Checking our Twitter Feed

As you may have noted, we had some issues with the TSMW twitterfeed account.

Whenever we posted new updates, the updates weren't getting sent through the Twitterfeed service, and out to our twitter followers.

So, we think we've narrowed it down. This post is mainly a test post. If we (and you) see the post sent through our RSS feed, then it's working. If not, then we've got more work to do to troubleshoot the issue...

Early Wednesday Update

We're catching up...albeit slowly.

Life has been anything but slow for yours truly's personal life recently, and Your Tri-State Media Watcher is about to hit another busy time.

As we've said, this blog is pretty much updated when we have time to do so... which lately, doesn't seem to be much. In any case, here's a couple quick items...

Bill Cunningham Show...On TV?: You may remember that a few months ago, WXIX-TV 19/Newport aired a pilot program featuring Bill Cunningham, the midday host on 700 WLW/Cincinnati. (This was BEFORE 19 and Clear Channel signed their major radio deal earlier this year.)

Now, Cunningham is taping another new show... but only five episodes at first.

John Kiesewetter has the full details... but the gist of it is that Cunningham is taping the first show tomorrrow in Dayton, then four more episodes in Chicago June 11 and 12.

There's no word on what will happen with Cunningham's radio program on taping days...but for the June tapings, we figure he'll be off. (Clear Channel does NOT have a talk station up there, though we know Tribune has WGN-AM 720, and Citadel has WLS-AM 890 [which syndicates his Sunday evening show].)

But, alas...if you think Cunningham will end his afternoon radio talkfest if this attempt at TV succeeds...think again.

Cunningham says he's planning to continue the afternoon show - but he'll do it from Chicago on Mondays through Wednesdays when he's taping the show, while doing it here in Cincinnati Thursdays and Fridays. He'll also do the Sunday show in Chicago. (Again, he has his ready affiliate for the Sunday program at Citadel's WLS-AM.) And he's about to sign an extension - but we have no word yet that he's done so.

Storm Fallout: By now, just about everybody already is aware of the fact that severe weather and tornadoes ripped through the Cincinnati area Friday night. (Yours truly was at a Relay for Life event in Florence, shortly after storms passed through...the event, and at least one other Relay in Campbell County, had to be moved indoors.)

The storms, of course, prompted the obligatory meteorologist cut-ins, which were good for people in Adams, Brown and Highland counties where tornadoes actually touched down. Many of those viewers were pleased to get some attention for their areas during bad weather...as they're not regularly covered by Cincinnati TV stations.

But for others, all that the cut-ins meant were that much of their favorite shows were cut off...including several season or series finales.

WKRC-TV 12/Cincinnati in particular took a lot of criticism on their facebook page...which was quickly followed by MORE criticism when it was announced the shows wouldn't be re-aired over-the-air.

Viewers who missed season finales of "Medium", "Ghost Whisperer", and "Miami Medical" can watch them from the CBS website. As far as we're aware, none of these are on hulu.com, but you should be able to watch FOX shows there, and NBC programs are available from NBC's website.

We don't make the programming decisions...but we'll be happy to let you sound off right here...

Radio One Shakeup

We're late to the party - but as we don't really have any new information, we're not missing anything.

Yesterday, word came that Radio One had fired Regional Vice President Rick Porter and Cincinnati market GM Lisa Thal. Today's Taylor on Radio-Info Newsletter (available free at Radio-Info.com) cited John Kiesewetter as the source of the story.

Whatever happened, it was apparently so serious that Radio One's radio division president Barry Mayo had to come from Maryland to do the firings himself, and he's now running WIZF 101.1/Erlanger, WMOJ-FM 100.3/Norwood, and WDBZ-AM 1230/Cincinnati out of the Cincinnati cluster's front offices on Central Avenue downtown. But Radio One won't say anything more than that Thal and Porter are no longer with the company.

