Monday Menu

UPDATE 8:46 AM 8/11/08: It turns out our reader was onto something about the absence of "Valentine" from the WAKS/96.5 "Kiss FM" website.

The station is now promoting its new morning show, set to begin airing August 25th. "Elvis Duran and the Kiss FM Morning Show" will air from its home base at Clear Channel top 40 WHTZ/100.3 in the New York City market - the legendary "Z100" - part of its mounting syndication effort.

Duran first expanded his reach when Miami's "Y100" picked up the show...which has also recently been added at Philadelphia's "Q102".

Both of those top 40 powerhouses have ties to Cleveland and WAKS. Former "Kiss Cleveland" program director Dan Mason spent a few months in 2006 as PD at Y100, before landing at Sacramento's KDND. And WAKS afternoon driver/assistant program director/OMW reader Kasper spent time doing afternoon drive at Q102, before returning to Oak Tree.

WAKS is not just promoting Duran's upcoming debut. They've launched a very, very slick customized website at "ElvisInCleveland.com" - with a video welcome from Duran and audio clips of his show.

Duran's show is very clearly a Clear Channel product. We wonder why they'd "bother" adding him with such fanfare for a short time if the Kiss FM format itself was not long for Cleveland, given the eventual sale of the 96.5 frequency in Clear Channel's divestiture of stations into the Aloha Station Trust. As we note below, WAKS is already in the trust.

It may not be a direct sign that Clear Channel intends on displacing another of its four FM formats in Cleveland with Kiss' brand of top 40 when 96.5 exits the cluster...but...it wouldn't seem to dispel speculation about that, either.

Our original item, with speculation about "Kiss Cleveland's" morning show before we learned this, and a host of other items, is below...

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We're updating this late Sunday night, so we don't know the answer to a question in our first item. As noted, we're on the road for much of the week, but we should be able to update any major breaking media news...

ALOHA MOVE?: We'll surf the FCC database for fun, if not for profit, from time to time, and we stumbled onto something this past week.

According to the FCC's online database, Clear Channel Cleveland market top 40 WAKS/96.5 Akron "Kiss FM" has already been transferred legally into the hands of the Aloha Station Trust.

Don't believe us? Check here to see this:

WAKS OH AKRON USA Licensee: ALOHA STATION TRUST, LLC, AS TRUSTEE

Further digging shows that the move was consummated, as far as the FCC is concerned, on July 30th. The link takes you to an information card for a Milton, WV station that apparently held the group list of CC-to-Aloha transfers in its database.

What does it mean?

Well, as near as we can tell, Clear Channel's World Domination HQ at Oak Tree will continue to provide programming to the 96.5 signal until such time when a new actual owner either takes control of the station...or enters an LMA to operate it.

But one eagle-eyed OMW reader has already spotted a change on the station's "Kiss Cleveland" website.

Valentine, Valentine, where for art thou Valentine? The "Kiss" syndicated morning driver has disappeared from the station's website schedule pulldown under "ON AIR", with nothing listed from 6-9 AM.

He's also not prominently featured elsewhere on the website, though we did spot Valentine on the staff contact/E-Mail list.

We're not going to read too much into this for now. We remember where we jumped on a reader mention that CBS Radio's WNCX/98.5 did not list now-former morning show host David Lee Roth on its site...until we were reminded that WNCX never really featured mainstay Howard Stern there before.

We're writing this on Sunday night, so tuning on the radio Monday morning should answer the question at least for now.

We'll make the assumption that even under Aloha's trustee/ownership, the station will continue to have access to Clear Channel voicetrack personalities via the company's WAN, via the oversight from Oak Tree.

And Sean Valentine, now the morning drive personality at Clear Channel's KBIG/104.3 "MyFM" in Los Angeles, continues to offer his voicetracked show on at least one other now-definitely-former CC outlet, Monticello Media's WHTE/101.9 in the Charlottesville, VA market...

LOVELINE CLARIFICATION: And across the hall at Oak Tree, we reported sister rock WMMS/100.7's addition of Westwood One relationship talk show "Loveline" to the evening schedule, from 10 PM to midnight Sunday through Thursday nights.

An OMW reader asked: wouldn't that put "Loveline" on WMMS from 1-3 AM, since the show is live 10 PM to midnight Pacific Time?

