Here at the OMW World Headquarters, we’ve finally found a radio which we can twist into the right position to regularly monitor Good Karma Broadcasting sports WWGK/1540 “Cleveland’s ESPN Radio 1540”.
It’s not the best, most listenable signal this far away – static abounds, and a hissing noise is constant – but it’s enough to endure to figure out what they’re doing on the air.
To wit, we did NOT hear WJW/8 “FOX 8” sports anchor Tony Rizzo on 1540 again this week, after last week’s special Ohio State/Michigan-themed show where he openly said that he’d like to be on regularly, and would try to work that out with his bosses on South Marginal Road.
“Cleveland’s ESPN Radio 1540” instead ran the usual ESPN Radio programming for the 10 AM to noon Saturday slot, which we believe is whatever flavor of “College GameDay” airs then.
However, just minutes ago, the radio in the other room tuned to 1540 revealed the latest addition to the WWGK lineup: Westwood One’s College Football Game of the Week.
The addition makes sense for the daytimer. Westwood One offers a regular weekday afternoon game during the college football season. It offers Notre Dame games separately, which air in Cleveland on Clear Channel talk WTAM/1100.
And..a game with a noon or 1 PM start is in no danger of being cut off by the station’s sunset signoff.
We’ll also note, though, that the NASCAR races the station carries on Sundays could be. To that end, we heard the station’s Bernard Bokenyi in a recorded liner a week or two back warning listeners that the station was “going to low-power” at 5 PM, and signing off entirely at 5:45 PM.
That low-power is a sub-lightbulb level of 18 watts. WWGK would be lucky to make it far from Euclid Avenue and East 80th Street with that, though we once heard a scratchy signal from that power level as far away as Parma.
We’re trying to remember, but we believe it’s a post-sunset authority the station has on paper, but which hasn’t made it to the FCC database. The FCC’s online sunrise/sunset time lookup for WWGK notes a 5 PM sunset in November.
Perhaps former 1540 chief engineer and OMW reader Chris Quinn – now concentrating on the formerly co-owned station at 1460/Painesville which took the WABQ calls – can refresh our memory on this. We seem to recall that it’s -not- a “critical hours” thing…
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