Making The Midweek Connection

As has been the case recently, we have a bunch of odd, mostly unconnected items that need to be let free...

MORE FOX: It's not like it was exactly a secret.

We knew that Local TV Cleveland Fox affiliate WJW/8 "Fox 8" was about to lose its 9-10 AM syndicated morning show, "The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet".

"M&J"'s run ended months ago, with the announcement that original production would be stopped earlier this year. The show has continued to air on affiliates like "Fox 8" locally, but in reruns.

Mirroring a move by other "M&J" affiliates, WJW is stretching its popular "Fox 8 News In The Morning" to a full five-hour run, from 5 AM-10 AM, starting September 8th.

The station has put up a video promo for the expanded morning show here.

The fifth hour of "Fox 8 News In The Morning" seems like overkill to some, but it's up against roughly the 10th hour of NBC's "Today" show over on WKYC/3...

STREAMING ALONG: The last major Cleveland broadcaster not to stream its signals on the Internet has ended its holdout.

It's part of what turns out to be a nationwide streaming audio effort by Maryland-based Radio One, which is now offering online feeds from its four Cleveland market stations - urban AC WZAK/93.1, hip-hop WENZ/107.9 "Z107.9", gospel WJMO/1300 "Praise 1300", and urban talk/brokered WERE/1490 "NewsTalk 1490".

The "Listen Live" links actually showed up on the stations' websites a few days ago, but just went "live" during the day on Tuesday.

The new streaming audio capability is part of a rather extensive technical upgrade at Radio One's Cleveland facility on St. Clair Avenue over the past few months, with studio rebuilds, and audio and data system upgrades.

While we're electronically looking in on Radio One/Cleveland, we note that WJMO's Brother Ed Powell is doing some local on-air work to supplement national hosts like morning drive's Yolanda Adams. We don't know if he's voicetracked, live or both.

And speaking of now-former WJMO on-air types, we don't think we noted that former "Praise 1300" afternoon drive host Ronny Knight ended up in the same time slot at crosstown New Spirit Revival Center gospel competitor WCCD/1000 Parma.

AND SPEAKING OF WCCD: That's PARMA, despite a legal ID we heard on AM 1000 on Tuesday...proudly proclaiming that the station was "WCCD, Cleveland Heights, Ohio!"

Please check the license and try again, we say in our best imitation of Lily Tomlin's voice.

The New Spirit Revival Center church is apparently located in Cleveland Heights, but the FCC's license for WCCD says it is licensed to Parma, and AM 1000 has always been (as far as we can remember) licensed to Parma.

It's the same problem we fixed for the good folks at Beacon Broadcasting, who were incorrectly identifying WRTK/1540 Niles as being licensed to the nearby Mahoning Valley community of Mineral Ridge...presumably because the station's transmitter site is near that community.

We don't know if any WCCD staffers read the Mighty Blog of Fun(tm), but you're welcome in advance for saving the New Spirit center from potential FCC fines for improper legal ID...

AND TRANSLATING DIGITAL: After we noted the applications to convert Ideastream PBS affiliate WVIZ/25's two eastern translators to digital, we got an update on another coming digital public TV translator in Northeast Ohio.

Western Reserve PBS station manager Bill O'Neil tells OMW that the Kent-based public TV outlet is in the process of converting analog Youngstown translator W58AM into W44CR, a digital replacement to serve Youngstown viewers shadowed by terrain and distance from WNEO/45's signal out of Salem.

O'Neil says the 1.5 kW facility's antenna is already mounted - we seem to remember it's on the tower of NBC affiliate WFMJ/21 just south of downtown Youngstown - and that they're waiting for delivery of the transmitter.

Expect digital channel 44 to light up somewhere in the September to October time frame.

And this time, we didn't accidentally give Mr. O'Neil a promotion....