UPDATE 12/24/09 10:10 AM: Cleveland Plain Dealer media writer Julie Washington has more on the pending format change, including confirmation that Ric Bennett is the new program director.
Both articles also note that the station will indeed be known on-air as “107.3 Boom!”. (With the exclamation mark, we presume…)
UPDATE 12/23/09 11:57 AM: An alert OMW reader pointed us to this article on the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram’s website today, confirming the WNWV format change. The paper is co-owned with the radio station.
We don’t know if the article appeared in the C-T’s print edition today…
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We’re still on indefinite hiatus, but since this is a pending format change in the Cleveland market, we’ll put a note up here about it.
As noted on our Twitter account, there are strong and loud rumblings around the market that Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting smooth jazz WNWV/107.3 Elyria “The Wave” is about to stop waving…in that format…after some 21 years.
OMW hears what everyone else in Northeast Ohio radio has apparently heard…that WNWV will end the smooth jazz/new adult contemporary format soon, and take on a new adult alternative rock format (“AAA”), with some classic rock mixed in.
In fact, we’re told that you can already hear the coming WNWV format on its HD2 subchannel right now.
And you can also hear that HD2-soon-to-be-main format, we’re told by more than one reader, at the site 1073cleveland.com.
We’re told that the new format is expected to launch on January 4th. We don’t know if it’ll take the “Boom” moniker shown on the above linked site, or if the music mix will change when it comes to the “main stage” at 107.3.
The venerable smooth jazz format, like in other such moves, will end up on the WNWV HD2 channel, switching places with the new AAA/rock format.
As has been posted elsewhere, on message boards, in Tom Taylor’s daily Taylor on Radio-Info newsletter and the like, we hear tbat “Rocco the Rock Dog” (aka Ric Bennett, ex-WMMS/100.7, WENZ/107.9 and WONE/97.5) is on board as program director for the new WNWV format.
Right now, the AAA format in Northeast Ohio is available on only one station, Akron Public Schools-owned non-comm WAPS/91.3 “The Summit”, and we can tell you that the folks on Steiner Avenue are already aware of the coming commercial competition.
Now, we’re still on hiatus. We’ll add an administrivia post later explaining the near-term future of your Mighty Blog of Fun(tm)…
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