Wednesday, October 18, 2006

More WBKC/WABQ/WCLV Items - And Roger, Too

Some of the dominoes we've been talking about, regarding changes involving at least three Cleveland market radio stations, are falling.

Since he's the first one who heard the syndicated 24/7 gospel music format "Rejoice - Musical Soul Food" on Painesville's WBKC/1460 - from all the way across town on the other end of Lake Erie in Lorain County - we'll give regular OMW reader/tipster Nathan Obral another nod for catching this on the WCLV website's "What's New" section:

WBKC NO LONGER SIMULCASTING WCLV

Tuesday, 17 October, 2006

We regret to announce that WCLV's classical music programing is no longer available over WBKC 1460 in Painesville. Cleveland station WABQ has been sold, and the new owners are changing its format to Sports. The previous WABQ owners, who currently also own WBKC have decided to move much of WABQ's gospel and religious programming to WBKC.

WCLV goes on to thank not only current WBKC owner Dale Edwards for hanging onto the simulcast, but former owner Clarence Bucaro for originating it in the first place.

We can't pick up the WBKC signal here at the OMW World Headquarters, so we don't know what's airing now on 1460 in Painesville...but we suspect "Rejoice" wouldn't be a bad guess.

And the other shoe in this could be dropping soon. (There we go with dropping footwear again.)

In one of his last efforts for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, outgoing sports/media columnist Roger Brown says Good Karma Broadcasting's WABQ/1540 Cleveland will start airing the ESPN Radio feed no later than Monday, "possibly sooner".

The Artful Roger notes that WABQ will also pick up NASCAR events, and that it will, apparently, only air the ESPN schedule on its daytime signal.

That would seem to suggest that the proposed deal with Radio One to air ESPN Radio at night on WERE/1300 is dead in the water, at least for now. The deal was once thought to be definite - so much so that Good Karma boss Craig Karmazin even commissioned the "Cleveland's ESPN Radio - 1540 Days / 1300 Nights" logo shown here.

UPDATE 10/18/06 10:05 PM: And thanks to our readers for pointing out what probably should have been obvious to us.

A closer reading of an article published under the Roger Brown byline in the weekly newspaper Cleveland Scene seems to indicate that it's a parody, something the alt-weekly has done before.

That'd certainly explain the items about FOX Sports Net/Shaker Heights native Chris Rose's hair, and the swiveling chairs at SportsTime Ohio. But to the guys and gals responsible for this at "Scene" - no real estate listings? No Ronnie Duncan mentions? You're slipping!

As we pointed out before we realized (thanks to OMW regular reader Johnny Morgan and others) that we were duped by the Scene folks, the weekly newspaper was the outlet which published the now-infamous dissection of Roger and his work at the Plain Dealer back in 2005, a not-very-favorable article by Michael C. Fitzpatrick titled "The Sniper".

Yes, when we're hurried and ready to go out the door to visit family, perhaps OMW is a bit more gullible than we should be...or maybe the Scene folks were more on-target with their parody than they realized...

9 comments:

Johnny Morgan said...

OA--

I *THINK* that Scene article may be a spoof.

It wouldn't be the first Scene parody--they had an "I-Team" report on the "secret life of Tom Meyer" about two months ago which was hilarious. The writer was Joe P. Tome, who may well be the best writer on staff at the alt-weekly.

Anonymous said...

Maybe the Roger article is a spoof.

Joe P Tone is terrible, johnny. He talks and talks, but really says nothing. His articles are a waste of space.

Johnny Morgan said...

That may be about Tome. Maybe it says something for the Scene that he's the best there...

By the way, OA, don't be too hard on yourself--you should have seen the number of people (upwards of 10 printed) who wrote letters to Scene complaining about the Tom Meyer piece and how it was unfair to Meyer to follow him, or how Meyer's secret life was disgraceful. They obviously didn't read to the end to see the joke.

And, one more thing: Meyer has a much better sense of humor about himself than Carl.

Anonymous said...

OMW IS THE BEST.

WE LOVE YA!!!

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!
----
ANONYMOUS

I LOVE KEEP PEOPLE IN SUSPENSE

Anonymous said...

Geez Johnny Morgan! At 8:39 you thought I was hilarious, and two hours later you're flip-flopping like a three-headed walleye on the shores of the Cuyahoga. What happened? You sober up or something?

Anonymous said...

Did hear gospel on WBKC last night. had trouble getting decent reception in Mentor-On-The-Lake, but it was there.

Anonymous said...

The Roger Brown spoof was pretty good.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that RB actually wrote it.

Johnny Morgan said...

Hey Joe,

Not exactly sure where I flip-flopped like an Erie carp. I enjoyed your Meyer thing, as I said, as well as the story on Maple Hts.'s football coach (really really well written).

The fact that you're the best at the Scene--when they should have, and used to have, a whole staff of great writers--speaks volumes about the hiring. Having ONE good and creative reporter/writer isn't a good thing for the paper, but not a shot at you.

I await your spoof of me inside the pages of Cleveland's oldest alternative weekly.

P.S. Who did write the Roger "column"?

Johnny Morgan said...

Carp, walleye, Sharon Reed...what's the difference? :-)