As reported earlier, WKYC/3 is giving up an October 1st Cleveland Indians contest to SportsTime Ohio…so it won’t preempt a NASCAR race on that day.
As the other half of that deal, Akron Beacon Journal TV columnist R.D. Heldenfels reports that WKYC will instead air an Indians game this coming Sunday.
That bumps NBC’s “Champ Car Series” race from Montreal, but STO will air that race instead of WKYC, starting at 1:30 on Sunday afternoon.
We don’t know the ins and outs of auto racing rights, but it appears NASCAR’s main events are not allowed to be aired outside of their normal live network time slots…but there would appear to be more flexibility to other racing events.
While we’re mentioning a Beacon Journal writer – maybe it’s different in the print newspaper, but there’s been something of a silence from the Beacon itself about the paper’s recent cut of a quarter of its newsroom staff. We haven’t seen anything about it on Ohio.com, aside from the story which ran the other day in the business section.
And TWC 23 “Akron/Canton News” anchor/WKYC Akron-Canton bureau chief Eric Mansfield alludes to that in his DiscoverNEO blog:
Still, I thought Black Press took a weak approach to its decision by putting the cuts in the business section instead of the front page. If any other major employer in town (think AGMC, Roadway, etc..) were dumping 25 percent of its main workforce, the ABJ would have put them in bold print on A1.
Eric has a point. Indeed, even stories on the future of his own Akron-based local TV news operation have been usually been published on page A1 in the Beacon.
Reading items from soon-to-be dismissed Beacon staffers like Pat McManamon and George Thomas gives us an eerie feeling.
But more importantly, the cuts are causing us to reconsider paying for a Beacon Journal subscription.
OMW had a Beacon Journal Digital Edition subscription until we let it lapse a few months ago. We’ll still buy an occasional newsstand copy, and read Ohio.com, but we won’t commit to getting the paper (digitally) again on a regular basis until we know what they plan to do about local news coverage, features and columnists.
If the Beacon is going to be known as Akron’s source for reprinted AP wire copy, we’ll pass on sending them money…
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