Two Assorted Items

We've just been hanging onto these for a while...

ACCIDENTAL, BUT GOOD, EXPOSURE: We spent part of Tuesday evening catching the Monday return of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart", faithfully recorded by our TiVo.

We didn't know until we went into the recording that Jon's guest for his first show back from a three week vacation was Akron's own mega sports superstar, the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers' own LeBron James.

LeBron's been on with Stewart before, but something caught our eye in his second "Daily Show" appearance...the show showed the cover of his new book, "Shooting Stars". Look at the cover image on Amazon, and you'll see what we saw:

Yep, that's a banner for Clear Channel talk WHLO/640 Akron, taken at the championship game site pictured. And we'll assume just to the left, that's the edge of a banner for Dix country/sports WQKT/104.5 "SportsCountry" Wooster.

We haven't met the man, but we'll assume the man in the blue shirt is long-time local high school radio play-by-play voice Rudy Piekarski.

WHLO/CC Akron/Canton operations director/OMW reader Keith Kennedy tells us that the banner was Rudy's. (We presume any station-made banner would have the official WHLO logo on it.)

All of this, on bookshelves everywhere, and on the popular "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Monday night...though viewers and readers could be forgiven for calling the station "WHL"...

DAZED: An OMW reader passes along a link to a Cleveland Scene post about "Radio Daze: Cleveland's FM Air Wars", the book-turned-TV-documentary which just won a local Emmy award for "Best Nostalgia Program". An hour-long version of the documentary aired on Western Reserve PBS (WNEO/45 Alliance-WEAO/49 Akron).

The "Scene" blog post ("When AOR Ruled The Earth" by Frank Lewis) also has more about producers Tom Cummings and Dave Rogant:

“Historically, from a Cleveland perspective, I think [Radio Daze] is important,” says Tom Cummings, whose Harvard 131 Films company produced the program. “It’s a document of Cleveland’s history and the city’s place in music history.”

It also details the relationship between Cummings, Rogant, and long-time Cleveland media personality/OMW reader Mike Olszewski, who wrote the original book...and talks about how "Radio Daze"'s video version came together.

And it notes that a 2 1/2 hour long version of "Radio Daze" is now available online on DVD ($20), at "RadioDazeMovie.com".

But one note from the article:

"The documentary didn’t air in Cleveland," writes Scene's Frank Lewis.

Well, sort of...yes, it did not air on Ideastream PBS affiliate WVIZ/25.

But the signal of Western Reserve PBS' WEAO/49, broadcasting from a tower off Cleveland-Massillon Road in Copley Township not far from the massive Montrose shopping area, reaches a pretty decent chunk of the Cleveland market.

Not all of it, by far, but enough to garner "must carry" cable coverage that puts the Kent-based public TV outlet on all the local cable systems, not to mention satellite TV "local-into-local" carriage in the entire Cleveland TV market....

CHUCK PLUG: We like to give free plugs for positive radio/TV news, particularly for Friends of OMW like Chuck Matthews.

We've been remiss in listing some of the new voiceover and imaging clients Matthews has piled up in the past month or so, so we asked him for a list:

WREO/Ashtabula
KGSO/Wichita KS "Sports Radio 1410 ESPN"
KAPC/Salt Lake City UT (formerly KNRS-AM) - just imaging
WDOX/Raleigh NC
WCTN/Potomac-Cabin John MD-Washington DC (standards)

And in his "day job" as production director for Rubber City Radio in Akron, Chuck's also heard frequently voicing both spots and on-air station production - including for the company's oldies/news WAKR/1590. In one recent drive, we heard Chuck's voice on both WREO "Star 97.1" and WAKR within a 2 minute time period, bouncing back and forth between the FM dial and AM dial.

Chuck tells us that he's hoping to add imaging for an in-market station or two in DC, soon.

Many of his new pickups are due to his relationship with Benztown Branding, which offers voiceover and imaging services to stations for barter. Check out Chuck's own site here for more.

Best of luck to Mr. Matthews, and here's hoping the OMW Reader Karma continues to work well!