Tuesday Follow Up

Some items of note:

STILL WAITING: OMW is still waiting for the items we talked about before. Not all of it is "big, huge" news, but it will be classified as Breaking News here at your Mighty Blog of Fun(tm). (Hey, if local TV news can use "Breaking News" graphics for anything more important than an ankle sprain, so can we!)

We're getting feedback that at least one of these items SHOULD be happening sometime later today. If it does, we'll "break in"...

BYE, BYE DAVE: AllAccess confirms our earlier report that syndicated money advice guy Dave Ramsey will disappear from Salem teaching/talk WHKW/1220 Cleveland and WRFD/880 Columbus later this month. The show will exit from those stations, and 19 other Salem outlets, on August 10th.

The word comes from a release from the Dave Ramsey folks.

As OMW earlier reported, the dispute centers over Salem's demand for "pay-to-play" clearance for Ramsey's show. Ramsey's people told an OMW reader last month that they are not in the business of paying to air his program, so they're exploring other options.

The show's already done so in Atlanta, where it airs in the "When The Braves Aren't Playing" 7-10 PM slot on Clear Channel talk WGST/640. OMW hears that there have been been Dave Ramsey billboard sightings in that market, though it could well be Clear Channel using its own unsold billboard inventory.

There's no word on where Ramsey may land in either Cleveland or Columbus.

Thanks to AllAccess news/talk/sports guru Perry Michael Simon for the nod to our earlier report!

JAVA SERVING?: There's another name popping up in the WAKS/96.5 "Kiss FM" Night Slammer Sweepstakes, and it's a familiar one.

AllAccess reports that former "Kiss" voicetracker "Java Joel" Murphy was heard in the time slot last night, and wonders if the appearance will be permanent.

Murphy was let go at his former home station, Chicago's "Kiss FM" WKSC/103.5, after a flap over an on-air comment. He was voicetracking onto WAKS from that job.

Since then, "Java Joel" has done some suburban Chicago fill-in work, and is currently voicetracking afternoon drive at Martz top 40 WYUL/94.7 "Hits FM" Chateaugay NY...which aims into the much larger market of Montreal, Quebec, Canada as a cross-border rimshot.

The fact Murphy's getting some Clear Channel fill-in work is significant, and it may signal the company's willingness to give him - as he put in banner ads on the RadioInsight message board - "a second chance". Or, maybe it just signals that WAKS program director Bo Matthews doesn't care about what happened in Chicago a couple of years ago...