It’s a “name” theme this time around for your Mighty Blog of Fun(tm)…
GEORGE OF RESERVE SQUARE: Raycom Media CBS/MyNet combo WOIO/19-WUAB/43 has a new anchor who started this week, and he’s coming off a national stage.
George Smith was a reporter for sports TV giant ESPN for nearly 10 years, and moves to “19 Action News” as 4:30 PM and 5:30 PM weekday anchor (with Danielle Serino) and reporter for the station’s 10 PM news on “My43 The Block”, and the 11 PM news on “CBS 19”.
Smith’s “Action News” bio talks about what he did at the Worldwide Leader:
During his time there he covered four Olympic Games (Athens, Beijing, Vancouver and London), the NFL and many stories on the “news” side of sports.
His TV news and sports path took him to places including New York City, Boston, Oregon, and Houston after a print journalism career.
And George Smith’s bio shows he’s not exactly a stranger to Northeast Ohio:
Smith is a graduate of Oberlin College and serves on the board of the Heisman Club which supports Oberlin athletics. He’s active in alumni affairs and athletics at Oberlin College. While at Oberlin, he was an All-American in the 100-meter dash his senior year and was elected to Oberlin’s athletic Hall of Fame.
We don’t have the “19 Action News Anchor Scorecard” handy, but we believe Smith is the direct or indirect replacement for Paul Joncich.
We must have been On Hiatus(tm) when Joncich left Reserve Square. This past summer, he became the noon and afternoon anchor for CBS affiliate KLAS/8 in Las Vegas.
Of course, Smith isn’t the first journalist to trade a network gig for a local one in Cleveland. Gannett NBC affiliate WKYC/3’s Russ Mitchell left CBS News for the evening co-anchor/managing editor job at 13th and Lakeside…
CHRISTINE’S LEAVING: Scripps ABC affiliate WEWS/5 “NewsChannel 5” “Good Morning Cleveland” meteorologist Christine Ferreira is “heading home”.
A station memo says Christine is heading to her hometown in southeastern Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia to “pursue other interests” near her hometown.
(No, we don’t know if those other interests include a TV weather job in that certain rather large market nearby, but the Philly TV stations should be interested if that’s what she wants to do.)
We got word of this a couple of weeks and change ago, but Christine will continue at 3001 Euclid “through the month of February”…
NEW GRAPHICS ON LAKESIDE: Every once in a while, TV stations get the itch to change up their news graphics.
In 2013, you can change that to “TV station groups”, as nearly all major TV groups present a unified look on all of their owned and operated stations.
Find yourself in Phoenix, and a quick look at the news produced by ABC affiliate KNXV/15 will look familiar to you if you’re a WEWS/5 “NewsChannel 5” viewer, as both stations are owned by Scripps.
So it is with mega-group Gannett, which is in the process of rolling out a new TV news look at all of its stations.
The new Gannett news look hit Cleveland’s WKYC this week, and thanks to a YouTube user we only know as “News89”, you can look at it even from afar:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nGna2YKHD4&w=560&h=315]
If you’re a fan of TV news graphics and themes, you’ll probably find a lot to watch on “News89″‘s page…including other examples of the new Gannett graphics package.
The look is pretty utilitarian and minimalistic, or “clean and crisp” if you prefer. It incorporates the upcoming story slots that have previously aired in right-hand side graphics on some editions of “Channel 3 News”…
NASH FM 105.1?: If you were fearing for the loss of 30-plus year brand “K105” for Cumulus Youngstown market country powerhouse WQXK/105.1 Salem, relax a little.
The dust was kicked up earlier this week.
Cumulus made a big splash by returning the country music format to the nation’s largest market, turning the former WFME(FM)/94.7http://ohiomediawatch.wordpress.com/ Newark NJ (New York’s outlet for religious radio giant Family Radio) into country WRXP-to-become-WNSH “Nash FM”, giving the Big Apple its first full market country outlet in some 17 years.
How does that affect Northeast Ohio?
Cumulus is going “all in” with country music nationwide, and then some, planning to plant the “Nash” branding on anything from magazines to existing Cumulus country stations.
There are 83 such stations (with WNSH), and one is most certainly a powerhouse locally…the aforementioned “K105”, which has a grandfathered signal that pretty much reaches all of Northeast Ohio to some degree.
