Monday, July 20, 2009

Musings on Walter Cronkite, Plus News on WOXY

As opposed to "News minus Walter Cronkite", but we'll get to those thoughts...

WOXY.com Move Reaction and New Info: There continues to be fallout and new information about WOXY's move south.

As we reported last week, the internet/HD2 radio station is moving southward to Austin, Texas on September 8th.

And as you would have expected if you live in Cincinnati, the reaction wasn't very good.

Readers of that site's blogs were understandably worried that they'd lose the local flavor that WOXY carried for some time. (And we remind you, that reaction is even in spite of WVQC-FM 95.7/Cincinnati launching its effort in just a few days with local bands in heavy rotation.)

And that brings us to new information about the move of WOXY.com.

The station told the Enquirer on Friday that they would end the live broadcasts from Cincinnati on Friday, August 28. From then until September 8, WOXY.com won't be broadcasting on the website - and we guess that the HD2 subchannel of 91.7 WVXU/Cincinnati will also go silent.

The move puts WOXY at the center of a blooming music scene in Austin. Austin hosts the "South by Southwest" music festival every March, and various bands tour through Austin every year.

That was something WOXY didn't have here - as many bands opted not to come to Cincinnati.

Regardless, on air, the station's DJ's have been reassuring listeners that the local music they like isn't going anywhere.

To us, that's good news...the more outlets that local bands have, the better...

Social Media Strikes Again: As a valuable news source, that is.

When news of Walter Cronkite's death last Friday night reached us, it wasn't by the TV or radio.

Rather, it was by Twitter. And it wasn't even our Tri State Media twitter, but Your Tri-State Media Watcher's personal twitter.

We were tipped off by Enquirer reporter Alex Shebar (whose twitter is here) who tweeted at 8:32 PM with the report from the New York Times about it. That of course sent us scurrying to other reputable news organization webpages on the TSMW laptop to confirm, then write our last post.

It once again shows the power of Twitter as a news source - but only when used the right way.

Our Own Musings on Cronkite: Your Tri-State Media Watcher doesn't have a personal story to share on Cronkite.

That's because yours truly wasn't born until 1985, when Cronkite's last telecast was in 1981.

However, we'd like to note that Cronkite was well respected. The fact that he told it "the way it is" really earned him that nickname.

Last night, CBS aired a one hour special on Cronkite titled "That's the Way It Was". The show really helped us understand why he was so respected.

It appears Cronkite has inspired a lot of potential journalists to hone their craft. And no matter how the news will be delivered in the future, Your Tri-State Media Watcher really would like to see it done in such a way as to remove biases and personal feelings from the equation. That means no spin, no left- or right-wing bias...just the facts.

We know we strive for that every day here. And we're just a blog about media, after all.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The station told the Enquirer on Friday that they would end the live broadcasts from Cincinnati on Friday, August 28. From then until September 8, WOXY.com won't be broadcasting on the website - and we guess that the HD2 subchannel of 91.7 WVXU/Cincinnati will also go silent."

Without going into details, woxy.com will be broadcasting while the move to Austin is occurring, and nothing will be "silent" as you claim.

J. Moses said...

I'm not sure how that would happen. Unless someone has a temporary setup somewhere in Austin that woxy.com will use? I would think they have to take everything apart, truck it down to Austin, then put it all back together...thus the reason we were guessing here. However, if someone's got a secondary setup, all one has to do is fire up the computers at that place, and that would allow them to at least be broadcasting music...if for no other reason than continuity... yours truly used to do internet radio, and as long as someone's ready to take control of the stream, then yes, broadcasting could continue.