April Quick Hits

A few quick hits from the last few days...

Regent Emerges From Bankruptcy: We had been following the situation with Cincinnati based Regent Communications, which had gone into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year. Here's the story from the Cincinnati Business Courier, as it announced its exit from Chapter 11 yesterday afternoon. The exit plan had been approved by a judge back on April 12th.

Regent now emerges as a privately held company, with Oaktree Capital Management as majority owner.

And in just breaking news: NASDAQ announced this afternoon that it will de-list common stock of the company. That may happen as soon as two weeks from tomorrow. The stock had been suspended since January 8. That was academic, as the common stock was "extinguished" by the company after the close of business Monday. The stock closed on Monday at 13 cents per share.

Former CET President Heads to Tampa: This one coming from the Kiese Blog this afternoon... as Susan Howarth exits and heads down I-75. She will become president of Tampa's WEDU-TV Channel 3 late in May.

Howarth had been WCET-TV 48/Cincinnati's president until it merged with Dayton-based Think TV, which owned WPTD 16/Dayton and WPTO 14/Oxford, in 2008. The groups, of course, are now one as Public Media Connect.

We congratulate Howarth for her dedication to public broadcasting, and wish her the best...

WLWT Re-Airing Old Programs: And by "old", we mean "Mostly Before Your Tri-State Media Watcher was Born".

The Kiese blog also had this one yesterday, when WLWT announced "Flashback Fridays". Programs from WLWT's 62 year history will air Fridays beginning this week at 11 AM, preempting Martha Stewart's daytime show.

The schedule as Kiese had it is as follows:

This Friday: “Avco Hour of Stars” from the 1974 Ohio State Fair with Braun, Dixon, Marion Spelman, Ruby Wright, Bonnie Lou, the band and many others.

May 7: “Ruth Lyons Special” (1981) and “Ruth Lyons: A Living Legend” (1983), both hosted by Bob Braun, looking at clips from her “50-50 Club” featuring Bob Hope and others, and songs by Spelman and Wright.

May 14: “WLWT Remembers Bob Braun” The 2001 special after Braun’s death with clips from his old shows featuring Lucille Ball, Bob Hope and others.

May 21: The famous “Paul Dixon Show” chicken wedding show from 1969.

Our Take: This is a great move by WLWT. Whether it will lead to future airings of past shows remains to be seen. We hope so though... and we also wonder if it'll help ratings for the noon news...