As Kiese notes, Thal and Porter both worked for Clear Channel before coming to Radio One. Thal jumped to Radio One just before they bought the "Mojo" intellectual property off of Cumulus (but not the 94.9 frequency), starting the 2006 radio shakeup here where half a dozen moves were made in a 3 month span. (This doesn't count WIZF's move one spot higher on the FM dial from 100.9 to its current 101.1, done three months before.)

We can't comment on the circumstances - as we simply don't know, and again, Radio One won't say anything. But something had to have gone badly wrong for the radio division's head honcho to come here...

THIS JUST IN: Local 12 on WKRQ-FM

UPDATE 7:49 AM: We just confirmed with Mr. John Gumm that WKRC meteorologists will be heard in both AM and PM drivetime...

We had speculated on this one some time back - it's now officially happening.

WKRC-TV 12/Cincinnati meteorologists will now provide (at least) morning weather updates on WKRQ-FM 101.9/Cincinnati - in fact, it's already happening, as John Gumm just posted this on his Facebook:

Really happy to be working with WKRQ starting today! Catch my forecasts on there in the morning now. Great to be working with Jeff & Jenn!

We'd speculated on this on Twitter a few weeks ago, when Brian and Laura guest-picked the music for a recent "Dance Party Friday" on the TV station's morning newscast.

Now, it looks official. We don't know if WKRC meteorologists Tim Hedrick or Michelle Boutillette will do forecasts for the aforementioned Brian and Laura yet. But we'd assume that's the case - and we'll update this post this afternoon if we catch that...

BREAKING NEWS: Insight Cable Problem

UPDATE 2 10:25 AM: We now know, courtesy a report from WXIX-TV 19/Newport, that the server in question is indeed located in Louisville, at their ops center.

UPDATE: From the DSLReports.com forum linked below, we now have at least ONE report that broadband has now failed. We're not 100 percent sure this is the case elsewhere just yet. Likely, any failure with broadband ANYWHERE from here until the cable's fixed, is related to the work to FIX this problem.

We first got word through the WHAS-AM 840/Louisville Facebook page of an issue with Louisville-area cable service through Kentucky statewide cable giant Insight Communications. We then heard it was happening in Shelbyville through a fan post on that same story.

Well...it's more widespread than Louisville. In fact, it's now spread to much of Central Kentucky. This link to the DSLReports.com Insight forum is where reports are now streaming in from across the state, as more and more folks wake up and find problems.

What we know: Sometime early this morning, one of the video servers started having issues. Whether the server is in Louisville, or somewhere else in the state or even country, we do not know.

We know that the server problem has caused a multitude of issues, from analog and/or digital channels not showing up, to frozen screens. We know this firsthand because we're finding the same issues on at least one television in the TSMW headquarters. We also know that broadband and phone aren't at all affected...and we know this firsthand because our broadband and phone both work just fine right now - as they're both through Insight.

We know that, again, MUCH of Central Kentucky is impacted by this cable problem.

What we don't know is when it will be fixed.

Insight Communications' CEO Michael Willner posted, as a request on his blog, that you do NOT call your local call center. They're swamped, and they're already well aware of the issue.

We'll tweet and/or update this post, when we know that the problem is fixed. For right now, expect some channels to be missing, others to have poor video quality or even frozen pictures, and that your other Insight services are fine...it's a video server issue on Insight's end...not your cable box or hookup.

Crammed Full Tuesday Update

We've got a whole LOT to cover from the busy Monday that was in the media world - so let's get right to it...

Williams Staying At WXIX: An anchor who not all that long ago was rumored to be headed for the Motor City, is staying put.

Rob Williams signed a new deal with WXIX-TV 19/Newport, which locks him in as morning co-anchor with Sheila Gray for the next three years, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer's John Kiesewetter yesterday.

Last year, in the midst of layoffs happening at other stations owned by WXIX owner Raycom, Williams was speculated by many to be headed to Detroit, Michigan for a higher profile job there. That never happened, of course, as Williams stayed in town. We now know he's staying through at least May 2013.

