The ongoing saga of changes about to be made to Clear Channel talk WTAM/1100’s lineup continues to amuse us.
This time, your Mighty Blog of Fun(tm) is right in the middle of the action involving the Cleveland talk station’s immediate future plans.
According to one of our readers, OMW was actually quoted/invoked by Premiere syndicated talk host Glenn Beck during his “Insiders” webcam feed between the 9 AM and 10 AM hours of his Tuesday broadcast.
(We picked this picture off of the website of Beck’s Akron affiliate WHLO/640 because he’s pointing at “us”, as it were.)
Since we’re not an “Insider”, we didn’t hear it (we’re not sure we’ll spend $7 a month to hear a national radio host talking about us for a small part of one day’s offerings)…but we’re told he read portions of our last item on his impending return to WTAM, and chuckled without comment.
Our item was also picked up Tuesday by the radio trade site AllAccess, which elicited a response from WTAM program director Ray Davis. Davis wouldn’t confirm to the AllAccess folks anything we have put up here, but did helpfully note that the station planned a programming announcement on October 20th. (Hey! That’s “next week”, as we said! Imagine that!)
Sorry to mess up your scheduled unveiling, Mr. Davis…but we are doing some free publicity work for you.
Anyway, all is status quo regarding the timeline here, with Beck making his WTAM debut on Monday, November 3rd at 9 AM.
Later that same day, as we reported earlier, current WTAM late morning host Bob Frantz moves into evenings, starting at 7 PM.
We’ve done some digging, and OMW now hears that Frantz will NOT become the “Sportsline” replacement for now-former host Kevin Keane.
Instead, expect to hear much the same kind of show Frantz has been doing from 9 AM to noon weekdays…a show focusing on news, current events, politics and other local issues.
Of course, WTAM’s heavy dose of sports continues, with Cavaliers and Indians (and Browns) play-by-play showing up in the evening hours, along with pre-game and post-game shows. That’s something that will continue no matter who hosts the evening show, otherwise, as WTAM and Clear Channel have long-term contracts with all the major professional teams.
And if sports makes news, we’re sure Bob will talk about it, as he has done on his daytime show.
But it’ll be “The Bob Frantz Show”, not “Sportsline with Bob Frantz”…and that will mark something of the end of an era, as “Sportsline” has existed in evenings on WTAM for (as far as we know) well over 30 years, dating back to the Pete Franklin days.
Not only was the show the first place current WTAM afternoon driver Mike Trivisonno was heard hosting on the station, Triv also planted the early seeds for his future radio career on “Sportsline” as a regular caller to the Franklin show, using the nickname “Mr. Know-It-All”.
Back to Glenn Beck for a moment…it appears with his show debuting on WTAM on November 3rd, there will be a two-day overlap with current Beck affiliate WEOL/930 Elyria. That station has already announced plans to move Talk Radio Network’s Laura Ingraham into the late morning slot, but that move isn’t scheduled until November 5th.
And of course, we’ve heard there’s this little election thing on the 4th…
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