We’re back, after a brief pause, with some new items…
ANCHOR “ACTION”: No, it doesn’t involve WOIO/19 “19 Action News”‘ most controversial anchor, who was reported to be looking at a gig in Houston earlier. There’s no word on that subject yet.
But we once again tip the hat to the folks at a popular TV news/gossip site for this item involving the Cleveland CBS affiliate.
NewsBlues reports that Tiffani Tucker, a “reporter and fill-in anchor” for FOX affiliate WSVN/7 Miami, is heading to Reserve Square to anchor the morning news.
NB doesn’t address the other half, but OMW hears that means the contract of current “19 Action News” morning anchor Allison Alexander may not have been renewed…
FOX 8 SET: OK, so we’ll admit that we had a big headache the night we first saw the new set of FOX O&O WJW/8 “FOX 8 News”. (Maybe we should put that in vertically now, in honor of the station’s new logo.)
But yes, it appears that they don’t actually have a “weather center”, yet…with forecasters standing either just outside the station’s South Marginal Road studios, or if they’re inside, only in front of the green screen.
And the weather segments continue to use the old graphics, with only a slight overlay on the newly updated graphics system that indicates what segment it is.
OMW hears that there will be a new “weather center”, though we don’t know when it will go in.
We’re also wondering if WJW will debut it with an updated graphics package, to compete with the “HD” radar as part of the “Power of 5” (Five! Yes, FIVE National Weather Service radars scanning on one screen! Look! There’s Fort Wayne!) on WEWS/5’s “NewsChannel 5”.
And while we’re on the subject of South Marginal, a brief note since we haven’t talked about it yet.
FOX owner News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch et al.) has a tentative agreement to purchase Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal. That happened earlier this week.
It’s far from certain, though, as certain members of the family that controls Dow Jones and the WSJ are fighting to get the rest of the family to block the sale. With majority voting control of the company, that could spike the deal.
If the sale does go through, OMW has this “gut feeling” that FOX may hang onto WJW and at least one other larger market O&O, both put on the sales block presumably to help nudge along the WSJ/Dow Jones purchase.
That, though, is just a guess…
WOXY BACK ON THE AIR, IN A WAY: Iconic Cincinnati market alt-rocker WOXY, which once occupied the 97.7/Oxford frequency, is now heading back to the airwaves. Well, sort of.
WOXY, which decamped to the Internet only after its broadcast frequency was sold to First Broadcasting, will show up as an HD2 channel when NPR outlet WVXU/91.7 Cincinnati fires up its digital transmitter in a month or so.
It’s an interesting pairing.
WVXU itself was once also an “eclectic” station when it was owned by Xavier University, before classical WGUC/90.9 bought the one-time home of the “X Star Network” and turned it into a pretty standard issue NPR news/talker.
This isn’t the first time this sort of pairing has happened, though the one we’re thinking about involves a station which never left the airwaves.
In the Baltimore MD area, Towson University AAA outlet WTMD/89.7 is relayed into the nearby Washington DC market on an HD subchannel of WAMU/88.5…
THE NEW WKNR STUDIOS ARE COMING: We still don’t have a date on when Good Karma sports talk WKNR/850 “ESPN 850” and sister WWGK/1540 “KNR2” are headed for their new studios in downtown Cleveland.
But prompted by a recent on-air comment by mid-morning host Tony Rizzo – who was battling with the phones during his “Rizzo on the Radio” show at the time – we went up to the Galleria at Erieview and saw if we could scope out any progress.
Since our last visit, the space inside is now no longer visible, thanks to this new fronting, with large station logos and the message “Coming soon” painted on the fronting.
Before this was put up, the station put up computer-printed pages with the WKNR and WWGK logos and put them up in the window of the previous fronting.
We still expect the move from Broadview Road to happen by the end of the year. The antiquated equipment at WKNR’s current location may not last that long…
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