Week

Barring any major Northeast Ohio media news, this will be our last update until (approximately) Monday morning. But…

We just had to update one earlier item, which we believe was an exclusive – thanks to RadioInsight.com’s Lance Venta.

As expected, Clear Channel advice talker WSAI/1360 “1360thesource.com” Cincinnati won’t be providing advice to Southwest Ohio listeners starting Monday.

Clear Channel Cincinnati has confirmed to AllAccess that it launches “Cincinnati’s ESPN 1360” that same day. It’ll become an all-ESPN Radio network flanker to mainly local WCKY/1530 “Homer”, and for that matter, to the sports-related programming on talk sister WLW/700 “The Big One”.

The station already has a splash screen up promoting the launch.

We believe Cincinnati Enquirer radio/TV guru John Kiesewetter may have gotten wind of our item on Friday morning, and posted this item before CC made its announcement.

Since it is “Kiese” we’re talking about here, he went into quick action and confirmed the news from the other end – Hamilton OH-based WMOH/1450, which was given a two-month notice by ESPN – a week ago – that the network was dropping it.

Unlike then-Salem sports talk WKNR/850 Cleveland, which hung in with ESPN until the end of its two month notice last year, only to later regain it under its current ownership, WMOH seems to have moved on. It will mount a new local morning show – along with keeping its local sports programming, and looking for syndicated programming to replace ESPN.

Kiese speculates that Clear Channel grabbed ESPN Radio as a pre-emptive strike – trying to stop Cumulus talk WFTK/96.5 “SuperTalk FM” from adding it.

He also expects former “Homer” morning drivers (and WLW weekend hosts) “The Two Angry Guys” to eventually show up on the FM talker – joining former WLW “SportsTalk” host Andy Furman, who’s in afternoon drive at WFTK…

WNIR Morning Co-Host Steps Down

UPDATE 6/29/07 10:07 PM: We’ve updated and changed some of this item, as some of the circumstances surrounding Maggie Fuller’s departure from WNIR become clearer.

Maggie’s website contains this message, which was copied by AllAccess earlier this afternoon:

Maggie really did quit!

Yes, I need a life. I will miss everyone and it makes me sad but life is too short to work Monday through Saturday and every other holiday. I have no retirement and need to find a job with a plan. I will miss everyone. Love, Maggie

The message also has her E-Mail address, and though it is on a rather interestingly named subpage of the Angelfire host – “weird2/bitemybutt”, we’re told she’s used it before for photos.

The original item is below, though with older information…

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OMW hears that Akron market MediaCom talk WNIR/100.1 morning co-host Maggie Fuller is leaving after 9 years working for the station.

Way back when, even before WKNT “AM & FM, Kent, Ohio” became “The Talk of Akron”…oh, say in the early 80’s…morning host Stan Piatt mostly reigned on the wakeup shift solo.

Over time, the show has grown to four on-air cast members who contribute…Piatt, news director Jim Midoch, sports director Steve French, and Maggie Fuller – who was the first member of the cast who wasn’t there because she had some other role on the show.

We don’t know much, right now, about why Maggie is leaving WNIR, or where, if anywhere, she’s going.

Kudos to Maggie, and enjoy life!

And It’s Friday

We’ll finish off the week, and note that we’re probably not going to be ’round these parts until Monday or Tuesday.

So…let’s have at it…leading from the outer reaches of the OMW Empire for once…

NO MORE “SOURCE”?: A tip of the OMW hat to Radio-Insight.com’s Lance Venta and his Internet domain name snooping on this one.

Lance tells us that Clear Channel scooped up the domain name 1360espn.com on Monday, and followed with two more – bengalstream.com and bearcatstream.com.

Lance also notes that while 1360espn.com currently redirects to the website for Clear Channel Cincinnati’s big sports talker, WCKY/1530 “1530 Homer”, some sub-pages reveal a new logo and site for “Cincinnati’s ESPN 1360”.

