Friday, August 10, 2007

One Of Those Follow-Up Posts

So, since we've mostly been gone for the past week or two, it would figure that our first big "return" post is almost entirely an update of our most recent item.

But we'll start with a new one...

MS. GILL: OMW told you some time ago that Kimberly Gill was headed for 3001 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, taking the permanent co-host gig on Scripps ABC affiliate WEWS/5's "Good Morning Cleveland".

Gill's not on "GMC" yet, but she's in town, and like Akron bureau chief Pete Kenworthy before her, she's already been thrown on the air reporting during breaking news.

("Hi, Kimberly...look, we know you don't know South Euclid from North Olmsted yet - we have severe weather...here's a map and a live truck!")

Ms. Gill, in fact, has been up to her ears in breaking weather news coverage, first showing up at a Parma apartment complex heavily flooded in the first major storm of this week.

On Thursday evening, she was on the air for "NewsChannel 5"'s "Live on Five", phoning in reports from Lodi, which was hit by the most recent storm.

The woman who will eventually take the chair alongside Paul Kiska in the morning comes to the area from CBS affiliate WBTW/13 in Myrtle Beach/Florence SC.

Ms. Gill is probably happy that her out-of-studio live "breaking news" experience comes in early August, and not in mid-January...

MAGGIE'S NEXT STOP?: After talking about it a bit, OMW hears that former WNIR/100.1 Kent "The Talk of Akron" morning co-host Maggie Fuller will be opening up a microphone again soon, at least for a while - in her quest to return to the airwaves.

And we hear that her upcoming brief audition stint is at a station located outside WNIR's signal area.

Oddly enough, as we found out from Maggie's own website and Stan Piatt's site, Ms. Fuller had been commuting a LONG way to WNIR. She lives in Medina County's Valley City, which is actually just outside of her former station's broadcast range.

(We'd guess she gets an unlistenable mix of WNIR and Clear Channel-for-now oldies outlet WSWR/100.1 Shelby...the latter, probably the dominant 100.1 signal at the station she'll be heard on in just over a week...)

WITHER 1520?:
And across the hall, in a closet near WNIR...as we noted in the previous item, MediaCom sports WJMP/1520 Kent "FOX Sports 1520" (otherwise known as "Not WNIR") had been off for much of the week due to technical problems.

It would appear to be on the air at this writing. Either that, or someone else has put up a weak AM signal on 1520 mixing CBS Radio News with FOX Sports Radio.

OMW hears from a birdie on State Route 59 that a lightning strike hit the station's transmitter, and the folks there have been efforted replacement parts to return The Mighty (cough, cough) 1520 to its daytime service of Kent, Ravenna, Streetsboro - and very patient sports fans in parts of other eastern Akron and southeastern Cleveland suburbs.

Then again, they could have saved a penny or two, and not rush to return it to the airwaves...

NOT "MY 90's": After we posted the item about Clear Channel hot AC WKDD/98.1 putting up a 90's format on its HD2 channel, we figured we'd better pull out our own HD Radio and listen to it for a while.

And for the moment, at least, it does appear to be mostly the company's "My 90's" feed out of the Clear Channel Format Lab - complete with that imaging.

But we've hear there is some 90's audio in the HD2 station's library from, of all places, WKDD itself.

Expect the "My 90's" moniker to go away, and soon.

Even though HD Radio isn't really blowing off the doors in market share right now*, there's still chance for confusion with the company's own WHOF/101.7 North Canton, the Canton market AC outlet known as "My 101.7".

* The asterisk is not for Barry Bonds, but for that guy who spends roughly 24 hours a day finding anti-HD Radio comments online, and feels the need to plug his own blog in our comments. Any more plugs will be removed. It's not like it's that difficult for people to find you, as you seem to post EVERYWHERE...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The asterisk is not for Barry Bonds, but for that guy who spends roughly 24 hours a day finding anti-HD Radio comments online, and feels the need to plug his own blog in our comments. Any more plugs will be removed. It's not like it's that difficult for people to find you, as you seem to post EVERYWHERE..."

Hey, you make me feel like I'm back on radio-info's HD board, with all of the HD booster lunatics. But you bet, anywhere I see "HD Radio" posted in a news article, or blog, I post a link to my anti-HD blog. Actually, I just have bookmarks for Google searches on news and blogs for "HD Radio" and sort on date - that way, it takes only a few minutes, a few times a day. If you want to just how much of a lunatic that I am, take a look:

http://tinyurl.com/37b476

Michael Dane said...

To be honest I think HD stands for
Hopelessly Dumb. It's a crappy
system that is over priced.
Ask any engineer who has seen HD in
action compared to FmXtra and see
what answer you get.
FmXtra is superior and a heck of a lot cheaper. And can be installed in
30 minutes or less.

Mike Dane