Catching Up

Seems we're constantly playing catch-up - but a few things we've missed:

Time Warner Adds ESPN3.com: Something we were told would happen over the weekend, launched Monday morning to a large part of our area.

Time Warner added the web-based ESPN3.com for customers of Time-Warner Cable - regardless of who you get internet through.

Confused?

It was part of a larger deal with Disney/ABC. Unlike with Insight (where, as we understood it, you need to have Insight Broadband AND Cable), Time Warner is only requiring customers to have TW Cable service - meaning you could have Cincinnati Bell Zoomtown or something else, and you'll have access to ESPN3.com. The reverse isn't true if you have Roadrunner, but get TV over a dish.

Our Take: We have used ESPN3 before, and found it to be a good service. If you want to follow your team, and they aren't on ESPN or ESPN2 or even ESPNU, that's where you can find it most of the time.

But the drawback is you really need a good connection...and a good video card...to have a great video experience. It's simply not good enough on a dial-up connection or with a bad video card. Our old video card simply couldn't handle it even on our fast broadband.

Louisville Station Sold: We finally found out the reason that WDRD-AM 680/Newburg, KY switched from Radio Disney to ESPN Radio a few weeks ago.

It's a station sale, with Disney selling off WDRD to Chad Boeger. We don't know offhand the terms of the sale, but the LMA began early this month, says our colleague Tom Taylor at Radio-Info.

Recall that we covered the sudden shutdown of Louisville's previous ESPN Radio affiliate, WQKC-AM went dark August 2nd when Cumulus got out of the market...which is a nice segue into our next item...

WLCL Back: The other station that shut down back on August 2nd is back... but with a new owner, says Taylor.

WAY-FM Media Group has added WLCL-FM 93.9/Sellersburg to its ranks, LMA'ing it at first. But it appears they'll buy it outright.

WAY-FM already has their own WAYI-FM 105.9/Valley Station, and in fact the two stations are simulcasting, which we can confirm with folks in the area. But for how long? WAY-FM says they'll announce what will happen to WAYI later this year. We assume, though, with the new WLCL signal being full-market, they don't exactly need 105.9 anymore...

Michaels Out: By now, you know about this major elephant in the room... Randy Michaels' departure Friday from Tribune. Take your pick of any number of articles on Google, but here's two we have read:

Radio-Info Story Friday

Chicago Tribune Story

What's next for Michaels? We're speculating - but he has a couple things he could do. Perhaps he can head back to Local TV LLC, which owns 18 stations in the US, including WJW-TV 8/Cleveland in Ohio Media Watch territory. (Yes, we checked Local TV's own website.) He helped form that company, Kiese helpfully reminds us here.

Maybe, as Kiese also suggested back on October 20 here, he could start a new radio empire with some of his old friends from the Jacor days (pre-Clear Channel). It could even include the recently fired Eddie Fingers, as Kiese suggests.

We won't know until and unless we hear from the man himself. That's not likely to happen for awhile - we expect he's laying low...

An Aside: Since we invoked OMW here, a quick administrative note.

OMW now has what they call a "Secondary Editorial Voice (TM)" to go with the obviously "Primary Editorial Voice (TM)".

TSMW welcomes OMW's "Secondary Voice"... this should help OMW when the "Primary Voice" has to step away.

We kinda wish we'd done it sooner, ourselves, especially this summer...and still could at any time take reader applications to be our own second...but for now, we're not.

But that door could open in the future...it'd have to be someone we could trust...