Odd And Not So Odd Midweek

This midweek post is an odd collection of items...though we'll start with the "not so odd" part...

CALL HIM A HALL OF FAMER: After next Tuesday, Clear Channel Cleveland country outlet WGAR/99.5 will officially be able to call one of its staffers a "Hall of Famer".

As OMW reported back in October, WGAR afternoon drive star Chuck Collier will be inducted into the Country Music Radio Hall of Fame in Nashville on March 3rd.

Quoting a Clear Channel release on next week's induction:

After his induction ceremony on Tuesday, Collier’s image will join the wall of those enshrined, located inside the Nashville Convention Center, as a permanent honor. With his induction, Collier joins an exclusive group of fewer than 100 members inside the Country Radio Hall of Fame. Collier was picked for this honor by a national board of industry leaders.

“This is definitely one of the highlights of my radio career,” said Chuck Collier. He continued, “Country Music has been such a big part of my life and it is incredible to be recognized with one of the top honors in the industry.”

“I could not be happier for Chuck,” said WGAR Program Director Brian Jennings. He continued, “Chuck is such a huge part of WGAR and an even bigger part of country music than most realize. He’s been witness to some of country music’s greatest moments and a player in many more.”

Collier - also WGAR's music director - has been saying the WGAR call letters nearly continuously for nearly 40 years. Aside from a brief stint in New York City, he's been a WGAR mainstay - dating back to 1970, when he joined the station which was then on AM 1220.

(For those coming in from the outside, 1220 later became sports talker WKNR after WGAR camped out on 99.5, and is now religious WHKW "The Word".)

He's also no stranger to picking up awards and getting recognition. Collier was inducted into the Ohio Radio-TV Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2005, and won an NAB Marconi Award in 2007 for Large Market Personality of the Year...

UH, OK...WE'RE STILL FIGURING THIS OUT: Clear Channel Toledo rock WIOT/104.7 afternoon driver Pyke has apparently established quite a beachhead at the iconic Northwest Ohio rocker.

And like a lot of personalities, he's been branching out via voicetracking.

Pyke has already been voicetracking within the Clear Channel empire, doing morning drive for alt-rock WTZB/105.9 "The Buzz" in the Sarasota FL market.

But as for Pyke's newest outlet? Uh...OK.

AllAccess reports that Pyke is now handling the noon-3 PM shift ("Pyke's Afternoon Delight") at Tallahassee FL market rimshot AM active rocker WSBX/1020 - we presume also via voicetracking from Toledo.

Yes, we said "AM active rocker", and yes, we said "Tallahassee FL rimshot".

The station is operated by one Woody Nelson, a former Southern California radio type who gets a lot of humorous pokes from various radio message board types.

Some would call his story "unintentional comedy", and it's been a quite a struggle to get the small daytimer near Thomasville GA (owned by his mother) up and running...which finally happened a couple of months ago.

We'll decline to enter into the message board fray, but note that Nelson is quite a self-promoter in the mold of one Dino Costa, the former WATJ/1560 Chardon sports talk host who made the arrival of a transmitter an event in his "help wanted" ads for a talk station he was briefly running in Jacksonville FL.

Nelson and Pyke apparently are friends and former co-workers from Nelson's time at "Cabo Wabo Radio". We'll leave it to the reader to research the disposition of that operation, and to find the various conversations about WSBX and Mr. Nelson on the message boards.

Nelson, who does morning drive on his station, had apparently planned an "active talk" format for AM 1020, but cites the end of Westwood One's syndication of Tom Leykis for nudging him into "active rock". Yes, on a small city, small market rimshot AM station that makes Kent's WJMP look like a powerhouse into Akron.

It shows the ease of voicetracking...Pyke can help out his friend's station from the comfort of Toledo, and continue to enjoy his popularity on WIOT.

In case you want to check out what Pyke sounds like on an AM "active rock" station in a small southern Georgia town, WSBX does offer a web stream at its website...

MAJIC OLDIE: No, that's not "oldie" in terms of the music on Clear Channel Cleveland classic hits station WMJI/105.7 "Majic 105.7", but a website.

OMW reader Chuck Matthews points out that there's still an old WMJI website out there on the Internet today.

The 1996 vintage site from the station's OmniAmerica ownership days is hosted on somewhere on the servers of the web provider which built it for WMJI, and is likely to bring back some listener memories.

Click on the "Majic DJs" page, and you'll see a lot of names listeners will remember.

For one, the station's morning show was "Lanigan, Webster and Malone" in those days, with John Webster still in the mix with John Lanigan and Jimmy Malone...and now-WJW "Fox 8" sports anchor and WKNR/850 "ESPN 850" mid-morning host Tony Rizzo on sports. (At the time, of course, Rizz went across the OmniAmerica hall after the WMJI morning show to do his sports talk show on WHK/1420 "The Voice of the Fan".)

The weekday airstaff included names such as Ravenna Miceli in middays and Scott Howitt in afternoon drive, with Sandy Bennett in overnights.

And look! It's WKYC/3 morning host Mark Nolan as a "Fill-in Air Talent", before he eventually landed as the Cleveland NBC affiliate's chief meteorologist, then morning news host.

The page also includes a picture of Chris "The Mighty" Quinn, the local radio legend (and OMW reader!) who passed away recently, Denny Sanders and now-WTAM/1100 afternoon news anchor Carmen Angelo early in his radio career...