Saturday, January 06, 2007

Two Quick Weekend Items

A couple of weekend tidbits we need to put up before they happen...

WEWS HD DEBUT: OMW hears that the debut of HDTV on WEWS/5's "NewsChannel 5" broadcasts is Sunday night at 11 PM on the Cleveland ABC affiliate.

The time makes sense to us. It would basically be a dress rehearsal, allowing the station to get out the bugs out before the weekday newscasts start.

At this point, we don't know what "NewsChannel 5" will do with out-of-studio video. Both WKYC/3 (NBC) and WJW/8 (FOX) use 16x9 standard definition feeds for live shots.

WKYC also uses 16x9 standard definition for most local taped reports, with the exception of video shot out of the station's Akron bureau. (We'll presume that's due to the lack of HD capability at WKYC's "Akron/Canton News" broadcast.)

WJW does not use 16x9 SD for local taped pieces, which carry the same "FOX 8/HD" bars in 4x3 as feeds from outside the station do...

SHOW ANNIVERSARY:
WCER/900 Canton operations manager and regular OMW reader John Amrhein passes along this word of an anniversary of a long-running weekly show. Since we don't know anything about it, we'll let John take the guest "keyboard" here:

Elder R.L. Fletcher, chaplain of the Hiram, OH Police Dept., started his weekly broadcast "Songs of Zion" in 1951 on WADC 1350/Akron - later WSLR, moving to WRCW 1060/Canton sometime in the 80s, then to WCER 900/Canton in 2004. The 1-hour weekly show was broadcast live up until the Fall of 2005, and is now prerecorded each week.

Elder Fletcher plays a mix of black gospel oldies - and still uses a rhyming style for his local advertisements - similar to R&B DJ's of the time when he started the broadcast. The 9AM Sunday, January 7, 2007 program will be Elder Fletcher's 56th Anniversary broadcast.

And - what has to be the longest-running local advertising relationship: C.C. Supply has been sponsoring "Songs of Zion" for 47 years!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

speaking of HD...classic rock station wncd in Youngstown is now in HD...
a friend of mine there bought an HD radio from Radio Shack and told me the signal is xcellent

Anonymous said...

What, no slamming of Tom Sullivan here, come on, he once worked at WNYN/900, Country 9. Right along side Max Heywood, Rex, Larry Durian, Bruce Know and of course Hymie Williams.