We generally deal in facts here at the Mighty Blog of Fun(tm), give or take an occasional rumble.
And at this juncture, there are a LOT of rumbles out there, and nearly all of them haven’t been confirmed to our satisfaction yet.
The item just before this one is just one example…there are more hot-and-heavy rumors out there.
So, if you’re looking for the answer to “who’s about to be fired”, after hearing it on a certain morning drive show…not yet. We’ll pass along changes as soon as they happen, and not before.
We are not immune to speculation here, but generally speaking, when nothing has actually HAPPENED yet, we don’t weigh in.
(There are limited exceptions to that, like when a certain afternoon drive talk show host loudly announced that he was SURE he was about to get competition, which never happened.)
Anyway, moving on to our verified items…
LONG-TIME EXIT: A local TV type behind the camera has left the building.
That building is 3001 Euclid Avenue, where Scripps ABC affiliate WEWS/5 says goodbye to managing editor Jim Scott, who has been with the station for five years.
OMW hears that the decision was his.
Scott’s family never left Pittsburgh when he took the job in Cleveland, and he’s returning to Pittsburgh after some family members passed away.
We hear that Jim Scott was well-respected and liked at “NewsChannel 5”, and we wish him well personallly and professionally…
INDIRECT: Western Reserve PBS’ WEAO/49 Akron has been off the air for a large chunk of April due to transmission line problems, and Mother Nature hasn’t at all been cooperative.
Those heavy rains and high winds we’ve been experiencing for much of the month mean that tower crews literally can’t get up on the station’s tower in Copley Township and repair the broken line.
In the meantime, WEAO has the bulk of its viewership still in the fold, as the massive Time Warner Cable system in the Cleveland/Akron/Canton area has been carrying the feed from sister Youngstown-market outlet WNEO/45 Alliance, unaffected by the problems in Copley Township, since a day after the outage began. (And thankfully, someone turned down the volume on the feed shortly after it started.)
Other local cable systems have been able to pick up the WNEO feed, but it does appear Cox Cable, DirecTV and Dish Network subscribers will have to wait until the over-air signal of WEAO/49 is back.
Western Reserve PBS communications coordinator and OMW Handler Diane Steinert (we’re pretty sure that’s on her business card) writes:
We’ve learned that the satellite companies and Cox Cable are unable to make the switch. They’ve all been great in trying to do so, and we appreciate their efforts. Repair work is still being thwarted by the weather.
When will it be fixed? Look for an extended period of dry, less windy weather, which seems almost unthinkable here in Northeast Ohio this month…but we’re sure our friends at Campus Center Drive will get the station back on as soon as possible.
And our apologies to Diane, for a small mistake in our previous item, which has been fixed.
We meant that we didn’t know if DirecTV subscribers would get the WEAO signal back BEFORE the over-air signal returns, not WHEN…
CLASSIC CHUCK: Clear Channel country WGAR/99.5 Hall of Fame afternoon driver Chuck Collier apparently counts Dayton among his resume stops, and is now being heard in the region again.
That’s because Collier is on the schedule at a new classic country outlet in the market, Springfield’s WIZE/1340. Until the flip, it was the eastern simulcaster of Dayton sports station WONE/980.
Clear Channel made the move after Main Line Broadcasting pulled country outlet WKSW/101.7 out of Springfield, off the frequency and out of the country format.
(It’s now modern AC WCLI-FM “Click 101.5” Enon, targeting Dayton itself. And that presumably means the WKSW calls are available, should, say, the folks at WKSU/89.7 wish to grab them for one of the station’s repeaters.)
Of course, Chuck Collier isn’t budging from either his WGAR afternoon drive perch, or his voicetracked midday shift on sister classic hits WMJI/105.7.
As far as we can tell, Chuck comes to Springfield via the magic of Clear Channel’s “Premium Choice” country format. When “Premium Choice” started, we noted here that we’d heard Chuck would be one of the voicetracked talents…
So, you can’t confirm or deny that Rover’s birth certificate has been found?
Didn’t know that dog pounds issued birth certificates.
In the continuation of the “Not Rumors, for the Most Part,” I can officially state that WEAO-DT is back on the air. I have a DirecTV HR-20 DVR (w/ OTA), and the main signal of WEAO is lit up, along with the subs (which I can only get OTA). This report was made at 5:16 PM.