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Activity in Canton

It has been nearly two entire months since OMW broke the story of the sale of Cumulus rock WRQK/106.9 “Rock 107” Canton to Clear Channel.

In that entire time, the news has appeared hardly anywhere else.

The Main St. Tattler (Conclave) folks picked up on it, and FMQB.com even ran a small item on it. Both brought the newer details – a swap between the companies’ stations in Ohio and Michigan.

But the deal has yet to be announced in a press release by either Cumulus or Clear Channel, and the assignment application has yet to show up on the FCC’s website. And the news, to our knowledge, has yet to appear in other trade publications or websites.

That might change fairly soon.

How does Your Mighty Blog of Fun(tm) convince you that we’re not hallucinating?

Here… see for yourself.

This “in waiting” Clear Channel site for “Rock 107” has apparently become all the rage in the Canton radio market, including at the station itself…and among staffers at other local stations.

It’s not all that difficult to discover. Clear Channel has a habit of putting those “backstage” sites in the URL form “stationcall-fm(or am).clearchannel.com”, and this is certainly not the first one they’ve put up in advance.

A quick look at the site would indicate that the company isn’t planning major (or any?) changes, as all of the current station staffers appear to be listed in their usual slots, and it basically seems like a Clear Channel conversion of the existing Cumulus site.

Now, of course, changes can be made relatively quickly…but with a takeover pending (even if delayed by some weeks), why go through the trouble of putting up what was supposed to be a non-public site with such detail about the current operation?

While we’re in Canton, a birdie not far away from 22nd St. off Whipple Avenue tells us that a drive by the WRQK tower site could end up giving you a nice view of some construction equipment that wasn’t there before.

We helpfully remind our readers that A) the WRQK tower itself needs to be replaced, and soon…and B) that tower will also become the home of the 101.7 outlet that’s still in Dover/New Philadelphia as WJER-FM.

We’ve talked to experts in towers and such things – such as a certain long-time Friend of OMW – and are told that B) won’t happen until A) does…and literally can’t, due to the condition we saw the WRQK tower in last time we were at the site…

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