Some Stuff We've Put Off

The ol' Mighty Blog kind of went into a state of suspended animation the past few days.

First, there was the passing of Casey Coleman. When a well-loved local broadcaster finally loses his battle with a very real, and very deadly, disease, not much else seems to matter. So, we put other items on hold.

Then, we put out our item related to the upcoming move of the 101.7 signal to North Canton, which put up the Bat Signal in Dover, which got us quoted in the paper, again.

So, let's catch up:

HO-HO-HO PARADE: As promised, stations we've noticed doing holiday music.

That list would include at least some holiday tunes out of Rubber City standards/news WAKR/1590 Akron, though we've also heard non-Christmas music in the past day or so.

NextMedia AC outlet WHBC-FM/94.1 Canton has also turned on the All Rudolph Machine.

A number of satellite-driven stations have also made the flip, but we won't mention them since they don't have any control over the music. We already mentioned the two big Cleveland outlets doing the Holiday Dance - CBS Radio AC WDOK/102.1 and Salem CCM WFHM/95.5...

MANSFIELD SHUFFLE: In the "we're not sure what it means" department...

AllAccess reports that Mansfield broadcaster Gunther Meisse is buying out his partners in AC WVNO/106.1 licensee Johnny Appleseed Broadcasting. That's a list of about five people who held an interest in the station, and a 20 percent interest in Meisse's sports WRGM/1440.

Meisse also owns the area's only TV stations, independent WMFD/68-DT12, and LPTV outlet WOHZ-LP 41...which, last time we were there and near a TV, was running a full-time automated weather channel...

ANSWERING ONE UNANSWERED QUESTION: It's a question we've posed for months, ever since Time Warner Cable swallowed the local Adelphia system as part of that multi-billion dollar merger earlier this year.

Why can't new TWC subscribers in Summit County watch the WKYC/3-produced, TWC-sponsored "Akron/Canton News" with Eric Mansfield?

We asked the question directly to TWC's local spokesman, Bill Jasso, and here's his response:

We hope to make our "Akron/Canton News" available to a wider audience in the future. Right now are faced with three separate cable systems (Time Warner, Adelphia, Comcast) that need to become one network. Once that happens (hopefully by Spring) we can begin to explore advantages like that.

We'd have more of a response to that, but we don't know some of the technical specifics. We're wondering, for example, why TWC can't make the newscast available now on the "OnDemand" local channel on the former Adelphia systems...but there's probably a technical reason it can't be done right now.

We'll be waiting...at least if we're still here by then!