Where WERE/Cleveland's New "Urban Talk" Format Will Get Its News

As noted earlier here in the Mighty Blog of Fun(tm), Radio One brokered talk WERE/1300 Cleveland is set to become the local affiliate for a new African-American oriented issues talk network...now scheduled to start in two weeks, on January 30th. Thanks to a bit of digging, we've found out what kind of national newscasts the station will run.

WERE now features newscasts from the USA Radio Network, which will likely go away with the new format...at least in daytime hours. In place of USA will be a new in-house news offering from "Syndication One" - which is the apparent name of the joint talk radio venture of Radio One and urban radio superstar Tom Joyner's Reach Media. The description reminds us of what liberal talk network Air America Radio does with its own in-house news service.

This word comes courtesy of a column by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel radio/TV columnist Tim Cuprisin, who tells local readers that WMCS/1290 personality Keith Murphy is leaving his Milwaukee morning show on Friday to be a daily news anchor for the new Radio One network. Murphy will also - in an unrelated deal - expand his XM Satellite Radio talk show to a 5-day-a-week program.