It doesn’t take the proverbial, well, you know, to figure out that CC Cincinnati is apparently readying a format flip for WSAI/1360, positioning it as a second sports flanker to WCKY. The “Lineup” pulldown page, at this writing, shows the entire ESPN network lineup.

It’d be sort of the Cincinnati version of “Cleveland’s AM 1540, KNR2”, only without the stray FOX Sports Radio programming (and with Clear Channel ownership).

The station – not that long ago – changed from liberal talk to “1360thesource.com“, an advice talk format with a web URL name that’s calls itself, yes, in lower case, “my source for answers”.

We guess doing advice talk on 1360 wasn’t the answer Clear Channel was looking for.

This is hardly new for Clear Channel.

The company operates two sports talkers in Minneapolis – the locally-programmed KFAN/1130, and its sister, KFXN/690 “The Score”, which primarily airs network programming. It also once had two sports talkers in Washington DC, before WWRC/1260 flipped from a flanker to WTEM/980 to liberal talk as “Progressive Talk 1260”.

And it shows, again, the difficulty of finding programming for these second and third tier AM stations. Or in Cincinnati, fourth-tier, as CC already has WLW/700, WKRC/550 and WCKY ahead of 1360 in its Queen City AM lineup…

MORE ON WYTV/WKBN/ETC.: Just a brief followup to our earlier item about a “stall” in the sale of Chelsey Broadcasting ABC affiliate WYTV/33 Youngstown.

We now have a copy of the article, thanks to publisher Andrea Wood and the fine folks at the Youngstown Business Journal – which regularly features the best coverage of Mahoning Valley broadcast media.

(No, Ms. Wood didn’t ask us to say that.)

Anyway, the article has details on numerous protestations by would-be WYTV owner Todd Parkin about how he’s not going to basically dismantle the station’s staff and news operation, and dismantle such things as staff seniority as New Vision Television did at CBS affiliate WKBN/27.

That sentiment, in a “calm down” letter sent to WYTV staffers, comes as a big surprise to veteran WKBN reporter Joe Bell, speaking for a station union bargaining unit. He tells the Business Journal:

What Parkin is representing in that letter is diametrically opposed to what New Vision’s attorney told us at the bargaining table. The New Vision attorney said that he envisioned that all those folks at WYTV would become New Vision employees, that they wouldn’t be working out of their [WYTV’s] building, and so forth. We don’t know who’s confused at the corporate level or if someone is misrepresenting themselves. We certainly would like an explanation.

Who do you believe here?

An unknown guy from California who had to tell the FCC about a “shared services agreement” in his application – not to mention an option for new WKBN owner New Vision to buy WYTV outright should FCC rules allow such a duopoly in the future?

Or a veteran, straight-ahead reporter with decades of good will in the Youngstown/Warren TV market?

You make the call.

Our guess, and this is only a guess: Mr. Parkin makes an effort on paper to carry on the WYTV newsroom and separate operations for a while. Maybe a few months to a year.

He then comes out and says, “look, we tried, but the numbers just aren’t there”…and carries out the merger of the WYTV and WKBN/WYFX newsrooms and the end of WYTV’s separate news operations.

That’s just what our gut is tellling us, and isn’t based on any fact. It’s the “and musings” part of OMW, as advertised up at the top of our homepage…

OMW, NEWSPAPER COLUMN: We’re told we’ve been quoted again in a Northeast Ohio newspaper.

It’s the Ashtabula Star-Beacon, which apparently repeated some of our earlier stuff about the upcoming changes at Clear Channel’s Ashtabula cluster – its upcoming sale to Tom Embrescia’s Sweet Home Ashtabula, and specifically our item a while back about the briefly-proposed swap of WREO/97.1 and CC’s WBBG/106.1 Niles.

We hope they followed to the end, where we found out shortly after we posted the item that the proposed swap was dismissed at the request of Clear Channel.

So, there may be more insight as to why, for example, the swap was pulled…but we haven’t been able to find the Star Beacon’s Thursday article on this on its website. We hear they’re a bit slow to put items from the Dead Trees edition online.

