WDOK Is Dead, Long Live The New 102?

CBS Radio Cleveland AC WDOK/102.1 unveiled the first part of its new formula for winning this morning: a new name, a returned morning show (mostly), and frequent mentions of Ohio Media Watch!

OK, so we’re kidding about that last part, but morning show hosts Trapper Jack Elliot, Terry Moir and Jim McIntyre had a lot of fun this morning with us, them on the air, us on Twitter, as they were pretty open with the changes that have taken place at One Radio Lane since last week.

For one, “WDOK” only exists as on the station at legal ID time now…oh, and on a very small part of the station’s new logo as, you guessed it, “New 102”.

As noted, “The Trapper Jack Morning Show” returned with all three regular cast members – well, for this week, at least.

For the “big announcement” the show teased for 8 AM, we found out that co-host Terry Moir is leaving the station.

Something about, well, having two full-time jobs that demand more attention from her these days…while on the WDOK morning show these past 4 years, Moir has also kept her job as Director of Programming at Gannett NBC affiliate WKYC/3.

Add to that being the mother of her two children, the youngest about to turn 16, and something had to give…and it was WDOK, er, “New 102” that had to give. “Two children and two (station) rebuilds, that’s too many,” Moir said.

And since we’re never really fully awake before 9 AM, we apologize for the Twitter and Facebook speculation that a soon-to-be-former TV news anchor may have been joining the station.

That speculation was fueled in part by an incorrect tip by a usually reliable OMW source, who had told us that Channel 3 News morning anchor Mark Nolan had met with WDOK program director Dave Popovich. Not recently, we hear.

Add that to the fact that Chris Tye takes over the WKYC morning anchor slot on Monday, and our computer was a bit overloaded with speculation that was not accurate.

And of course, as a member of management at WKYC, this is also on Moir’s other work plate.

See, when we’re wrong, we fall on our sword with the best of ’em. We will note that even on our Twitter account, we said rather clearly that we had heard neither rumor nor confirmation of such a move.

We will note that Nolan will be off the air at 13th and Lakeside on Friday, and already expressed an interest in “short term radio work”. We’ll see what form that takes.

New on the station formerly known/known only at legal ID time as WDOK: The “New 102” name, complete with “Cleveland’s New 102!” jingles…the exit of Moir from the morning show…and unspecified “live and local” programming.

We’re not sure what shape that takes after Trapper Jack and Jim McIntyre sign off the air this morning. (And Terry Moir, who will wrap up her presence on the show at the end of the week.)

We do know that Trapper Jack continually promised “live and local” programming to replace the syndicated “Delilah” show in evenings…a show WD..er…”The New 102″ dumped in last week’s changes.

Elliot was clearly happy with that change, at least on the air, and clearly unhappy with the station’s non-renewal of the contract of station icon Nancy Alden…playing “villain” music when talking about management’s decision to send the 20-plus year WDOK vet away.

Trapper Jack also confirmed that the station will use the new “new102.com” web address that we talked about last week…a domain registration first uncovered by Lance Venta at RadioInsight. (It’s not working for us, but sometimes, it takes those changes a day or two to distribute along the name servers on the Internet.)

The format?

Well, some sort of adult contemporary as far as we can tell, though we’re not really good enough with music formats to spot what “tweaking” they’ve done with the music mix on “New 102”. (Follow that link at Yes.com to see what “New 102” is playing now, and make your own observations.)

But the “we’re not changing our format” mantra that’s been coming out of One Radio Lane this past week?

We’ve never, ever said there would be a wholesale change of format. No country to go after WGAR, no alt-rock to replace “Radio 92.3” (now sports “92.3 The Fan”), and no AAA to replace “V107.3” (now smooth AC WNWV/107.3 “The Wave”).

It was always going to be an adjustment…likely dropping older songs off the playlist, adding newer ones, then eventually, nudging sister hot AC WQAL/104.1 gently out of its way by adding younger songs there, too. We have said exactly that all this time.

We’ll leave it to the music playlist analysts to tell you how much “younger” the “New 102” will go, or any related adjustments that’ll be made on Q104.

What about “Fresh 102”? Is that rumor dead, yet? Does our Secondary Editorial Voice(tm) need to eat a strawberry felt beret?

Maybe not.

While tweeting that maybe the station needed to change its Twitter handle from @WDOK to @TheNew102, we noticed that there’s actually a very modest, new @TheNew102 Twitter handle out there…and it’s been out there a few days.

Here are the only four tweets from that account, newest to oldest, as we write this item:

the NEW 102 @theNew102
It’s almost time. #new102 #fresh102 #wdok
10 hours ago

the NEW 102 @theNew102
Ahhhh, so…fresh.
2 days ago

the NEW 102 @theNew102
Get ready…for something new…on 102!
5 days ago

the NEW 102 @theNew102
Coming Soon
5 days ago

Now, the folks at One Radio Lane are clearly aware of us (see this morning), and someone either inside or outside the building could well have planted this Twitter account to mess with our heads…but we’re not sure of anything at this point.

We are sure that Clear Channel rock/talk WMMS/100.7 morning doggie Shane “Rover” French is back in the building with his “Rover’s Morning Glory” at Oak Tree, with a new multi-year deal (according to him) in hand…reportedly through 2017.

We’ll get to that, and other changes on both radio and TV, later today…but we gotta go…