Your Primary Editorial Voice(tm) is back and in the OMW Saddle again. We appreciate our new “Second” for keeping the OMW fires going while we were away from the Mighty Blog(tm).
Our other editor will continue to be able to contribute, should he feel the need or desire to do so. But let’s pick up some stuff we deposited on Twitter…
NEW SIGNAL: That forlorn FM translator that started life in Lorain, but didn’t actually start, and was set to go to Radio One…will go to Clear Channel, maybe.
The folks at Oak Tree, as reported in numerous places, have filed to purchase W262BN/100.3 Lorain, which had a construction permit to move to the North Ridgeville area with a city of license of…Cleveland.
As we reported, the effort to move the translator closer to Cleveland, by owner Edgewater Broadcasting, was shot down by Media-Com talk WNIR/100.1 Kent, with “The Talk of Akron” listeners responding to a station call for letters to the FCC asking for rejection of the move.
Radio One filed to buy the facility for $100,000…and Clear Channel is getting a bargain relative to that price, $85,000. Radio One bailed out of the purchase after the move, and another attempt to relocate the translator to 99.1, were both turned away by the FCC.
The Clear Channel purchase application notes that W262BN, still legally licensed to Lorain, will rebroadcast Clear Channel country WGAR/99.5 Cleveland, but no one believes that’s the end game.
There would appear to be two options:
1) The station becomes a simulcaster of talk WTAM/1100, aimed at putting the station’s sports properties on an FM central city signal. This is what Clear Channel already did in Minneapolis, moving a translator into downtown Minneapolis to simulcast sports KFAN/1130 “The Fan”.
The biggest advantage to doing this would be to put Indians and Cavaliers games on FM in the downtown area, and the translator (even maximized to 250 watts) would be a “helper”, not marketed as a full-fledged incarnation of WTAM-FM.
2) The station mounts an entirely new format, fed by the HD2 channel of an existing full-power Clear Channel FM station.
We’re having trouble figuring out what format CC would choose. AAA was a format hole for such a niche signal, but is no longer, unless the company wants to nip Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting’s WNWV/107.3 “V107.3” in the bud.
Clear Channel could also mount a competitive format to another station to try to chip away market share, to help the company’s existing stations.
One thing appears certain: no one is at the betting window for an actual simulcast of WGAR in Lorain County.
What about the problem of moving the station’s signal?
We checked in with OMW Technical Advisor, long-time friend and colleague Scott Fybush at Northeast Radio Watch, who tells us the station could still fit in without contour overlap with WNIR’s 60 dBu signal (the same level that allowed WNIR to shoot down the original proposal to move W262BN), with a directional antenna pointed away from Kent, at an existing CC facility in the Parma antenna farm…
SPEAKING OF OAK TREE, AND WTAM: One of the biggest stories in the radio world this past week is the official end of the Randy Michaels era at Tribune.
The changes at the Chicago-based media giant could reverberate well into Ohio, with several ex-Ohio media names in “Randy’s Army” at Tribune…among them, former Clear Channel Cleveland VP/programming Kevin Metheny, at least now still program director of Tribune’s only radio property, WGN/720 Chicago. (Also in place at both WGN and Tribune itself: a number of Michaels’ former Clear Channel and WLW colleagues from Cincinnati, including new midday host Mike McConnell.)
Though we would not bet the OMW World Headquarters on the fate of Metheny or others in the Randy Michaels orbit at Tribune, we cautiously remind people that “sweeping changes” seldom happen as fast as envisioned on message boards and the like.
Our bet: Metheny quietly exits WGN for “other opportunities”, though maybe not immediately, and McConnell stays at least a few months to see what his performance looks like…
HER EXIT: Rubber City Radio country WQMX/94.9 evening personality Amanda Casey is finishing out her last week at the Akron market country powerhouse.
Casey’s last day will be at the end of this week. OMW hears she will be physically heading out of the Akron market, but hopes to resurface somewhere else on the air soon…or perhaps off-air as well, doing consulting work. We hear Amanda has programming experience in the Western U.S.
We haven’t heard yet if anyone has been picked to replace Casey, though we did spot OMW reader and WQMX program director Sue Wilson looking for a possible new replacement in the nighttime time slot in an AllAccess item.
After this week, we assume you’ll hear ‘QMX weekend regulars like George McFly, Joe Friday (now back in the building at the Akron Radio Center) and others filling in…but Sue’s more than welcome to contact us to correct that guess…
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