We have no problem with newspapers quoting us. Feel free to do so, as long as you get our name right (“the blog Ohio Media Watch” is fine with us)…

Thursday Stuff

And unlike our last update, most of this is not related…

THIS PORTION OF OUR ITEM IS PAID PROGRAMMING: No, not really. We don’t have an ad sales department here at the Mighty Blog of Fun(tm).

But Raycom Media is at it again in Cleveland.

Numerous readers let us know that the company’s CBS affiliate, WOIO/19, pre-empted an hour of CBS prime-time programming Wednesday night from 8-9 PM for…paid programming. Infomercials. You know them. (We’d love to know what they actually aired.)

The paid spots bumped two episodes of the popular CBS comedy “The King of Queens” off the WOIO schedule in favor of quick cash for Reserve Square.

OK, let’s come down a BIT off the high horse here.

“The King of Queens” is well into reruns for the summer. The sitcom aired its final first-run episode, if we remember right, a month or two back. The two reruns are basically summer filler on the network’s own schedule.

But…at least “KoQ” would have viewers, even if people had already seen the episodes.

As we’ve said before, we understand the modern reality of television financing. Infomercials are basically “free money”, and occupy much of the weekend late morning/early afternoon schedule on nearly all local stations.

But CBS prime time?!?

Rerun or not, the practice seems rather cheap to us. It sounds like something a company like Raycom would do.

No, wait…they have, already. Sound familiar?

Yep, sister station WUAB/43, then a UPN affiliate, did the same a year ago on a Saturday night. But 1) UPN isn’t CBS (nor is MyNetwork TV, either) and B) UPN did not program Saturdays.

Now, this is not 100 percent new, and is not something only Raycom does, even in the Cleveland market.

We believe it’s Scripps ABC affiliate WEWS/5 that occasionally clears out an hour for the Billy Graham Crusade, and Channel 5 and other local stations have pre-empted generic network made-for-TV movies from time to time to burn off old show reruns (“Matlock”) to get some extra cash by selling more local spots.

It just seems a little, well, more unseemly when WOIO/WUAB do it. And we don’t know what got sold at 8 PM and 8:30 PM Wednesday on “Cleveland’s CBS 19”, but we’d assume they were rather generic infomercials. At least Rev. Graham gets viewers…

AND NOT AN INFOMERCIAL: As far as we know, at least…

We’ve heard radio spots and seen brief TV promos for a program that’ll air this Saturday at 7 PM on Gannett NBC affiliate WKYC/3.

The show is called “Lake Erie: Beyond The Surface”, and the brief radio commercial we heard promises an in-depth look – literally – at the lake and its eco-structure. We believe we heard it called a “series”.

And what perked up our technology-loving ears?

Channel 3 is producing “Lake Erie: Beyond The Surface” in HDTV.

This would be one of the first regular non-news/non-sports local TV presentations in HD, if we remember right. We’ll be tuned in, and expect to hear more from the one and only Frank Macek, WKYC senior director and author of the station’s “Director’s Cut” blog… link to your left!

NOT SMOOTH SAILING: If a headline on the website of the Youngstown Business Journal is to be believed, the move to sell at least one Youngstown TV station is “stalled” at the FCC.

We’ll assume that’s ABC affiliate WYTV/33, since the transfers of CBS affiliate WKBN/27 and sister LPTV duo WYFX-LP/62-WFXI-CA/17 have already been made to New Vision Television, the outfit that started all this.

Earlier this year, a new outfit called Parkin Television, headed by Todd Parkin of Los Angeles, filed to buy WYTV. That wasn’t the controversial part.

The controversial part was part of the WYTV license transfer application, which indicated that the new licensee intended to enter a “Shared Services Agreement” with WKBN/New Vision, the ultimate presumably to utilize WKBN to produce/help produce/somehow put together news for WYTV.

We aren’t a Business Journal subscriber, online or otherwise, so we’ll quote the front of the website:

As License Transfer Stalls at FCC,
Stations’ Employees Ask, What’s Up?
June 27, 2007 7:14 a.m.
Commentary by Andrea Wood
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – What’s the real story?

