At least two items from our Rumormill, and one correction, in this batch…
WEATHER OR NOT: OMW hears strong rumblings that a now-former Cleveland TV weather forecaster could be back on the air soon in the market at another station.
We haven’t confirmed this, though it’s quite likely obvious who we’re talking about from our wording.
We don’t know when this will be made official, or what role the new weather person would take at their new station…
COLUMBUS HIT AGAIN?: Clear Channel holiday season job cuts are almost a sad tradition now, and it looks like one of the company’s Ohio clusters has been hit – again.
OMW hears that as many as seven people may have just gotten a holiday pink slip from Clear Channel’s cluster in Columbus, just as the group prepares to launch another new station with a new format.
Among those rumored to be out: Stuart Osborne, the former-and-again WTVN/610 news anchor who was first let go in last year’s round of holiday layoffs.
After we’d reported this last year, we heard Stuart on the air a few months later (doing a report via WAN for Cleveland’s WTAM/1100), and didn’t realize he’d been brought back. Well, that apparently didn’t last long.
We’re still confirming the other six employees that our sources tell us are gone from Clear Channel in Columbus. And we’re wondering if some of this could be fluid, given that the company could well be bringing people in for the new 106.7 format.
Is it adult rock, in the “Radio 106.7” mold? Is it a full-market smooth jazz competitor for Saga’s WJZA/WJZK rimshot combo? Is it something else? We’ll find out soon.
But either of those formats could well not require a lot of air personalities.
By the way, we hear the new 106.7 format may debut as soon as tomorrow…
NO, TV 26 ISN’T INCLUDED: An update to our earlier item about Defiance-based, Clear Channel-owned LPTV outlet WDFM-LP 26.
Sources in the region tell us that the FCC filing we linked in Monday’s item was indeed a mistake, and Clear Channel and Providence Equity Partners moved to make the application moot shortly after it was filed last May.
WDFM-LP was apparently included by mistake in a global filing for “all” of Clear Channel’s TV stations. Those wildcards will get you, no?
Why it hasn’t disappeared or been marked “dismissed” in the FCC application, we have no idea. We seem to remember a recently uncovered proposed FM swap being marked dismissed within days after we brought it to life.
So, no…the intent is as we suspected, for WDFM’s FM outlet (“Mix 98.1”) to continue to run the LPTV station as a side business.
Left unanswered, of course, is the future for WDFM/98.1 itself. It’s one of a number of Clear Channel small market stations that didn’t even get tabbed for the now-defunct GoodRadio.TV LLC buyout.
WDFM’s FM side is one of four radio stations run out of the Clear Channel Defiance area operation, along with talk WONW/1280 and country WZOM/105.7 “The Bull”, licensed to Defiance itself, and AC WNDH/103.1, which is apparently run out of separate studios in Napoleon.
If, as we’ve speculated, WDFM ends up in the hands of a Fort Wayne operator, we’ll assume the LPTV side would stick with the remaining stations in Defiance, which – again, if Clear Channel is still trying to exit its micro-markets – could end up in another operator’s hands.
Only 98.1 would be of interest to someone looking to run it as a Fort Wayne semi-rimshot….with an on-channel Fort Wayne booster likely to be revived if that scenario happens.
Again, all of the above is only our own speculation, aside from the confirmation that WDFM-LP 26 is NOT included in the Providence Equity Partners/Clear Channel Television deal…
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