Of course, we think this is a great move by FOX19 to lock him in longer term. We doubt he was asking much of anything from 19... and the new Clear Channel deal signed early last month may have swayed him, as he's now doing updates for Clear Channel talk 550 WKRC-AM/Cincinnati...

Former WDJO DJ, WCPO-TV Anchor Pass On: Unfortunate news coming out of both Kentucky and Florida, as two different former local personalities passed away over the weekend.

We tweeted the news Monday afternoon about former WCPO-TV anchor Jon Esther, who died Saturday at age 72 in Owensboro, where he lived for quite some time.

The WCPO article does a fairly nice job of recapping where Esther worked.

Esther started out at WEHT-TV (then channel 50, now channel 25) in Evansville in 1962, moving on to Milwaukee's WISN-TV 12, then to WCCO-TV 4 in Minneapolis, WBBM-TV 2 in Chicago, stations in Louisville (WAVE-TV 3 according to the Kiese Blog here) and Des Moines (according to Kiese, that was WHO-TV 13), and then BACK to WEHT, before joining WCPO here in 1976 as Assistant News Editor.

Esther launched WCPO's "7 O'Clock Report" in 1979, before moving up to co-anchor the 11 PM news, the post from which he retired in 1985.

Meanwhile, down in Orlando, Florida, a former DJ for WSAI-AM here died Sunday. Dave Reinhart was 67 when he died from muscular system atrophy, which is a degenerative neurological disorder.

Kiese reports here that Reinhart worked for the old WSAI back when it was on West 8th Street in the Price Hill neighborhood. He left for awhile to work as a stockbroker, but radio was in his blood...he came back to do weekend DJ'ing work for WLW-AM 700 (back before it went talk), then became program director there in the 1980s.

Reinhart's last job in the radio business was for the Clear Channel stations down in Tampa, where he was market manager over stations such as WFLZ-FM 93.3 (don't ask how we knew that; Kiese apparently didn't) and WFLA-AM 970, before he retired in 2005.

Our condolences go out to both Reinhart's and Esther's families, as they both deal with their respective losses...

Regent No More: This will pretty much be our final reference to "Regent Communications" - as that name no longer exists for the downtown based company.

Around 10 AM today, Tom Taylor at Radio-Info reported, and the Enquirer confirmed, that Regent is now called Townsquare Media.

Along with that move comes the exit of both Chairman and CEO William Stakelin, as well as Anthony Vasconcellos, who both resigned.

Steven Price replaces Stakelin and Stuart Rosenstein now replaces Vasconcellos in management.

As Regent has gone private, and now has basically changed names, this is the last time you'll read us saying that name. From now on, if Townsquare should make news in our corner of the world, we'll refer to them as such...

Two Administrative Notes: We have two administrative notes to cover this morning, as well.

Ohio Media Watch, which if you've read us since day one you know they were the reason yours truly decided to cover southwest Ohio media, are changing blog hosts.

Effective immediately, OMW is now at ohiomediawatch.wordpress.com. We've changed the links to reflect the move, and we suggest that if you have not done so, you do the same - as after about a week or two, the old address will no longer be updated, and will remain "As Is" from there on.

It's a process similar to that which we use for Tri-State DTV Watch, which we don't update anymore, as we haven't needed to since the DTV transition happened way back in 2009. (And we doubt that domain name will be needed anytime immediately forthcoming - so for now, we keep it out there.)

The second piece of administrative news is that we've now added a new "About TSMW" page which can be accessed from the top right side of the blog. (Once you're on that page, the other link will, of course, bring you back here.)

Eventually, we'll add more to it...but for now, it's a basic description of this blog, the areas we cover regularly (or don't), and it includes the link to the aforementioned OMW, plus email and Twitter. However, the twitter feed WILL remain on the right side of the blog. This is just a way for us to put all of that information on one page.