Thursday Fun Stack

Just a few odds and ends from various parts of the state and beyond:

STACK ITEM #1: You normally don't look to TV "up front" presentations for radio news, but that's what happened Wednesday. CBS head honcho Les Moonves tipped at the network's presentation to advertisers that the company's looking to sell off 35 "small market" radio stations.

It's not the first time the company's said that. It's not even the second time. And we don't have any indication, at least in the above-linked article from TheStreet.com, of what markets CBS plans to exit.

We're assuming that Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati aren't on the list, for now. But a friend of ours who works for the company in the North Carolina "Triad" area (Greensboro et al.) may be working for new bosses if CBS ever gets around to selling stations in smaller markets...

STACK ITEM #2: AllAccess reports that Cox country powerhouse WHKO/99.1 "K99.1" Dayton morning man Jim Day is headed for a plum gig...mornings at Cumulus country WSM-FM/Nashville "99.5 The Wolf". (Jim's pictured here with "K99.1" morning partner Nancy Wilson.)

It's hard to think of many better gigs for a country morning guy than working in Music City, though the competition is quite intense in country radio there. Among other things, Day and partner Amy Nash will be up against country radio legend Gerry House and his "House Foundation" (on Clear Channel country WSIX/97.9 "The Big 98").

STACK ITEM #3: It doesn't have anything to do directly with Ohio radio, but it reminds us of something that happened here about a year ago.

Still reeling from reaction to a morning show parody called "Wetback Steakhouse", Cox rocker WBAB in Long Island is now dealing with more fallout from something it says it did NOT do - broadcast a racially-charged country song with numerous not-so-nice references to African-Americans, both offensive and violent.

Long Island Newsday reports that the station says someone apparently hijacked the WBAB signal, by interjecting their signal between the station's studio and transmitter site - disrupting the existing STL. WBAB programmer John Olsen says he's "not happy about it" and wants to find out who did it...saying the same song was interjected over sister CHR WBLI's signal a couple of years ago.

It reminded us of the stunting that Clear Channel's Akron/Canton cluster did shortly before the flip of then-sports "Fox Sports 1350" into today's liberal talk WARF "Radio Free Ohio". The local stunting involved a supposed pirate taking over the signal to "bring the truth to the people"...when of course, it was actually the station itself simulating such interruptions.

We're not engineers here at your MBoF(tm), so we don't know how likely it is for someone to overpower the Long Island station's STL feed and broadcast intensely racist hate songs. But we tend to think the station itself couldn't possibly do that. Well, unless they're the dumbest radio station in America - broadcasting such garbage just days after apologizing for a skit they DID produce.

They say "no publicity is bad publicity", but this would pretty much be it. The "Wetback Steakhouse" bit they can earnestly "apologize for", and not lose a lot of face. But this isn't the kind of "stunting" a legitimate radio station does...or anything anyone wants to be associated with. Just our thoughts...