It is a dominant station in Youngstown, which counts many listeners from the Canton area and beyond…and even had a sales office in Canton when Cumulus and its predecessors owned now-Clear Channel rock WRQK/106.9.
(UPDATE 1/24/13 9:50 PM: K105 afternoon driver Heather Stevens tells us that the station has a Canton-area sales office in North Canton, though someone forgot to tell the station’s webmaster…)
Here’s the line that got people worried. It’s from an article in the Wall Street Journal.
The switch is part of an effort by Cumulus, the second-biggest radio broadcaster by stations after Clear Channel Communications Inc., to begin converting all of its now 83 country stations across the nation to the newly created NASH brand starting on Tuesday.
Nash FM 105.1? Say it ain’t so, Mr. Dickey!
OK, so it might not be so. Some clarification comes in a Wednesday article in Inside Radio, one of the most recent stops in Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey’s “Nash, We’re Really Serious About This” media tour:
With 83 country stations already, Cumulus Media could add to its roster. “We’ll be opportunistic,” Dickey says. “We have a unique position in this format and we’re going to leverage it.” In the meantime more stations will roll out the “Nash FM” brand. Some will use it as their handle, others with strong local positions like “99.5 The Wolf” KPLX, Dallas will refer to themselves as a “Nash station.” Some Cumulus country outlets will carry the 24/7 Nash FM programming, but many others will pick up vignettes, weekend programming and live music events. “The presence of the brand will be felt on all of our country stations,” Dickey says.
One would expect that the heritage K105 branding for WQXK would be considered a “strong local position” by Cumulus, so it appears likely you’ll hear wording like “K105, a Nash station” instead of a wholesale name change…
DENNIS AND FOX: It was almost like a punchline when we heard it (credit whoever put that in our head)…”Dennis Kucinich is going to work for Fox News Channel”.
But it was no joke, as the veteran Cleveland-area congressman, former Cleveland mayor, occasional presidential candidate and diehard liberal did indeed join the roster of contributors to the conservative-leaning TV news network.
While there are other liberal contributors to FNC, Dennis brings his own brand of populism to the staunchly right-leaning channel.
And Kucinich looks forward to that, he tells Plain Dealer Washington bureau chief Stephen Koff:
“All networks provide a service,” he said. “People who are familiar with my perspective know that I relish the opportunity to go into the lion’s den.
“I don’t yield to anybody on standing up for what I believe in,” he continued. “If all you do is talk to people who agree with you, how are you going to change anybody’s mind?”
Kucinich “likes to mix it up”, writes Koff.
We didn’t see his debut on FNC’s “The O’Reilly Factor” last week, so we’ll have to see how that phrase is defined in action with the Congressman’s new TV stint…
DANI’S FUNERAL: WKYC/3 assignment editor Danielle Fink, who died in a car accident last weekend (see earlier item below), will be remembered in services this coming weekend.
OMW reader Adam Gercak tells us that her funeral mass will be Saturday morning at 11, at the church she attended all her life and where she sang in the choir, Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church.
Calling hours for the woman so many in the local TV news world knew as “Dani” will be at Maher Melbourne Funeral Home, Friday from 5 to 8 PM.
Condolences to Danielle Fink’s family can be sent via the funeral home’s website…
SKATING BACK: The National Hockey League’s billionaire owners and millionaire players finally decided how to share all these riches, so NHL hockey is back on the ice after a long lockout.
So, too, is Ohio’s only NHL team, the Columbus Blue Jackets…which returns to Northeast Ohio radio with the resumption of play.
A quick check of the websites of all three Cleveland/Akron area Blue Jackets affiliates shows the team’s games returning to the airwaves…including:
Clear Channel sports WARF/1350 Akron “Fox Sports 1350”
Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting talk WEOL/930 Elyria
Spirit Media talk/variety WELW/1330 Willoughby
On all three stations, the Columbus-based NHL team’s games are subject to being bounced off the air due to local high school, college or other professional sports…
PERCY’S QUEST: You’ve got to say this about former radio station owner Percy Squire…he doesn’t give up easily.
