Starting off the week with a couple of items outside the usual OMW coverage area, from the Queen City of Cincinnati:
CBS SELLS CINCY: It’ll be Entercom buying the CBS Radio cluster in Cincinnati.
The $262 million deal also covers CBS Radio’s stations in Rochester, Memphis and Austin. Joining the Entercom family in Cincinnati will be country WUBE/105.1, hot AC WKRQ/101.9 “Q102”, oldies WGRR/103.5, and alt-rock WAQZ/97.3.
This deal means two things:
1) It ends speculation that former Clear Channel radio head Randy Michaels was a candidate to buy the CBS Radio Cincinnati cluster, at least.
Another piece of speculation involving Mr. Michaels also fell through recently, as he did not take over programming of Inner City liberal talk WLIB/1190 New York City. And today, AllAccess reports that instead of being a Randy Michaels-programmed competitor to Air America’s programming on new flagship WWRL/1600 in NYC, WLIB is set to launch a gospel format on September 1st.
2) It leaves the CBS Columbus operations on the block for now. (CBS Radio’s four station group in Cleveland is remaining with the company.)
NO REDS VOICE: The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Steve Stewart won’t be returning to the Cincinnati Reds’ radio booth alongside iconic team radio voice Marty Brennaman next season, as Stewart’s contract won’t be renewed.
He joined the radio team as a part-time replacement for Reds radio veteran Joe Nuxhall in 2004, and had his contract extended until the end of this season. Brennaman will reportedly be directly involved in picking Stewart’s replacement.
The Reds are heard on a network based at Clear Channel talk WLW/700 in Cincinnati. They were also, at last check, heard as far north as the Canton market on ESPN affiliate WTIG/990 in Massillon…
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