Election Day

On this perhaps Biggest Ever Election Day, it's as close to the Super Bowl as local newsrooms will ever get.

Since the presidential race is the primary race of interest, the various network partners of local TV and radio stations will do the "heavy lifting", with pretty much all of the TV and radio network newsrooms showing up at around 7 PM Eastern time - with coverage available even on broadcast TV networks well past midnight.

Local news outlets won't stay on the sidelines all night, though. We've caught each of the local TV news operations touting not only their own legion of reporters and anchors (well, those who haven't been laid off or cut yet), but extensive coverage on their websites as well.

Of note in the "extra" department - Cleveland NBC affiliate WKYC/3 is blowing out syndicated talk giant "Dr. Phil" for a second straight day this afternoon at 5 PM for a live and local election and news special.

On the radio side, those news/talk outlets you'd expect to be all over the election are indeed all gearing up.

We mentioned in an earlier item that Clear Channel talk WTAM/1100 Cleveland's coverage starts off with FOX News Radio tonight (at 7 PM, we assume), and that newly-minted evening host Bob Frantz will follow with local coverage and reaction.

In Akron, both Rubber City Radio oldies/news WAKR/1590 and Clear Channel talk WHLO/640 are promising complete election coverage this evening - the former, with its full complement of local news staffers supplementing ABC News Radio's coverage, and the latter, with news director John Amrhein burning both ends of the clock supplementing FOX News Radio coverage.

In Canton, NextMedia talk WHBC/1480 is promising an "Election Night All-Nighter", with news/program director Pam Cook, morning news anchor Steve Luke, afternoon news anchor Geoff Mears and midday local talk host Ron Ponder among those pulling double duty starting at 6 PM during WHBC's afternoon drive Jim Albright Show.

Results will be posted online from all of the above stations, with both WAKR's AkronNewsNow.com and WHBC's site with areas already dedicated to hosting the results.

Rubber City/WAKR has also enlisted the help of the Associated Press online, not only for results, but also to provide two live election-related video streams tonight.

And we already mentioned that before he hits the air, WTAM's Frantz will hit the computer, blogging and participating in his message boards (memo to WTAM.com webmasters: Bob Frantz is no longer on the air from 9 AM to noon).

Media-Com talk WNIR/100.1 in the Akron market still hasn't debuted its long-rumored web site upgrade, but we assume night host Tom Erickson will talk around ABC News Radio election coverage as well.

Elsewhere, we'd be shocked if outlying areas like Wayne County (WQKT/104.5), Lorain County and Medina County (WEOL/930), the Mahoning Valley (WKBN/570) and Dover-New Philadelphia (WJER/1450, WTUZ/99.9) weren't covered like the proverbial glove tonight by those local radio news operations.

Every single radio and TV news operation will have a network assist, since all the major news networks have at least one reporter somewhere in Ohio for tonight's coverage.

One local radio outlet won't be doing election coverage tonight, but there's nothing it can do. In the past, Streetsboro High School station WSTB/88.9 has provided returns for Portage County listeners, with a student-staffed effort led by long-time general manager Bob Long.

Of course, if you've been paying attention here, you know WSTB has been off the air since last month. OMW is hearing that the station could return to the air in the near future, though not nearly in enough time to hit the airwaves for election coverage tonight.

More on that sub-news item in a later update...