Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Talkin' Tribe - Again

We're really trying not to turn this into Indians Media Watch, but it's a big couple of weeks for the local baseball team media-wise, so...let's look at Opening Day on Friday:

* We mentioned this a few weeks ago, but it will indeed be WTAM/1100 morning co-host Casey Coleman throwing out the first pitch at Friday's Indians' home opener against the Minnesota Twins. Casey, who appeared better than he has in weeks at a recent event honoring him, told WJW FOX 8 at the time that he was hoping to be back on the air at "The Big One" roughly around the 4th of July. No matter how he feels Friday, we have no doubt he can toss out the first pitch better than, say, we could...

* Opening Day is also a big day for radio remotes. Team flagship WTAM will broadcast live from Gateway Plaza from 9 AM until the Indians pre-game at 2:37 PM with the station's normal afternoon motormouth Mike Trivisonno and Indians beat reporter Mark Schwab.

Sportstalker WKNR/850 will hold live broadcasts at Pickwick and Frolic - not only with station personalities Greg Brinda and Kenny Roda, but ESPN morning team "Mike and Mike" will be in town as well on Friday. (The radio remote takes the ESPN morning duo off of ESPN2, as they're apparently not sending live cameras for the remote.) The Plain Dealer's Roger Brown reports that co-host Mike Greenburg will host a book signing Thursday night at a Lyndhurst book store.

You know Opening Day is big - when both WTAM and WKNR blow out signature national personalities Rush Limbaugh and Jim Rome for the day - though we suspect 'KNR will run a delayed Rome at 3 PM on Friday, in the "no one who follows sports is listening to us anyway" category. Limbaugh fans can find his show on roughly 300 other Northeast Ohio stations, including WHLO/640 Akron and WFUN/970 Ashtabula, not to mention 50,000 watt Detroit powerhouse WJR/760, almost a local signal in much of greater Cleveland...

TV-wise, Indians' over-air station WKYC/3 will also broadcast its 1-3 PM pre-game show live from Jacobs Field. Well, we'd hope they would, since they're already there to broadcast the game...

* And one more note regarding SportsTime Ohio and that quirky "only greater Cleveland" deal with DirecTV - STO's Jim Liberatore tells Brown that he's "hopeful" the satellite service will open up the Indians' TV network to subscribers outside the immediate Cleveland/Akron/Canton and Columbus areas.

Uh, OK...we were hoping for more details, but will have to settle for that until Liberatore returns our own messages. Memo to the Indians: A LOT of people read this thing, believe it or not, including a bunch of people following the whole SportsTime Ohio saga...

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