Don’t ask the employees of WYTV or WKBN/WYFX because they know only what they’re told – and the stories they’re hearing are not the same.

Confused? So are they.

Employees of media outlets getting mixed signals from management and ownership? Why, we never…

New Technology Wednesday

For whatever reason, today’s items all have a fresh, new technology bent to them…

WNEO/WEAO HD LIT UP AGAIN: Kent-based public broadcasters WNEO/45 Alliance-WEAO/49 Akron (“PBS 45 & 49”) have turned on PBS HD programming again, as of Tuesday, on their digital outlets.

The stations had been running the 24/7 PBS HD feed for some time, until various equipment and financial issues got in the way and forced the end of the feed. Then, until Tuesday, the digital versions of 45/49 ran the PBS “Create” channel on 45-1/49-2, the analog simulcast on 45-2/49-2, and the public affairs channel “The Ohio Channel” on the third subchannel.

We’ve heard from 45/49’s engineering/IT manager Bill O’Neil, who tells OMW that the FCC regulation requiring stations to continue to air analog simulcasts on the digital channel “went away” in 2005:

We do continue to program the converted analog as a convenience to our viewers and many cable systems/satellite providers are using that digital feed and converting it back to analog on their basic tier.

It does make sense, when you consider that viewers camped out on WNEO-DT/WEAO-DT wouldn’t get regular PBS programming otherwise. Unlike the commercial networks, a simple upconversion of SD material on the HD channel outside prime-time doesn’t work – since PBS HD is a separate feed.

The two other SD channels go away with the new configuration, though one or both may return at some point.

PBS HD and The Ohio Channel already air via the digital feed of Cleveland’s PBS outlet, ideastream’s WVIZ/25.

But unless you get it on cable (Time Warner Cable’s Cleveland-based system carries it), good luck.

Since its inception, WVIZ-DT has operated with what’s charitably been called “lightbulb power” – a very low power signal from a small antenna on top of the station’s former studios on Brookpark Road in Parma. We know people who live in Parma itself, a short drive from the former studios, who can’t pick it up.

At some point, some day, some how, the digital signal will move to the station’s current analog transmitter site in North Royalton. We’ve long heard rumors about some sort of legal dispute between CBS Radio – which has WNCX/98.5’s site there and is WVIZ’s host – and ideastream over the use of the site for digital TV. But we don’t know when, or if, this will be resolved.

So, for over-air HD viewers without cable in much of the Cleveland market, WEAO-DT is the only way to get HD PBS programming.

By the way, WNEO/WEAO is encouraging cable viewers to contact their cable company to add the digital/HD signal.

WEAO has been listed in Time Warner Cable’s Cleveland lineup since nearly the day the company took over from Adelphia in Cleveland, but it hasn’t been put up. We wonder if they’ll add it, even considering that the very same 24/7 PBS HD feed is available on WVIZ’s digital channel on the TWC system, only with a constant WVIZ bug onscreen…

ANOTHER OPTION: For those who are looking for “another video option” to cable and satellite, it’s here in Northeast Ohio. Well, sort of.

This week, the folks at AT&T – you know, what was long ago AT&T-subsidiary Ohio Bell, the phone company – unveiled “U-verse”, a new combination high-speed Internet/video delivery service, in a couple of dozen Northeast Ohio communities, suburbs of both Cleveland and Akron.

Notice we said “a couple of dozen”. They are local cities which have already reached agreements with AT&T to provide the video part of the U-verse service.

Cleveland suburbs, from the U-verse press release, include: Bay Village, Berea, Broadview Heights, Brooklyn, Euclid, Fairview Park, Lakewood, Lyndhurst, Mayfield Heights, Mentor, North Royalton, Orange, Solon, South Euclid, Warrensville Heights, Westlake, Willoughby Hills and Willowick.

In the Akron area: Cuyahoga Falls, Fairlawn, Kent, Munroe Falls, Silver Lake, and Stow.

