Random Tuesday Stuff

Some items kicking around the Mighty Blog of Fun(tm)'s storage bin...

HSFB IN HD: The good folks at SportsTime Ohio have passed along their coverage plans for this coming weekend's Ohio High School Athletic Association high school football championships.

And the schedule of six games includes three that will be broadcast in HD format:

11/28 11:00am Div. VI - Delphos St. John's vs Bascom Hopewell-Loudon

11/28 3:00pm Div. IV - HD - Steubenville vs. Kettering Archbishop Alter

11/28 7:00pm Div. II - Sylvania Southview vs. Cincinnati Anderson

11/29 11:00am Div. III - HD - Columbus Eastmoor Academy vs Aurora

11/29 3:00pm Div. V - Youngstown Ursuline vs. Findlay Liberty-Benton

11/29 7:00pm Div. I - HD - Cleveland St. Ignatius vs. Cincinnati Elder

An STO release notes that only one HD production truck was available, but that still allows them three games in the HDTV format.

The STO folks note a veritable army will cover the championship games:

Matt Underwood, Al Pawlowski, Greg Frey, Andre Knott, Mike Cairns, Matt D’Orazio, Jerry Rudzinski, and Katie Witham will all be involved providing play-by-play, color commentary, and sideline reports. In addition, Mark Schwab of WTAM 1100 and Jim Isabella, the ‘Principal of High School Sports’ will be in the STO studio providing updates and halftime programming.

Cairns, Frey and Isabella will be on hand at STO tonight at 7 PM for a preview of the championship weekend...

INTERESTING HOLIDAY FILL: An alert OMW reader noted an interesting group of fill-ins for CBS Radio Cleveland AC WDOK/102.1's morning show on Monday.

And we're told among those filling in for Trapper Jack, Terry Moir and company on "Soft Rock 102.1" was a WDOK staffer who just became a former staffer. Now-former afternoon driver Dan Deely was heard by our reader on Monday morning, just days after he lost his regular shift to what we'll have to presume was a budget-linked schedule cutback.

As CBS Radio is moving rather rapidly to make live midday shows a thing of the past, Deely was bounced out of afternoon drive - after station veteran Nancy Alden was moved there from middays.

Deely was joined, we're told by our reader, by new midday voice Desiray McCray, and WKYC/3's apparently now-former reporter Vic Gideon.

(Our apologies for the earlier, incorrect name check to "19 Action News" weekend sports anchor and regular radio fill-in Chuck Galeti...the information given to us was correct, but we had Galeti mixed in our head with Gideon for some reason when we wrote it.) We weren't around this morning to hear if that group continued the fill-in today, but we'll assume so.

We'll also make the logical assumption that McCray is voicetracking the midday shift, in addition to her regular Saturday morning air shift.

As this is the Thanksgiving holiday week, expect to hear a number of fill-ins on the radio as the week progresses...

'STB: Another alert reader pointed out that the recently-returned WSTB/88.9 signal was actually off the air for a few hours on Monday morning.

By the time we were able to catch up, the Streetsboro City Schools-owned station was back on the air with its student-run "AlterNation" format.

OMW checked, and the off-air time was not planned, and not linked to the dispute that took WSTB off the air for a month recently.

But considering how closely that station has been watched, it's no wonder we were alerted...

'NEO: An official update: Western Reserve PBS Youngstown-market outlet WNEO-DT/45 Alliance is now operating on its (currently licensed, for now) full power facility.

Our friends at Campus Center Drive confirm to OMW that they've filed for a "license to cover", the official notification to the FCC that the station has successfully brought the construction permit on the air.

But as we've reported here, it's not the final signal for WNEO.

WNEO's new digital facility is putting out 44KW, a power level that will eventually increase when a new, maximized facility increases that power output by over 10 times (500KW).

But we're getting reports from well into Western Pennsylvania that even the pre-maximization WNEO-DT is putting an improved signal out that way - compared to the former WNEO-DT facility on RF channel 46.

We're not getting it here at all this far west - but we're firmly in the full-power signal grasp of WEAO-DT and the still-operating WEAO analog channel 49. WNEO-DT isn't meant for us...