OMW has audio of Howard Stern’s last live over-air broadcast, an event which has been hyped beyond belief, as it aired on Cleveland affliiate WNCX/98.5 this morning. We haven’t listened to much of it yet, but we note that Howard did mention the area.
In his opening speech, Howard asked his audience if they remembered some seminal events in the show, including when his live national broadcast from Cleveland was cut off by an engineering employee of a WNCX rival, rocker WMMS/100.7. The broadcast event in 1994 was a “funeral celebration” by Stern, a typical event over the years on his show…when his show overtakes a rival in the ratings. (In this case, the “burial” involved not just WMMS, but Cleveland morning radio icon John Lanigan on WMJI/105.7.)
This flashback article by FMQB recounts the tale. A quick Google search shows that the former WMMS engineer was sentenced to 10 days in jail and a $1000 fine for the incident.
Former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth takes over mornings on the CBS Radio Cleveland classic rocker, and a number of other large market ex-Stern affiliates, on January 3rd. One of the other Stern replacements is CBS alt-rock WXTM/92.3 morning driver Rover, who’ll move to “Free FM” talker WCKG/Chicago in January…still being heard on 92.3 locally, which means Cleveland will be the only head-to-head Stern Replacement Battleground in America.
SATURDAY UPDATE: We’ve been informed by a few people that WNCX has indeed been promoting the “Best of Stern”, which will air between Monday and the premiere of David Lee Roth in the 98.5 morning slot. And though we hadn’t noted it elsewhere in this blog, “CBS Radio” is indeed the new corporate name of the former Infinity, which is splitting off from Viacom.
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