The appropriate press releases are here for Cleveland and here for Akron.

AT&T says it’ll increase availability on an “ongoing basis”, but the new system’s footprint will likely increase dramatically when a new law takes effect in a couple of months. That’s the much-talked-about statewide video services bill, which will allow the company to start expanding without having to reach franchise agreements in individual cities or areas.

Governor Ted Strickland signed the measure on Monday, and it’s set to take effect in late September.

Interested in what channels U-verse is offering? Someone uncovered this channel lineup card (PDF file) online.

A quick glance shows us that all the full-power Cleveland locals are included, along with HD versions of WKYC/3, WEWS/5, WJW/8 and WOIO/19 and as far as we can tell, only the SD versions of SportsTime Ohio and FSN Ohio.

Other than that…it’s a whole host of other channels well into the hundreds, including your usual components of multiple feeds of all the pay cable channels and many “channels” we haven’t even heard of before.

What might be interesting: AT&T’s lineup card lists any number of regional sports networks from all over the country, with the notation that the networks have programming “subject to blackout” – i.e. we presume most of the professional and college sports they carry.

These networks are on a higher “U400” tier – as it appears the service has at least four distinct tiers and then some. We have no idea what the pricing is, though.

If you’re not sure if you can get the new service, check around your neighborhood for a brand new refrigerator-sized box. AT&T has been putting them in over the past year or so under the “Project Lightspeed” moniker.

And our next question – will this service prompt a strong response from incumbent cable companies like Time Warner Cable?

TWC already has some competition on the ground in parts of Northeast Ohio, in areas serviced by the WOW Cable folks…

WJW’S NEW SET: A topic of much discussion here on OMW, and a very popular E-Mail topic, is the upcoming new news set for WJW/8, the currently-FOX O&O station in Cleveland known as “FOX 8”.

The talk has moved onto the station’s own website, where “FOX 8 News In The Morning” feature reporter Kenny Crumpton’s video blog has been exploring the work on the set with video clips.

The update linked above is from Friday, which describes the set as “almost complete”. An OMW reader noted to us that a glimpse of the set – without full lighting – showed up on the air by accident on a news segment late last week.

Anyway, we don’t know when they’ll be done, but from the looks of that update, we wouldn’t be surprised if they debut the new set at South Marginal Road as soon as this weekend…

Day Of Silence

Those who have a favorite Internet radio stream, or two, or six, will be a bit grumpy today.

A broad-based effort by a number of webcasters, both large and small, will replace programming on the streams with “A Day Of Silence”, in protest of the…well, we’ll let webcast guru Kurt Hanson and his “RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter” tell the story:

On Tuesday, June 26, thousands of U.S.-based webcasters plan to turn off the music and go silent in a unified effort to draw attention to an impending royalty rate increase that, if implemented, would lead to the virtual shutdown of this country’s Internet radio industry.

Internet-only webcasters and broadcasters that simulcast online will alert their listeners that “silence” is what Internet radio may be reduced to after July 15th, the day on which 17 months’ worth of retroactive royalty payments — at new, exceedingly high rates — are due to the SoundExchange collection organization, following a recent Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decision.

Some major broadcast groups – including Saga Communications, which owns stations in Ohio – are joining up for the event. A number of big public radio outlets, small stations and independent webcasters are also in the mix today.

But a well-known, independent local broadcaster here in Northeast Ohio is also going silent on the Internet for a day.

It’s the area’s classical music outlet, WCLV/104.9.

In a note posted on the station’s website this morning, WCLV warns of what would happen if the larger fees take hold:

The fees being charged by the record companies could bring to an end WCLV’s Internet transmission of its many classical music programs, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, Symphonycast, and concerts from Oberlin, Baldwin-Wallace and CIM.

Like the other webcasters, WCLV asks concerned web listeners to write their member of Congress. The specific goal is to urge support of the “Internet Radio Equality Act”, a proposed measure which has garnered support from both sides of the political aisle.

