Reading The Tea Leaves

Two pieces of information have us wondering if there is more behind the story...

INSIGHT ABOARD: As expected, Columbus' third major cable provider has signed up with SportsTime Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch reports that Insight Cable will carry STO on Channel 60, which is normally reserved for - and will retain outside of STO's Indians programming - ShopNBC programming. (Maybe the Tribe can talk to ShopNBC about offering Indians memorabilia after the STO post-game? Heh.)

But our question - why hasn't STO or the team put out a release about this yet? The Dispatch article is the only mention of the new deal. Our guess - Armstrong Cable is next (we've already heard they're aboard), and STO officials are waiting until they have deals with DirecTV and/or Dish Network to announce they've finished the whole affiliation thing. Expect a press release to that effect on Friday..."we're done, enjoy the games, Play Ball!"

JV AND ELVIS: WFNY/New York midday hosts JV and Elvis once again appeared on CBS Radio classic rocker WNCX/98.5 Cleveland, as incumbent morning host David Lee Roth won't be back until Friday morning.

And though CBS Radio swears up and down that Roth has not been fired - and JV and Elvis did once again make it clear they were "filling in for" DLR...we noticed a change this morning.

The pair had a fully produced opening montage today. They had something yesterday, but it was brief and sounded thrown together. Today, it sounded like - aside from a brief mention that they were filling in for Roth - it was being treated like their show.

Sure, they had to spend a lot more time explaining things on Wednesday, as they showed up out of nowhere and no one knew why Diamond Dave was gone. But, the mention of filling in for Roth today sounded almost like they "had to mention it quickly"...though they did indeed mention later that Roth was returning from Miami and would be back tomorrow.

And in some strange story about being beaten with a fly swatter on Times Square, the hosts said "it's going to last longer than a day"... "a day, it could last weeks!" Listeners to talk radio shows often try to make out "coded messages" from the hosts. Though we're not familiar with JV and Elvis - frankly, they aren't even remotely our kind of talk radio - that odd line sounds to our ears like they were talking about not being beaten with a fly swatter, but their own presence in the "Free FM" morning slot.

We're not 100% confident that David Lee Roth's show will return tomorrow morning. We're also not 100% confident he will not be back as promised, but again, we would not bet the nearly-on-the-market Palatial OMW World Headquarters on Roth lasting into the next month...