Friday, January 02, 2009

THIS JUST IN: WNIR Joins 21st Century, Streams Audio

It's been rumored for what seems like a year, but is now reality.

The new website for Media-Com Akron market talk WNIR/100.1 "The Talk of Akron" is online as of this Friday afternoon, and yes, there is live streaming audio. We're listening to it right now.

The station is running a banner on the updated website with this crawl: "From Cleveland to Cancun, from Los Angeles to London, from New York to New Delhi...FROM ANYWHERE TO ANYWHERE...WNIR welcomes our new global audience!"

OMW hears that the station will apparently only stream its local shows, and the audio will "go dark" online during syndicated talk programming (Westwood One's Jim Bohannon and other late night and weekend syndicated shows).

Since WNIR is locally programmed from 5:30 AM to 11 PM weekdays, and 6 AM-7 PM Saturdays, this will have little impact on the audio stream.

We have heard ABC News Radio's hourly Information Network newscasts on the stream...presumably, they will continue. They won't be starting any earlier, though, unless the WNIR local hosts actually figure out how to join ABC Radio's feed on time.

OMW hears that WNIR midday veteran Howie Chizek will announce that he invented streaming audio for talk radio.

And somewhere in London, computer users will ask each other - "what's a Plusquellic?"

We'll have more in our return to regular updating on Monday morning...

6 comments:

onlinecomedicwannabe said...

How awesome is that? Now the world will hear Goober snort and Mantua Man (2008 WNIR Caller of the Year)fire up his chainsaw! The Guiseppe's Jingle will be sung all over Lithuania! Way to go Kaiser!!!!

Anonymous said...

I have a most likely reason why WNIR is only streaming the local shows.

Remember, for the nationally syndicated shows, there would be an additional fee to be paid to the show for the streaming rights.

WNIR is most likely not streaming the national shows for two very important reasons: (1) they decided against paying the rights fee for streaming these shows; and (2) since WNIR's main focus has always been their local content, they decided to focus there.

One final thought. WNIR probabily decided to stream their programs so that Ohio Media Watch can get off their backs. LOL.

firebird said...

The WNIR stream is sounding great in Atlanta! Listened to Stan this morning and he mentioned Ohio Media Watch!

Ohio Media Watch said...

king-of-kings - that's exactly why.

I don't know how Westwood One feels about affiliates streaming its shows these days...WW1 is the syndicator for many of WNIR's night/weekend shows.

Mike Gallagher comes from Salem, and TRN provides Tammy Bruce, Jerry Doyle and the like. I'm pretty sure those syndicators don't have any problem with the streaming.

But overall, as mentioned, this isn't a big deal...since WNIR has so much local programming.

I'm wondering if there's a way to time shift the local programming on the stream. Howie Chizek at 11 PM repeated from 11 AM? Sure! :)

And this, firebird:

"The WNIR stream is sounding great in Atlanta! Listened to Stan this morning and he mentioned Ohio Media Watch!"

How's come people tell me that Stan and company mention OMW from time to time, but never hear it myself? Ah, well. Of course, I don't get up that early... :)

-The Management

Unknown said...

Funny joke about Howie! But, he is indeed the king. His show is amazing. I know a lot of people who were waiting for this stream!

rootvg said...

Yeah, Howie sounds great here in San Francisco. He's no spring chicken but let's hope he sticks around for awhile.