Thursday, September 21, 2006

Names of the Recent Past

And we didn't even coordinate these two items which found their way into our mailbox...two people who have surfaced after leaving local media jobs:

RYAN'S JOB: Former WOIO/19 "19 Action News" anchor Ryan Andrews is back on the air in his hometown. No, not Cleveland...Orlando.

A helpful OMW reader leads us to this Orlando TV news website, which says Andrews has been hired as a reporter and weekend anchor at WFTV/9 there. Andrews is originally from the Orlando suburb of Winter Park, and went to college in Florida. He left "Action News" back in January.

His departure from Reserve Square came just before he was going to be moved from a weekday anchor slot to a weekend anchor slot - the position now filled by former Sacramento TV news anchor Paul Joncich.

But it appears from the original story that Andrews was looking to leave WOIO anyway...

KELLY BACK TO VISIT?: A reader tells us they've heard former WTAM/1100 Browns beat reporter David Kelly twice on the local radio airwaves recently, with a guest shot on WTAM's Bob Frantz show...and doing high school football play-by-play (St. Ignatius vs. Mentor) on rival Salem sports talk WKNR/850.

The Frantz appearance is easy enough to do from Memphis, where Kelly went after leaving the Clear Channel talk station here. But you'd pretty much have to be in Cleveland to call a local high school football game, even if you're just visiting.

We did not hear it, and wonder if anyone did...

Kelly left WTAM to take a job as a broadcaster for the Memphis Redbirds minor league baseball team, which ended its season earlier this month. He's still listed as one of the Redbirds' broadcasters on the team's "Front Office" web page. We can't find him on the staff page of Redbirds outlet WHBQ/560 "Sports 56", but we don't know if he did anything for the station besides the baseball games and related items during the season.

The Redbirds are the top minor league club in the St. Louis Cardinals' system...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kelly was back for a few days. He was on with Franz and they mentioned something about the Browns game, so I think he was at the Browns-Saints game too. He probably wishes he was still here.

Anonymous said...

I too spoke with Kelly during his visit home. He's not back in Cleveland, but just came back to hang out for a week and a half. He actually did TWO football games while he was here. The Ignatius/Mentor game and Case's game at Denison the prior Saturday. Both were set up through his friendship with CSU announcer Al Pawlowski who is in on both those gigs. He says he is enjoying baseball immensely and in fact was among the final candidates for a play-by-play position with the Philadelphia Phillies prior to the season. He also did some post-game hosting on the Memphis Grizzlies Radio Network last season. He told me he does miss Cleveland, especially this time of year when the minor league season ends and football is just getting going, but his dream is to broadcast in the big leagues and that likely wasn't going to happen if he had stayed in Cleveland. He's hoping to eventually parlay his baseball with some regional college football work.