Well, no.

We did some digging, and found this Westwood One clock (PDF file) that indicates the show is fed two times via satellite - the live airing on the west coast, and on a one-day delay from 10 PM to midnight Eastern Time...with Thursday night's "Loveline" airing Sunday night on the feed for the east coast.

OMW reader/tipster Nathan Obral reminded us that the show has aired twice in Cleveland before: on CBS Radio alt-rocker then-WXTM/92.3 in its days as "Xtreme Radio", and on CBS sister hot AC outlet WQAL/104.1 "Q104".

We don't remember that latter "Loveline" stint, so we'll take Nathan's word for it...

BTN, WHERE THE N STANDS FOR NOT ON TIME WARNER: An item by Akron Beacon Journal sports media columnist and OMW reader George M. Thomas in Friday's Beacon takes us back to yesteryear... the thrilling days of August, 2007.

For the second year in a row, the cable/satellite network Big Ten Network will air THE Ohio State University Buckeyes in their football season opener against the Youngstown State Penguins.

And for the second year in a row, it's coming down to the wire as far as BTN being carried on Time Warner Cable, the dominant cable provider in the entire state.

Thomas notes that a possible deal between the two factions remains "far from reality". Quoting:

''We're a little concerned that the pace of negotiations with Time Warner may not allow us to reach an agreement in time,'' Big Ten Network spokeswoman Elizabeth Conlisk said.

"In time" means before the Buckeyes-Penguins game on August 30th, and Thomas reports that two other early OSU contests have apparently already been nabbed by the BTN folks: a game against Troy University and another against Minnesota, both in September.

As for the Time Warner folks, local spokesman Bill Jasso tells Thomas he's "optimistic" a deal can be reached, but none has been:

''The serious talking doesn't start until the 11th hour,'' he said, ''and we're in the 11th hour.''

There was a glimmer of hope interjected into the TWC/BTN talks, when the other major provider negotiating, Comcast, worked out an unusual multi-faceted deal which allows it to move BTN in and out of various lineup tiers depending on the time of year.

But that glimmer hasn't yet provided any light on the TWC/BTN side of things.

We said it before, we'll say it again...unless BTN somehow manages to pull the Ohio State-Michigan football game off of ABC or something, there'll be relatively modest outcry...

DIALED OUT: OMW hears that long-time Dix country WQKT/104.5 Wooster personality Dave Dial is no longer hosting the late afternoon local show "The Best of the Best", and is out at "Wooster Radio".

Dial's been replaced by, well, the same Dial Global satellite-delivered country format that powers the station's programming most of the day.

WQKT has long concentrated its local programming resources mainly on sports and news, particularly the former. It and sister oldies WKVX/960 have occasionally brought on live, locally originated music shows, but local personality/music shows have never been the staple of the station's recent programming.

Dial was on his second stint at WQKT, after his involvement in various sports-related websites based in California during the "dot-com boom"...

IMAGE VIDEO EMPIRE EXPANDING?: Our earlier FCC database diving led us to, as far as we known, an exclusive item.

Image Video Teleproductions, which owns Canton-based LPTV combo WIVM-LP/52 Canton-WIVN-LP/29 Newcomerstown, is picking up two TV translators for $12,500.

Image Video is buying W69AO/Millersburg and W65AH/Loudonville from Ohio University, which has operated them in the past as far-flung translators for WOUC/44 Cambridge.

In the FCC filings, the WOUC and WOUB-TV/20 Athens owner cites the loss of control of both translators' transmitter sites - they've apparently been taken over by a non-related state entity. Ohio University also filed to take both translators silent in mid-June.

The university also cites the upcoming uncertainty about the status of analog translators in a post-transition digital world...not to mention both translators being out of the new TV broadcast band core, channel wise, and their isolated location compared to both WOUC and WOUB.

For its part, Image Video has filed a displacement application for one of the two stations, which would move W69AO to low-power digital channel 27. (WKBN-DT Youngstown is staying at 41 after the transition, freeing up 27 in eastern Ohio after its analog signal shuts off.)

It's the only digital application Image Video has filed, that we can find...with no such move filed so far for either WIVM-LP or WIVN-LP.

We are assuming that one or both translators will be used to extend the WIVM "empire" to the west...