Thursday, September 21, 2006

Some More Quick Items

And some more stuff...

ESPN CLEVELAND WEBSITE: A regular OMW reader lets us know that the bare-bones "placeholder" page for the upcoming Cleveland ESPN Radio affiliate now has a logo.

And as expected, and as predicted here and elsewhere, the logo says: "Cleveland's ESPN Radio - 1540 Days / 1300 Nights", with a "Coming soon!" notation under it.

The logo is more interesting for what it does not say.

The local rumor mill has been rumbling with noises that WABQ/1540 owner Craig Karmazin was going to pull off a swap with Radio One, ending up - as the rumors go - with WERE/1300 for his 24/7 "ESPN Cleveland" outlet.

Either this has not happened yet, or is not in the cards for the station's upcoming launch (if at all), judging from the logo. Stay tuned...

IT'S NOT A DEBATE, IS IT?: We've heard the promos on WTAM/1100 the past couple of days, and just got another reminder.

Days after gubernatorial candidates Ted Strickland and Ken Blackwell showed up for a debate on Cleveland ABC affiliate WEWS/5, the other "big race" gets the spotlight on WTAM on Friday.

It'll be Senator Mike DeWine on the air with his challenger, Rep. Sherrod Brown, from 3:30 to 5 PM on the station's Mike Trivisonno show.

And yes, Triv will "moderate" this "non-debate", says the station...which calls it a "question and answer session" with the two candidates, with listener questions E-Mailed into the station being posed to the candidates:

“I want this to be an open, accurate, unscripted view of both candidates,” said Mike Trivisonno. He continued, “The commercials we see and hear have the candidates tearing each other apart on a regular basis, the public does not know what to believe. In my studio they will play by Trivisonno rules and the questions of the public will be addressed.”

The WTAM press release does not mention "eating in the studio" among those rules. (Sorry, it was just SITTING THERE!)

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

If your rumored news about 1300AM going ESPN, what would that do to Ronnie Duncan's current morning show there? And what's going on with his WBNX gig Roger & you referred to recently? Still happening?

Neil said...

Ronnie used to host a sports talk show on WKNR. He would fit right in.

Ohio Media Watch said...

See above, regarding the first question. The rumor has been going around a while, but it appears at very least "ESPN Cleveland" will launch the share-time situation Mr. Karmazin has in Milwaukee.

That means ESPN would only be on 1300 from 7 PM-6 AM, and Ronnie Duncan and the Radio One talk format doesn't move.

If the rumored swap were to happen (again - if!), the current WERE programming would land on one of the other two Cleveland signals, likely 1490 AM...with WJMO moving to the new 1540 AM.

That's just our educated guess, and we've heard nothing about that even in rumors. It would make the most sense, basically, and everyone gets what they want - aside from the loss of nighttime hours for the gospel format...

-OMW

Anonymous said...

I heard some noise that WABQ is moving to 1460 (currently WBKC-Painesville, which is a simulcast of WCLV 104.9) and positioning it to serve Cleveland.

Is this true?

Anonymous said...

I turned on WABQ Friday morning, Sept.22 at about 7:20 am. I arrived in the middle of an announcement that WABQ would be moving to 1460am and that would be a 24-hour operation. They also asked listeners to bear with them as they may experience technical glitches "during this time of transistion". I turned on 1460 once I got into downtown Cleveland and didn't hear anything listenable. I assume WBKC (Formerly WQLS, originally WPVL) is still at 1 Radio Place, Painesville.

Johnny Morgan said...

WBKC is owned by just-recently former WABQ owner Dale Edwards (he sold to Mel's kid), a long-time gospel radio nudnik in Cleveland.

Sure, it's 24/7 operation--with a pattern at night that hits all of the main drag in Painesville.

But not Cleveland.

Anonymous said...

What happens to the weekend ethnic programs???

Anonymous said...

Get rid of Ronnie Duncan and put the ethnic programs in the morning drive. They are more entertaining than Ronnie "I am the greatest" Duncan.

Anonymous said...

What ethnic programs and what station are you referring to?

If it's WERE, they apparently will stay as they run - how about that? - from 7am to 7pm. Don't know if WABQ had any, but if they did, the shows would move to WBKC.

This would likely have been the case, swap or no swap. If the intellectual programming of WERE were ever to move to WJMO (and WJMO's to WABQ), the ethnic programs would have moved as well.

It's good money, and you don't want to PO the dwindling pockets of ethnic communities that remain...

- Nathan Obral

Anonymous said...

I can recall when I was younger that ethnic programming was on 2 full-power FM stations in Cleveland..WXEN 106.5 and WZAK 93.1..Also I know there was at least some Greek Shows on the former WOIO-1060 in Canton Sunday Afternoons in the 1970's..Times have certainly changed..