The former head of the Stop 26 Riverbend group, who lost his stations in bankruptcy proceedings to the D.B. Zwirn investment firm (headed by Daniel B. Zwirn, the major Stop 26 creditor), tried his hand at mucking up the current FCC proceedings of the Zwirn stations – operating under the name Bernard Ohio.
Radio Business Report reports that Squire was unsuccessful in challenging the license renewals of Bernard’s Youngstown market stations, including WRBP/101.9 Hubbard, WGFT/1330 Campbell, and WASN/1500 Youngstown and Bernard’s WVKO/1580 and WVKO-FM/103.1 in the Columbus market.
Squire also tried to block the sale of WRBP to Educational Media Foundation, the California-based Christian radio giant, and that station’s application for a main studio waiver (needed to run EMF’s satellite-fed formats without a local studio).
RBR notes:
Part of Squires objection was based on what it called an improper transfer of control when Fortress Investment Group took over hedge funds controlled by DBZ. It said that even if the licensee entered into an LMA with Fortress the situation was improper due to its assertion that Fortress was pulling all the strings at the stations.
It also said that there was foreign ownership in excess of the 25% limit.
Bernard responded that there weren’t any facts backing up Squire’s petition, and that the foreign ownership arguments were “virtually impossible to comprehend”.
Bottom line: RBR says the FCC turned away Squire, the license renewals for the Bernard stations were approved, and the sale of WRBP/101.9 to EMF was also approved.
FCC records show that the WRBP sale was approved on January 11th, and already show the station as repeating EMF’s KLVR(FM) Middletown CA, the nominal primary station for the company’s “K-Love” feed.
We’re told that EMF planted its younger skewing “Air1” Christian rock format on former “K-Love” Youngstown rimshot WLVX/107.1 Greenville PA…
I saw the new graphic package last night, the weather banner on 3.2 hinted the change. Like WEWS, the new graphics take advantage of the 16:9 aspect ratio, but for WKYC, they went a step farther and put the temperatures and such during the weather segment outside of the 4:3 safe zone. Since more people own HDTV sets, stations are adjusting their graphics so they fall out of the 4:3 safe zone. Hopefully this trend will continue and other stations and networks will follow.
However, one thing that I don’t like about the WEWS/WKYC graphics is that the name of the story always stays on the screen and the bar never disappears. A bit of an annoyance for me, but a big issue for those who have a plasma TV. At least WKYC doesn’t have a little box in the bottom-left corner that continuously shows animation of their Facebook/Twitter/web pages. It also seems like the new graphic packages are getting less colorful and detailed and are being simplified, kind of like the graphics in Windows 8.
And with new graphics usually come new theme music. HOPEFULLY they will replace the music loop on 3.2 with something else. When I’m in my 70’s I will probably still remember that tune in my head.
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As of yesterday, both WRBP/101.9 and WLVX/107.1 were broadcasting the “K-Love” format… no “Air1″ from Greenville yet.
http://www.insideradio.com/Article.asp?id=2610222&spid=32061#.UQbv-ehD_bM
Arbitron sues Gannett over ratings use.
Gannett’s WKYC-TV, Cleveland has been packaging Pandora ad buys into its sales efforts and that’s run the station into legal trouble with Arbitron. Although it’s not a subscriber, WKYC-TV allegedly used Arbitron’s average quarter hour estimates for nine radio stations in its media kit to ad buyers. Arbitron says that non-subscriber’s use violates its copyright. In a suit filed in U.S. District Court the ratings company asks for at least $150,000 for each act of infringement – plus legal fees.
Former Youngstown station WRBP-FM Jamz 101.9 has new call letter as WYLR-FM
http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/fmq?state=OH&call=&city=hubbard&arn=&serv=&vac=&freq=0.0&fre2=107.9&facid=&class=&dkt=&list=1&dist=&dlat2=&mlat2=&slat2=&NS=N&dlon2=&mlon2=&slon2=&EW=W&size=9
http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/fmq?list=0&facid=63498
I second what Andy has said about WLVX. Both stations are still broadcasting the “K-Love” feed as of this reply, and the WYLR ID slot specifically mentions WLVX as a companion station. After WYLR’s ID, “107.1 Greenville/Warren” is inserted after the station ID. It has been the case since WRBP has changed their calls to WYLR.