For at least some tech-savvy WCLV listeners in Cleveland’s far eastern suburbs and beyond, the Internet stream of the station’s programming has been the only way to hear it in recent years.

Of course, in the Great Frequency Swap of 2001, WCLV moved off of the Cleveland-licensed 95.5 signal – now occupied by Salem’s WFHM “The Fish” – to the Lorain-licensed 104.9 class A signal now coming from a tower in eastern Lorain County, in Avon just west of the Cuyahoga County line.

We don’t have a list of other, smaller Ohio broadcasters and webcasters going silent today, so feel free to add your own outlet to the comments section if you’re participating…

Monday Fatigue

With weekend-long discussion of Friday’s biggest media story, the placement of five Clear Channel Cleveland-operated FMs into a trust for eventual sale – and the developments over the weekend in the Jessie Davis Case Media Circus – we feel exhausted on this Monday.

But, we’ll get to the hits:

A PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION: Some of our commenters have posted possible scenarios for the first item, the move by Clear Channel to place all of its Oak Tree-located FMs into a new trust – presumably to bring the company under ownership caps so it can complete the sale to private equity funds.

And we kept saying it, as did others: To the best of our knowledge, the folks at Oak Tree only need to flip a single FM outlet to someone else in Cleveland. Many had even assumed that it would mean Akron-licensed 96.5 moves south again, even into the company’s Akron/Canton operations from similar to former facilities. With that, the “strongest four” formats would occupy the remaining four FM stations licensed to Cleveland.

So? Why would the company tab all FIVE FM stations that are in the Oak Tree World Domination HQ?

We’d have to agree with the speculation that CC is “overdoing it” in the trust flip-offs, trying to grease quick approval from the feds. Then, presumably, they’d “do the math” and flip many of the stations back into the company from the Aloha Trust.

It would appear from this end that the folks at Oak Tree have not decided which of the five signals they are removing from Cleveland, either to another owner or to themselves elsewhere.

This buys ’em time, and allows the private equity sale to go through faster. And it would seem quite likely that all CC would have to do to regain the four FM signals it wants to keep in Cleveland would be to, well, withdraw the application to transfer them to Aloha Trust.

One BIG thing signaling this to us: At least as of this writing, these five FMs are the only ones in the trust application. Not listed are talk WTAM/1100 in Cleveland, along with Akron AM combo talk WHLO/640 and sports WARF/1350. Not listed are any of the three Stark County-licensed FMs run out of Freedom Avenue – WKDD/98.1 Canton, WHOF/101.7 North Canton and WRQK/106.9 Canton.

(Though, as mentioned, the former Clear Channel stations in Michigan, traded by the company for WRQK are up there, because they’re already going away.)

If you were looking to exit Cleveland as a market, why would you leave one of your biggest signals off the list? Why would you hang onto the smaller Akron and Canton markets? We’re making the assumption here that Friday’s filings are the last made in the Great Aloha Trust Station Move, which we believe they are, from what we’ve read.

So, anyway…we love speculation, but don’t expect a Knight On A White Horse to come in and “rescue” us from modern corporate radio programming styles. Most of the time, that’s about as likely to come true as a fictional TV news anchor and congressman turning into a modern-day Noah….

BUSY WEEKEND: And that other story, the one spilling over into “real life”, ratcheted up over the weekend, with discovery of the body of Jessie Marie Davis of Stark County’s Lake Township in an Akron-area park, and with word that not only Canton police officer Bobby Cutts – but a female friend of his – has been arrested.

Word started moving quickly among local TV and radio reporters, and newspaper types, somewhere in the 3-4 PM hour, and the news started being reported somewhere in that time frame by stations like Rubber City Radio’s WAKR/1590 in Akron – with a later simulcast on the other two stations in the cluster, country WQMX/94.9 Medina and rock WONE/97.5 Akron.

We still suffer from Inability To Hear WHBC/1480 Disease, so we didn’t hear what the NextMedia talk outlet did on Saturday. But they were quoted by FOXNews.com with the major breaking developments a little later, at about 5 PM.

