Other Stuff Buried In The Opening Day Avalanche

OK, so the whole Indians opening day thing was a bit overwhelming the past week or two...and we missed Julie Washington's radio column in the Plain Dealer over the weekend.

Highlights:

* They may as well start running a regular shuttle between the WCPN/ideastream headquarters on Playhouse Square and the WKSU/89.7 building near the Kent State University campus. This time, it's a move from Kent to Cleveland, as veteran WKSU reporter Mark Urycki joins the Cleveland pubradio outlet on Monday after over 20 years in Kent.

Urycki tells Washington he couldn't resist the lure of working for NPR veteran David Molpus, who joined the station as executive editor after a stint at Virginia pubradio outlet WMRA (Harrisonburg). Molpus is a familiar name and voice to NPR listeners via years of various reporting and hosting roles at the national level. Urycki basically replaces reporter Renita Jablonski, who ended up at...stop us if you've heard this before...WKSU.

* Standards music returns to Salem talk WHK/1420...for an hour each Sunday, at least. Mike Young's buying time for a "Great American Songbook" show on Sundays from noon to 1 PM. He was most recently heard on Kenston High's non-comm standards outlet, WKHR/91.5 Bainbridge. Of course, 1420 was running standards as WCLV-owned WRMR until Salem bought it...

* Congrats to WAKR/1590 Akron's Larry States and WJW/8 Cleveland's Tom Merriman for winning regional Murrow Awards from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. States and Merriman bested other entrants from Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana and go on to national competition.

* And Washington picks up on the move of WEWS/5 meterologist Mike Stone to WTOL/Toledo last month. His WTOL bio says he's doing the station's morning and noon weathercasts. And he's now working at a sister station to WEWS competitor WOIO/19-WUAB/43, as "19 Action News" owner Raycom Media acquired WTOL in the Liberty acquisition a while back...selling WNWO/24 to Barrington...

Oh, and a follow up to all the STO/DirecTV stuff below - it appears the gremlins are pretty much gone, and DirecTV viewers in the Cleveland/etc. area got to see the Indians beat the Mariners last night. We got one report of someone having problems, but it appears to be specific to their setup.

Those in the outer reaches of the Tribe TV empire with DirecTV will still have to bug them, though...or switch to Dish Network or cable to catch games in places like Toledo, Lima and Erie...