Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Hearing From Central and Southeast Ohio

Two notes from readers south of the usual OMW coverage area...

* An OMW reader tells us that Clear Channel talk WTVN/610 Columbus is running promos that they are "about to take over another station". While it very well could be hinting of something as bold as adding an FM simulcast to 610, it also could be alluding to a promotion temporarily taking over...a gas station, to offer lower gas prices in a promotional stunt.

We have no inside information on this, but our proverbial $20 at the OMW Betting Window would probably go to the gas promotion at this point - as such wording has been used by stations in the past. But we will be keeping our eye on it, just in case...

* Kyle McPeck's "The King of Zanesville" blog weighs in on something that's been in progress for a while now - the planned COL move of that city's WHIZ-FM/102.5 to Baltimore OH...making it a Columbus market station.

Kyle has details on the construction permit application for the new WHIZ-FM facilities on his blog. WHIZ will leave behind WHIZ/1240 and WHIZ-TV/18, the NBC affiliate in that small one-station TV market.

Kyle wonders why WHIZ hasn't come clean on this move...well, stations tend not to do that, particularly in a small, tightly-controlled media market like Zanesville. We're guessing that they worry about losing those FM advertising dollars before the move is actually completed.

While we were looking at the WHIZ details, we once again checked records for WJER-FM/101.7 Dover. A construction permit application for the newly-approved COL of North Canton has yet to show up in the FCC's online database. There's no hurry there - Clear Channel still has a month and a half or so to file it, and then three years to build it out...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You could likely connect your two stories into one and say that WTVN would be taking over the WHIZ move-in, but I am pretty sure Clear Channel Columbus is at the market ownership cap.

Then again, maybe CC is looking to sell off one signal while looking to buy another. After all, with CBS pulling out, WAZU, WLVQ, and WHOK are all up for grabs.

I don't know why WTVN would need/want an FM simulcast... doesn't it pretty much have the best coverage of any signal in the city?