It's sort of anti-climactic at this point.After Chicago Sun-Times radio/TV guru Robert Feder hinted that Jerry Springer may give up his Air America Radio/Clear Channel syndicated liberal talk radio show, and a day after this very blog noted the near-total absence of Springer from the AAR website, Springer has officially announced the end of "Springer on the Radio".The last show will be this Friday, Springer tells Cincinnati Enquirer radio/TV columnist John Kiesewetter in an online article that … [Read more...]

Now that we've had a little time to digest the announced sale of Salem sports talk WKNR/850 to Good Karma Broadcasting, some thoughts. The below is primarily our own speculation and educated guessing, and not borne in fact unless we tell you otherwise:* First, a "victory lap", as it were.Here at your Mighty Blog of Fun(tm), we can't even count the number of times we've written the following sentence - or some variation of it - in connection with Good Karma's purchase of the 1000 watt … [Read more...]

UPDATE 4:49 PM 12/4/06: The sale's been confirmed by Crain's Cleveland Business, in an article by John Booth. (Thanks to alert OMW reader Nate - "not Nate81" - for the heads up in a comment below.)The reported selling price - $7 million dollars, or about $3 million south of what Salem paid WCLV to take back WKNR sister talk WHK/1420.Good Karma boss Craig Karmazin tells Crain's that Good Karma will take over operations of WKNR via an LMA "immediately". He says he has plans to consolidate WKNR … [Read more...]

It appears that small stations are once again running into a roadblock when it comes to streaming audio, this time courtesy of the U.S. Congress, the federal court system and the folks at SoundExchange - the apparatus which determines royalties for web streaming.And one of the first victims of the new guidelines and rates is right here in OMW Land.Streetsboro City Schools-owned alt-rock/oldies WSTB/88.9 Streetsboro has announced that the changes will silence the WSTB Internet stream as of … [Read more...]

Another tree gets killed in Dover as a result of OMW. We're sorry, environmentalists, we didn't do it!Seriously, your Mighty Blog of Fun(tm) has once again been invoked in the Dover/New Philadelphia newspaper, courtesy of an editorial comment in the Times-Reporter.This time, they're defending their use of this very blog as a primary source for recent items about the impending move of the station now known as WJER-FM, the 101.7 signal which will - soon - be broadcasting from a tower site under … [Read more...]

We touched on this in an earlier item, where we reprinted a line from Chicago Sun-Times radio/TV guru Robert Feder about Cincinnati-based syndicated talk host Jerry Springer and his radio show:Jerry Springer, whose talk show has been airing from 8 to 11 a.m., exits the Newsweb Corp. station for now -- and could be stepping down from radio entirely.Could it be sooner rather than later?Less than one week after Chicago rimshot liberal talker WCPT/850 announced it was dropping Springer for Jones … [Read more...]

UPDATE 12/2/06 3:07 PM: Well, so much for that. The station literally signed off in mid-song just a short time ago.Have we nabbed the second pirate your Primary Editorial Voice(tm) has ever heard? The first was the "WCUE Pirate", who camped out on 91.9 FM with a distorted voice and a few jingles from the old top 40 format at WCUE/1150 Cuyahoga Falls a few months back.Though we can't link the two from what we heard, the "WCUE Pirate" was running at roughly the same time of day on a Saturday … [Read more...]

There aren't just leftovers from Thanksgiving. We left a few as we head into Saturday:THAT OTHER CC AKRON/CANTON CHANGE: With all the attention about the item involving the replacement of Al Franken with Ed Schultz on Clear Channel Akron liberal talker WARF/1350 "Radio Free Ohio", we forgot word on another change in the cluster.OMW hears that WARF sister talker WHLO/640 is picking up Premiere's new weekend show with Bob Costas. WHLO will air the Costas show Sunday evenings between 8 and 10 … [Read more...]

As expected, Clear Channel liberal talk WARF/1350 Akron "Radio Free Ohio" has officially announced that it's boarding the Big Eddie Train to its earlier time slot.WARF will move along with Jones Radio's Ed Schultz, and start airing him in his new noon-3 PM time slot on December 11th - replacing Air America Radio's Al Franken.The move also gives a long-awaited live afternoon drive clearance to Franken's AAR counterpart, Randi Rhodes...she'll air live 3-6 PM weekdays on "Radio Free Ohio".The … [Read more...]

Random potpourri to propel you into the weekend:MELISSA MACK TO FOX 8?: Several alert OMW readers pointed out the presence of a new weather person on the airwaves of FOX O&O WJW/8 Cleveland.She's Melissa Mack, who apparently is now the former morning weather anchor at Youngstown ABC affiliate WYTV/33. We say "former" because WYTV has pulled the Vienna Township native's link from the station's staff bio page, much like FOX 8 did with, say, now-former weathercaster Heather Weber.We don't know … [Read more...]