Ingraham Lands On WEOL

It looks like Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting talk WEOL/930 Elyria will be the new home of Talk Radio Network's Laura Ingraham in the Cleveland market.

This, from a list of new affiliates now found on Ingraham's official website:

Cleveland ­ WEOL AM 930 ­ 5-7pm M-F

Yes, it's a delayed clearance for the show - which would clip an hour from ABC/Premiere's Sean Hannity on the WEOL schedule, and apparently leave a live 9-11:45 AM clearance for Premiere's Glenn Beck on the Lorain County station.

So far, there's no sign of Ingraham's new clearance on her apparent new affiliate's website. And there's no word on when the show will start on WEOL.

WEOL has been added to the show's main affiliate list for Ohio, which not only still has WHK listed, but also mistakenly lists Ingraham with a weekend clearance on Clear Channel talk WHLO/640 Akron. (We're pretty sure that went away when WHLO picked up syndicated tech talker Kim Komando.)

Thanks to OMW reader Greg for the tip!

As we mentioned more than once here, our earlier prediction that crosstown Spirit Media talk/variety WELW/1330 Willoughby would pick up the show was just that - a prediction that apparently isn't coming to pass.

An OMW reader asked an interesting question after we posted that over the weekend - is the syndicated "Duke and The Doctor" alternative medicine show (9-11 AM on WELW) a brokered clearance? We're not familiar enough with that program to answer the question.

Either station - by itself - isn't the ideal Cleveland market-wide clearance for Ingraham. Even both stations wouldn't quite serve the entire market.

WEOL is a decent station overall, but it's basically only usable for Cleveland's western suburbs. (It also has a decent signal into fast-growing Medina, which is still in the Cleveland market, and has been a second focus area for WEOL for some time.)

WELW has the same problem, and even more so, as far as mostly being limited to the eastern suburbs of Cleveland. It is also higher on the dial (1330 vs. 930), and half the power (500 watts vs. 1000 watts), compared to WEOL.

In Cleveland, there's no reasonably-signaled "third-tier" talker after Ingraham's former affiliate, WHK/1420...like many of the other stations on that list we linked above.

Ingraham's biggest upgrade on the list is a delayed night clearance starting later this month on Citadel blowtorch talk WBAP/820 in the Dallas-Fort Worth market...