Random Items

Some random, maybe unrelated items:

RANDOM ITEM 1: We’ve certainly been following the saga of DirecTV and SportsTime Ohio, the Indians’ new cable/satellite channel. OMW reported last week that the satellite service has given the thumbs down to adding STO for those outside greater Cleveland…saying the response was “surprisingly little” from those blacked out by the company’s “only in Zone 1/2” policy.

A regular reader of OMW, “Moohead Radio”‘s Marc Steenbarger, is not buying that. The Internet sports radio host is declaring E-Mail war – well, he calls it a “Bovine Fatwah” – on a DirecTV executive Moo says negotiated the limiting deal with STO.

OMW wonders if folks in Columbus were added to the DirecTV ZIP code list in error, as those ZIP codes and others have now been removed from the list on STO’s website. Indeed, we don’t have any idea if Columbus area DirecTV subscribers have ever gotten the STO games…maybe Moohead’s far flung network of Internet listeners would be able to answer that question.

RANDOM ITEM 2: We mentioned the debut of Youngstown CBS affiliate WKBN/27 on local digital TV dials, and noted it was testing. The station officially launched WKBN-DT on Friday, according to a report on “27 First News” that night. We also got a note sent to us by WKBN/WYFX chief engineer Tom Zocolo, and appreciate his keeping in touch!

The new station has a good shot at much of the Akron/Canton area, and even some southern Cleveland suburbs. We’re watching it right now on the little TV in our palatial OMW main office in northwest Akron. The signal varies with atmospheric condition, but we’re able to get it most nights with an amplified indoor antenna.

WKBN-DT runs a simulcast of WKBN-TV and CBS HDTV programming on 27-1, and a standard definition simulcast of WYFX-LP 62 Youngstown/WFXI-CA 17 Mercer PA, otherwise known as “FOX 17/62”, on 27-2.

While we’re in digital TV land, we hear from spies at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas this week that a Cleveland TV station is scoping out high-definition studio equipment…which would make it the third local station to do local HDTV newscasts. FOX O&O WJW/8 started the trend, and NBC affiliate WKYC/3 will follow shortly thereafter, probably in the next month or so. You guess the rest. Let’s just say that the equipment in question is NOT likely to be headed for Reserve Square…

RANDOM ITEM 3: Cleveland CBS Radio alt-rocker WXRK/92.3 “K-Rock” is spreading the word about its new/old afternoon drive show “Opie and Anthony”, set to debut on Wednesday. The station’s on-air personalities have been promoting the move most of today, and there’s now a large O&A banner on the WXRK website:

(The O&A ad appears on the animated top banner after an existing concert advertisement.)

OMW assumes that this banner, the on-air announcements and a CBS Radio press release will be enough for the local media to FINALLY figure out what’s happening…instead of blindly taking word from wire copy that David Lee Roth would be replaced by Opie and Anthony on WNCX/98.5. But…we’re not holding our collective breath…

RANDOM ITEM 4: Blogger, the huge service which hosts OMW, has been going through some growing pains lately. We had trouble updating the Mighty Blog of Fun(tm) for a part of this afternoon. We frankly wonder why there’s been such difficulty…we thought Blogger owner Google had more servers and bandwidth than Bill Gates, and more programmers, too.

So far, it doesn’t appear to affect the user end of things, but if it does in the near future…you’ll know why…