HOT WEEKEND ITEM 1: Air America syndicated midday host Jerry Springer returned to the Northeast Ohio airwaves early this evening - apparently by accident. While running some errands around town, we heard the former WTAM/1100 Cleveland mid-morning time slot occupant on Akron liberal talker WARF/1350 "Radio Free Ohio".
We say "by accident" because "Springer on the Radio" has never been scheduled - or as far as we know, even heard - on WARF, even in weekend replays.
The station's weekend schedule currently lists repeats of WYD/Jones weekday host Stephanie Miller in the 5-8 PM Sunday time slot. It also appears that schedule is flexible, because "Radio Free Ohio" started airing an infomercial after the ABC newscast at 7 PM - and after about 7 minutes of dead air preceding ABC.
Springer's program repeats for an hour on the Air America national schedule in the Sunday 6-7 PM ET time slot where he was heard on WARF tonight...so the 1350 automation computer apparently got confused and dumped into the live Air America satellite feed, complete with non-matching spot breaks and different cue tones.
The airing tonight is still a far cry from Springer's former weekday morning time slot on WTAM, which he lost earlier this year to local talker Bob Frantz...
HOT WEEKEND ITEM 2: A discussion with some online friends earlier in the week got us in the mood to make the drive over to Warren...to devour three chili-cheese hot dogs at the city's iconic Hot Dog Shoppe. (Your Primary Editorial Voice was a regular visitor to that establishment in the early 1990's.)While we were in the Mahoning Valley, we did a cursory check of some stations with a questionable status. So far, the bankruptcy-induced ownership/management changes at the Stop 26 Riverbend stations have not made it to the air.
WRBP/101.9 Hubbard was running what sounded to us like ABC's "The Touch" urban AC 24/7 format...we don't know if that's any different than what they've done in the past on weekends, but the station is still calling itself "102 Jams".
The Stop 26 AM stations were running their usual formats - WGFT/1330 Campbell with gospel, and WASN/1500 Youngstown with Spanish-language music. We did not hear an English legal ID on the latter, but did hear a liner out of nowhere in English, saying 1500 was "the station playing your kind of music".
The stations must not be looking at impending loss of transmitter site lease, which prompted the bankruptcy receiver's appointed management to shutter Stop 26's WVKO/1580 Columbus a while back. The manager is operating the stations as ownership transitions from the bankrupt Stop 26 to Bernard Radio, the radio operating company of investment firm D.B. Zwirn - the largest creditor on Stop 26's list...
2 comments:
Speaking of item #2, at this point in my life, the only reason I would go to the west side of Cleveland would be to have a couple of chili dogs at a greasy spoon on the corner of Lorain Ave. and W.41st. The place used to be called the Hot Dog Inn, and buddy, these are still some of the best chili dogs I have ever tasted.
Hot Dog Inn has the best dogs on the planet. Only Pink's in L.A. comes close, and those are totally different. The chili at the Hot Dog Inn is unmatched.
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