An announcement, followed by a quick DTV hit.

UPDATE 5PM: I have decided to go ahead and create the blog as a placeholder for when I start posting to it.

When I launch it on 4/12, the URL is:

http://ohkyindtvwatch.blogspot.com/

Until then, it is a private blog, as I will be tinkering with it.

Original item follows...

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First, the announcement.

In the interest of keeping all DTV stuff separate, starting April 14, all DTV-transition items from then on will be posted to a separate blog. This way, we can keep those things, separate from the main blog - but a link will be provided from here to each item as it's posted, and when we post a DTV item, that will be a separate Twitter update.

Now a quick piece of interesting news from Rich Emery, who wrote us this morning to tell us he was able to pick up stations in Indianapolis and Louisville from his home in Hamilton(!) via his analog TV.

After telling us of previous experiences being able to pick up a station in Denver, Colorado (!!), Rich writes:

Here's why I bring this up -- around 7 AM this morning, I turned on a bedroom TV with nothing but amplified rabbit airs that's tuned to Ch. 3; before turning on the DTV converter box, I noticed an incredibly clear signal from Louisville's WAVE-3. It was equal to anything from Cincinnati this morning, which piqued my curiosity to see what other distant signals might come with such great atmospheric conditions.

By my tally, I was able to pick up completely viewable, identifiable analog signals from TWENTY-NINE stations today. Every single VHF channel except for Ch. 10 had something on it, something I've never seen before.

Dayton -- 7
Cincinnati (including WPTO, two KET stations from N. Kentucky, and two low power stations) -- 10
Indianapolis -- 6
Louisville -- 6

Let's see...12, 22...yep that's 29 stations! (Just double checking.)

This brings up an interesting point.

At 7 this morning, atmospheric conditions weren't precisely ideal for this kind of viewing. What you ideally want is high pressure, clear skies or fog, and light winds.

It should be noted that at 7 this morning, according to National Weather Service observations, we did have mostly cloudy skies in the Tri-State. A front had moved through this morning, and it had rained. The only ideal condition we did have was the light winds (at Hamilton, winds were calm at 7am) and fog (at CVG, or the International Airport). There was yet to be high pressure established.

Still, it's pretty amazing that even under what were less than ideal conditions, signals from Indy and Louisville STILL propagated all the way to Hamilton...

DTV Update

Well, that didn't take long.

Upon reviewing the DTV lists here (pre-June 12 transitions) and here (all others), here's what you need to know.

Lexington, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Dayton commercial TV stations will all wait until June 12.

The next ones to go will be WCVN-TV 54 and WKON-TV 52, along with the rest of the KET network. They'll go on April 16.

Then the Cincinnati, Dayton and Oxford PBS stations will all pull their plugs May 1.

The TBN-programmed WKOI-TV 43 in Richmond, Indiana will also pull it's analog off air May 1. Then the rest of the market will drop analog.

By the way, several of you tipped us to the lists being out, including Rich Emery (who emailed us the lists) and someone going by the handle of king-of-kings (via a comment). Thanks guys!

And Pat J, we're looking into that Dayton tip, too...

Midweek NCAA Update

We promised an update today, and it's chock full of NCAA tourney news...so here it is:

Local NCAA Plans: We have the schedule for Thursday's tournament games that will air on Local 12 WKRC-TV and Dayton's WHIO-TV 7. The schedule is a shared schedule, so both stations will air the same games, and all of them will be in HD.

Those games are:

12:20 p.m.: Butler-LSU
2:30 p.m. Northern Iowa-Purdue
7:10 p.m.: Michigan-Clemson
9:45 p.m.: Western KY-Illinois

Also, Local12.2 CW Cincinnati will air two afternoon games, but in Standard Definition, and those are:

12:30 p.m.: Texas A&M-BYU
2:45 p.m.: Maryland-California

And just announced as this is being posted is the Friday schedule, which we found through John Kiesewetter at the Enquirer. And the multiplexing will expand on Friday, to allow for both the Xavier and Louisville games to be shown in the Tri-State:

On WKRC, this schedule WILL be in HD:

12:30: Utah State-Marquette
2:50 p.m.: Dayton-West Virginia
7:25 p.m.: Xavier-Portland State
9:30 p.m.: Ohio State-Siena

Ch 12.2 will air three games Friday, BUT these are NOT High-Definition broadcasts:

12:25 p.m.: Tennessee-Oklahoma
2:35 p.m. Temple-Arizona State
7:10 p.m. Louisville-Morehead State

CBS' pregame shows will start at 12 noon and at 7pm. That is why Local12 News will be on CW Cincinnati on Thursday and Friday...we have also found out that Local12 News at 11 will ALSO be on CW Cincinnati Thursday night and Friday night, just because the games probably will run late and there will likely be postgame coverage. The news will also be moved on Thursday and Friday of NEXT week, too.

EDIT: And by the way, this will also bump all of CW Cincinnati's Friday night programming per John Kiesewetter. Everybody Hates Chris will air at 11:30. (Isn't it Everybody HATES Chris, Kiese?) Then it will be "The Game" and then "America's Next Top Model".

