Sunday, April 05, 2009

That Cleveland Morning Show Change

We apologize for holding this for an extra day or so, but...we have a lot more information about the item we hinted about on our Twitter feed late Friday.

OMW hears from reliable sources that Cleveland CBS Radio classic rock WNCX/98.5 morning drive co-host Mike Oleszewski is no longer with the station...exiting the building after Friday's show.

In place of "The WNCX Morning Show", we're told, will be a new show called "The Morning Rush", where incumbent morning host Scott Miller will be joined by a voice familiar to WNCX listeners...local comedian Jeff Blanchard. As far as we know, the new "Morning Rush" show will start on Monday.

Blanchard has made regular appearances on the previous "WNCX Morning Show", and participated in the station's "Classic Cleveland Comic" contest earlier this year.

Those who haven't tuned into WNCX, or who haven't visited a comedy club, may still recognize Blanchard's voice...or even his face, seen to the left courtesy of his Facebook page.

Blanchard has played the "Cleveland Guy" Average-Cleveland-Joe-Six-Pack character in televised promos for Raycom Media CBS affiliate WOIO/19's "19 Action News".

You know, the guy who tells viewers that "Action News" anchor Denise Dufala is "easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean".

As Blanchard and Miller move onto the new WNCX morning show era, the exit of Oleszewski means the original local post-Howard Stern era morning show team on the station has now fully unraveled...with the previous exits of the other members of the "Mud, Mihalik and Mike" show - Wynn "Mud" Richards (ex-M105 personality) and Kim Mihalik (former WTAM afternoon drive co-host).

Of course, WNCX, like many CBS Radio owned former Stern affiliates, was saddled with the So Awful We Can't Describe It David Lee Roth Morning Drive Radio Experiment...until 98.5 went local in morning drive before Roth's show swallowed the Cleveland classic rocker whole.

Scott Miller, the former program director of sister AC WDOK/102.1, stepped in to lead the WNCX show after "Mud's" exit, and will stay on with Blanchard as the show transforms into "Morning Rush"...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mike must have been walking around the WNCX FM newsroom with a fold-out of 'Long Dong Silver', asking female reporter's "would you date this?" Uh Mike, that stuff doesn't cut it anymore. Anyway, I wish Mike well - he won't be off the air for long!-)

-Andrew, MALL727.net-