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.

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...

Of HD Radars and Messed Up Broadcasts

We're starting this week with the wrapup on a Friday night broadcast snafu, and a newly replaced radar at a station that's done without for 15 months...

Reds HD Mess: As you may recall, Friday night, we were tweeting like crazy with our readers, along with Time Warner Cable customer representatives, as the Reds game...didn't air in HD. At least at first.

We now know for sure what happened from around 7 PM Friday night, when we first got word of the happenings from Friend of TSMW Mike Taylor, until sometime close to 9:30 PM when it was fixed for Time Warner customers here. (We don't think it was ever fixed for DirectTV.)

Apparently, the problems arose from trying to broadcast two sports in HD. The Reds game had to be put on an alternate feed, as the Cavaliers were also set to be broadcast in HD Friday night. FSO says some changes had to be made about an hour before the 7 PM first pitch - and not all cable and satellite companies got the word in time. That apparently included Time Warner and Direct TV subscribers at a minimum in our area, maybe others also. (We now know that Insight customers in Northern Kentucky had no problem getting the HD feed - what we here at the TSMW Headquarters saw was indeed High Definition.) The Standard Definition feed was never impacted - but of course, Reds fans know that FSO had promised 145 High Definition games (their entire Reds schedule).

We now hear that this isn't the first time an HD Reds game didn't air somewhere this season: in an apparent glitch on Wednesday, the Reds didn't air in High Definition on...Insight. We didn't catch this mixup, but suspect it's the same issue.

Anyway, FSO says they hope to have all of the Reds games in HD from here on out. Although they have the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Reds conflicting again Wednesday as far as HD broadcasts, they hope that's not going to be an issue.

Precision Doppler 12 HD: We had first seen pictures of the WKRC-TV 12/Cincinnati radar site in Cold Spring on John Gumm's Facebook page, but didn't say anything about it because we weren't sure when a supposedly repaired PD12 Radar would launch.

Well it happened today - and it's not repaired, it's completely replaced.

We didn't get a chance to screenshot the new radar when it showed up on the noon news today. Nonetheless, Precision Doppler 12 Radar IS completely re-done, and is definitely high definition.

Gumm posted all about the new radar over the weekend on the forums of the Skyeye Weather website (which Your Editor is a member of) run by former WXIX-TV 19/Newport chief met Rich Apuzzo. This is what he wrote:

“After nearly a year of careful planning, I am pleased to announce the arrival of the most advanced TV radar in the Cincinnati area – Precision Doppler 12 HD. When Precision Doppler 12 broke down over a year ago, we first decided to just fix it. But after much discussion with our radar designer, [Weather Detection Systems](WDS) we decided to rebuild instead with the goal of being ready for severe weather season 2010. This was a much longer and costlier option and is proof of the station’s dedication to weather. We have been in the testing and calibration phase for the past week. In fact, I spent all afternoon Wednesday at the radome in Cold Spring with WDS’ chief radar engineer going through this process.

The end result is amazing. I did some test runs with the new radar this past week during the storms we had and its performance was outstanding.

Here are the major upgrades:

1.) Upgrade to an RVP8 processor- this is the same processor now used in the 88Ds. This allows for much faster scan speeds than were available with PD12. We, however, will have the option of 3 scan speeds and will switch between each as needed. Faster is not always better!

2.) Upgrade to a new transmitter with pulse compression. This has increased our peak output power by a good margin. Our radar still operates at much lower output power than Baron Services standard radars (see WCPO) by design. We use pulse compression along with a much bigger dish and much more sensitive receiver equipment in order to exceed their data quality and resolution despite the lower wattage. The design of this radar simply makes it more accurate in the display of velocity and reflectivity data.

3.) New receiver, exciter, and synthesizer components. This results in higher resolution data than before.

4.) Integration with Weather Central’s ESP:LIVE system. This gives us all the hi-res HD mapping capabilities of the ESP system and also allows for the addition of our exclusive storm tracking algorithms which were developed at the National Severe Storms Lab. It will also allow us to display up to 3 Level 2 NWS radar data streams along side of PD12 HD.

There are other enhancements we will be working on in the weeks to come, some of which we will be the first in the country to utilize.

Guys, I am like a kid with a new toy. This is awesome!”

Your Editor's take having seen the new radar: I like this new radar. Did WKRC get blasted by numerous media outlets for not having their own radar for 15 months? You bet: Two of the three competitors have run commercial spots touting their OWN radars - and blasting away at 12 for having not fixed theirs.

Was it worth it? From our point of view, absolutely. Radars can't be replaced overnight...the NWS radars in the interim served as a halfway decent replacement, and it's better to take 15 months to do something right, than just hurry to do it half-right in six months or less, and wind up needing to repair the radar again shortly thereafter.

We'll have to see how the new radar performs when there's something to track, however... tracking ground clutter isn't the best use of new doppler radar technology, after all...