We also don’t have any tidbits on how Clear Channel’s WTAM/1100 and WHLO/640 covered things on Saturday, though we’d be shocked if WTAM “lead team reporter” Greg Sabre wasn’t in near-permanent residence down there.

TV-wise, we heard WOIO/19′ “19 Action News” anchor Sharon Reed getting dramatic on CNN Saturday afternoon via telephone, reporting some personally sourced information received, she said, by a friend of the Cutts family who she’s been talking with for some time.

And just Sunday night, as we were starting to put this item together, we saw WKYC/3’s Akron/Canton Bureau Chief Eric Mansfield live on a “special” edition of CNN’s “Larry King Live”.

Not “special” enough, we guess, to get Larry out of taking a day off before that heavily hyped Paris Hilton interview”…Larry was replaced in a newly-live weekend edition of his own show by someone we didn’t recognize. But Larry, or no Larry, Eric Mansfield was there via satellite from Canton.

OK, enough. But will someone please tell the folks at Reserve Square that – as far as we can tell – Ms. Davis’ body was NOT found at “Keyser City Park” in Cuyahoga Falls?

As the saying goes, “close, but no cigar”.

A quick Google Maps search tells us it’s just down Bath Road from the actual reported burial site, in the Hampton Hills park of the Summit County parks system – which is also adjacent to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The Keyser park itself would also appear, from Google Maps’ satellite photos, to be too “open” to be a place anyone would hide a body.

It’s not a big deal, but we had to search, and found that of every media outlet searchable by Google News, WOIO was the only “Keyser Park” reference found, except one story out of Cincinnati quoting the folks at 19…

ANCHOR SHUFFLE, AGAIN: When in doubt, shuffle your anchors again.

This seems to be the ongoing philosophy at WEWS/5, where you can never be terribly sure who’s going to be anchoring “NewsChannel 5”, short of Ted Henry at least a few times a day.

OMW hears that another shift is about to happen at 30th and Euclid, but you won’t see it until next week due to vacation time.

Get out that NewsChannel 5 Anchor Scorecard, folks!

We’re told that Lee Jordan will add the station’s noon newscasts to her assignment, along with “Live on Five”. Alicia Booth stays on the noon show, and Leon Bibb on “Live on Five”.

Danita Harris moves into the 6 PM and 11 PM co-anchor position with the aforementioned Mr. Henry.

Again, with some vacations, this will all be visible on-air starting next week.

Meanwhile, Paul Kiska is still the only official anchor of “Good Morning Cleveland”. We hear Lorna Barrett’s fill-in there is only that for now, a fill-in.

And here we are, a month removed from the end of the May sweeps – frequently cited as a delaying factor by WEWS management – and we have no idea how the station’s sports staff will be filled.

Fill-in sports anchor Andy Baskin – who poked fun at his own “35 day” anniversary the other day to laughs on the news set – is also still a fill-in.

Two major positions are open in that department, and other anchors aren’t set…but existing players at 3001 Euclid keep getting moved around like chess pieces, management apparently hoping fervently that *some* combination will stick…

BREAKING NEWS: Clear Channel Flipping Ohio Stations Into Trust

It looks like four big Clear Channel FM stations in the Cleveland market, and a number of other stations in three other Ohio markets, are being spun off to a trust to satisfy FCC regulatory caps, in connection with the ongoing effort to spin Clear Channel itself off to private equity firms.

The four Cleveland stations would be: country WGAR/99.5, rock WMMS/100.7, oldies WMJI/105.7 and hot AC WMVX/106.5. They’d go to Aloha Station Trust LLC.

Also on the list of 71 stations – a large number in other Ohio markets – is what appears to be the entire CC Dayton cluster, along with the company’s Lima stations. Many of the latter market’s CC stations, of course, will land with Dean Goodman’s GoodRadio.TV, who’s spinning off at least one (WBUK/106.3 Ottawa OH) to yet another owner.