CBS College Sports Preview: Kiese also mentions an upcoming preview, which we knew of Insight's share of independently Tuesday night...but didn't know about TWC until just before we wrote the preview yesterday. (The Tri-State Media Watch HQ in Florence, KY uses Insight Cable, and has digital...)

Both Time Warner and Insight have announced a CBS College Sports TV preview to take place now through April 7, which is the day following the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship.

Insight will offer the channel at channel 530, with NCAA highlights on channel 501 (the latter will air through 4/30). Time Warner customers will find it on Channel 177.

B105 Inspires American Idol Performance: A hat tip to Kiese for this one, too.

When you watch tonight's American Idol, featuring Carrie Underwood and Randy Travis singing "I Told You So" (8pm, WXIX-TV 19/WRGT-TV 45), be sure to thank WUBE-FM 105.1 DJ Jesse Tack.

When Artista Records released Underwood's single of the song from her 2007 "Carnival Ride" CD, program director Travis Moon suggested that Tack try to combine it with Travis's version recorded in 1987. He did. Moon liked it so much he put it on B105 immediately, and it was a HUGE hit locally and now nationally.

So, Underwood and Travis will do the duet LIVE tonight...Tack said to Kiese: "When I put this together, my hope was that Carrie and Randy would hear this, and think what a good opportunity it would be to record it together.... I knew my version sounded good, but I didn't know if we would even play it. I certainly didn't know it would spread around the country. They must be getting a big response from other PDs (program directors), and seeing what's written on message boards."

We here at TSMW give massive props to Tack...he, after all, created the sensation, and now it's gone viral...who'da thunk it?

By the way, we know that the list of DTV transition dates has been released...we will post on that tonight, as soon as we've had time to digest it...

Preview of Wednesday's update

We'll be back later today with these stories:

* Which NCAA games WKRC-TV, along with CW Cincinnati and WHIO-TV plan to broadcast on Thursday.

* Why B105 inspired a duet that will be featured on American Idol Wednesday night.

* How you can see CBS College Sports TV in Cincinnati and N KY.

All this, plus breaking media news as we get it, Wednesday right here on TSMW!

Furloughs and Paper Closings

We don't typically spend much time on Print Media (as the subtitle says, we're about TV and Radio), but we'd be remiss if we didn't throw in a couple print-media notes here.

Yesterday, it was announced that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will no longer be doing print editions, and is going digital only after this morning's paper. The publisher of the paper, Hearst, says that the economic conditions caught up with them.

Here's the article from the P-I itself.

Meanwhile, locally, of course the Post already shut down last year. But now the Enquirer is taking a step to help cut costs.

Many, if not all employees are being sent on 7 day furloughs (read: unpaid vacations) to help cut costs. Thus, the reason John Kiesewetter's blog wasn't updated last week...or why several people, including Peter Bronson, won't be doing any stories this week.

Now, print media won't necessarily go away. We know this. After all, there will always be some places where internet isn't readily available, or where people support the Dead Trees (tm by OMW) editions of their local papers.

But it is pretty clear from the P-I shutting off its print editions that print outlets know where the money will be in the future: the Internet.

As the story we linked above about the P-I says, conditions aren't just affecting local papers in the Tri-State. The P-I will be the largest newspaper to shut off their presses in the nation to date and go web-only. (Yes, we're pretty sure the Post had a smaller circulation than the P-I.)

It just goes to show, things are changing in the world...

EDIT: Cliff, aka 74WIXYgrad, makes a good point.

There may actually exist a situation, sometime in the future, where there are smaller print edition newspapers, dedicated to one specific neighborhood. He explains that there's a paper in his hometown, Rittman, Ohio, called the Rittman Post, which is really just a string of smaller, neighborhood-centered papers for news, but it's all one operation as far as classified ads go.

And by the way, as we're listening to 700 Club here as of 9:05am, they're talking about the P-I story.

More CC-Cincy layoffs??

We're hearing that there *COULD* be additional cuts at the Kenwood Tower HQ of Clear Channel's local cluster this Friday, according to a source who asked not to be named...stay tuned...

MOJO Afternoon Drive Change

One of the Queens of Comedy is out of the radio biz in the Queen City...and nationally as well, John Kiesewetter at the Enquirer reports.

Mo'Nique, who has had a syndicated show on WMOJ-FM 100.3 since June, announced Friday she was ending her syndicated radio show to concentrate on her comedic career. The show was syndicated via Syndication One, a division of Radio One which owns WMOJ, as well as WIZF-FM 101.1 and WDBZ-AM 1230.

Faith Daniels, host of the MOJO early-afternoon show, announced that Doc Kilgore, host of the evening daypart of MOJO's schedule, known as "The Quiet Storm", will take over today and in fact, he's in the middle of his show as we speak.

Kilgore, a Cincinnati native, started in the Scarlet Oaks broadcasting arts program in the late 1970s. His first paid gig was as a news anchor at WCIN-AM in the early 1980s, then joined the old WBLZ-FM. He spent 14 years as a DJ in Houston and Chicago. He's been at WMOJ-FM since it debuted in fall 2006.

We're hearing that Kilgore takes the MOJO afternoon drive show in a music-intensive direction.