AND ANOTHER UPDATE: This just in from AllAccess…

CLEAR CHANNEL has filed additional paperwork with the FCC sending another 71 stations, including stations in the HARTFORD, FRESNO, OCEAN CITY-SALISBURY, HUNTINGTON, and AKRON markets, to the ALOHA STATION TRUST, doubling the number of stations for which trust assignments have been requested.

At least some of the stations tabbed are stations already destined for other owners, like GoodRadio, Cumulus (in the case of the Ohio/Michigan station swap involving rock WRQK/106.9 Canton on this end), etc…and we have at least one report that the company’s WKRC/12 Cincinnati is legally on the trust transfer list, but of course, all of the Clear Channel Television outlets are already in the process of being sold.

So, what’s left in Cleveland that is not on the list? How about talk WTAM/1100? And is Akron-licensed WAKS/96.5 “Kiss FM” on the cut list as well, via its COL?

The whole thing is bizarre to us, assuming the details posted on a list in the “Transactions” area of the R&R website are accurate. (An OMW nod of the hat to whoever passed that along to us.)

At least some of this has been speculated. Inside Radio put a list out a few months ago that CC Cleveland would have to sell off at least one FM station to get under non-grandfathered cap limits due to the sale transaction. But…four?

We won’t be able to follow this as closely as we’d like, but we’ll try to update this item or this blog with anything major or new.

We’re just wondering if this is a massive chess game, moving around stations that may one day be moved back into the company once the dust clears, or if Clear Channel is indeed “slimming down”.

We’re just having very much trouble envisioning the stations listed here in Northeast Ohio actually being sold away…VERY much…

Matthews’ Contract Renewal

The folks at Oak Tree want to make sure you know this:

Clear Channel Cleveland rock WMMS/100.7 – top 40 WAKS/96.5 program director Bo Matthews has signed a three year contract extension, taking him – on paper – until April 2010.

Bo gained the “Kiss FM” addition to his duties in replacement of former “Kiss” programmer Dan Mason, now trying to bring new stability to embattled top 40 outlet KDND/107.9 Sacramento CA (“The End”), which was that certain station with that certain contest that made national news…

STO Ups With Captains

This one only made our radar when we tuned into SportsTime Ohio, and saw a Lake County Captains game being aired.

But sure enough, the Indians-owned cable/satellite regional sports channel has just inked a five-game deal with the team’s single-A South Atlantic League affiliate just up I-90 in Eastlake. The games are being produced by Classic Teleproductions.

Tonight, the Captains’ 7 PM game with the Delmarva Shorebirds – first in the series – is being broadcast live. The Captains and Shorebirds’ second game in this series will air on delay Friday after the Cleveland Indians’ game with the Washington Nationals. Three other Captains’ games will be announced later in this second half of the season.

We remember the very early days of SportsTime Ohio – OK, so it was just over a year ago – when network officials seemed cool to telecasting minor league games, even those of the team’s own affiliates.

With even a limited Captains schedule, can the double-A Eastern League Akron Aeros be next up? With the deal with the Captains and Classic Teleproductions, and Akron being just a little farther from Jacobs Field than Eastlake…it would make sense to us.

Oh, and we got a reminder of another ongoing news item while watching the Captains on STO.

As it turns out, WJW “FOX 8” has an advertising board out at Classic Park, the home of the Captains.

It’s not a “Cleveland’s own” style ad, though…it has the new FOX O&O/FOX News Channel style “FOX 8” logo, with the legend: “The Most Powerful Name In Local News”.

This slogan, of course, is the slogan the company is reportedly planning to adopt at its local owned stations – following after the similar FNC slogan. As far as we know, neither the new logo or slogan has been used in outside advertising (or on-air, for that matter) elsewhere for WJW.

Is it “business as usual” for the local FOX O&O stations, like WJW, until a buyer is found for the ones that are up for sale? Would a new WJW owner keep this branding even if the station remains a FOX affiliate after a sale? Will the stations up on the block actually be sold?

Oh, we’ve hit this topic numerous times before, of course, in the items below. But we’re just thinking out loud…