Blue Jackets Update, plus Skinner Back On Air

A couple items to clear the plate on this Thursday night...all coming from the Kiese Blog (aka John Kiesewetter's TV blog):

Time Warner/Blue Jackets update: Time Warner has announced today that the Columbus Blue Jackets' game against the Detroit Red Wings Saturday night at 6 pm will air on Channel 99 locally. The Reds game will air as scheduled on Fox Sports Ohio at 7 pm.

Skinner Back On Air: Richard Skinner has a new radio gig. Skinner is hosting "Saturday Morning Sports Talk" 8-11 a.m. on WCIN-AM (1480), the smooth jazz station owned by WDJO-AM (1160). With other Angry Guy Tom Gamble still at 96 ROCK, Skinner has been paired with a familiar voice to talk radio junkies..... "Glenn from Mason."

This seems like a good move for Skinner. He works best with a partner, as we've heard. We'll listen in and see what happens...

Collinsworth for Madden: John Madden's surprise retirement today prompted a change at NBC for "Sunday Night Football".

Cris Collinsworth will replace Madden, NBC announced today. The former Bengal, who lives in Fort Thomas, has won numerous Sports Emmys for his work at NBC, Fox and HBO, both as a game and studio analyst.

This is a good move. Collinsworth has grown leaps and bounds since his days at WLW-AM as Bob Trumpey's successor on "Sports Talk". We'll definitely be watching this one, too...

The Latest on Local Stuff

I realize I haven't posted in a week! As announced way back in February, I have the prerogative to take a few days to clear my head. So I have been off doing just that. But, let us get to the media news that's come up since last week:

First FSO, Then WLW Cut Away Early From Reds?: Indeed, it looks like that's what happened, according to the Enquirer today.

Monday, during the first Reds/Brewers game of the series, Fox Sports Net's computer in New York cut away at 11:30pm to "Best Damn Sports Show Period", with the Reds game in the bottom of the ninth and the Reds winning 7-6. It apparently affected all local subscribers plus those on DirectTV who received the game, including the father of Reds outfielder Laynce Nix in Midland, Texas. Fox Sports Net later did apologize for the error.

Then on Tuesday, with the Reds again in the bottom of the ninth inning with one out, WLW's feed did exactly the same thing...cutting away from the game into a commercial and coming back in at postgame. What happened at WLW is still unclear.

Skinner is One Angry Guy: John Kiesewetter gives us this and the next two items from his blog.

Apparently, when Skinner was let go late last year, 96 ROCK WFTK-FM 96.5 continued to use the "2 Angry Guys" branding for their morning show for another 2 months. Skinner wasn't too happy about that, says Kiese. This is a quote:

Skinner says the station made the changes about two months ago -- which would be about when Skinner's attorney, Eric Deters (yes, the fill-in WLW-AM talk show host), sent Cumulus a copy of the suit they intended to file. Says Deters: 'We tried to resolve this. I sent a letter to them with the copy of the law suit, and they didn't respond.... I don't bluff, so I filed it.'

Skinner also says he remains friends with Gamble, and the suit "has nothing to do with him."

WFTK has since changed the show's name to "Gamble-N-Fin".

"Clean House" in Westwood: We not only heard about this through Kiese, but have seen TV coverage on WLWT-TV/DT 5...

The Style Network is filming an episode of the "Clean House" show in Westwood, at the home of Sharon and Brigitte Baglien. They're shooting a two-hour special at the house, which will air July 1 as the climax to the seven-episode hunt for the messiest home, says Kiese.

Kiese says that the daughter, Brigitte, told him her mother never threw anything away, buying multiple sets of everything, and never threw out Brigitte's baby toys or clothes.

Kiese also has these notes about the yard sale, and an appearance by the "Clean House" team:

There is so much stuff that the yard sale has been moved to the old Steve & Barry's store at 5150 Glencrossing Way, in the Glenway Crossing Shopping Center, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Host Nash will be there, along with co-stars Trish "Yard Sale Diva" Suhr, designer Mark Brunetz and "go-to" fix-it guy Matt Iseman.

All four "Clean House" celebs also will sign autographs at a meet & greet 5-6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Time Warner cable customer service center in Tri-County Mall in Springdale.

FSO Schedules Conflict: And finally from Kiese comes news about one somewhat local sports team, whose schedule is about to conflict with the Reds'.

The Columbus Blue Jackets NHL team has made the playoffs, and that's about to create issues for its' fans locally.

Kiese says the first game will air locally, as there is no conflict with the Reds Thursday night. That game will air at 7 pm as scheduled. But Reds games conflict with the series on Saturday (6 pm) and next Tuesday (7 pm), and if there's a need for games 6 and 7, those will also conflict on April 27 and April 29.

Time Warner usually creates separate channels for these kind of situations, but Kiese says he has no official word on what will be done. Stay tuned for more details on this one.

RTN On the Air in Cincinnati, plus ABC announces its summer schedule.

A couple headlines on this Wednesday evening:

RTN On The Air at 25.3: This comes from Rich Emery, dutifully keeping his eyes on DTV stuff from Fairfield...and we do realize this is a DTV item, but figured this was the right spot for it...we will have a DTV item or two over at Tri-State DTV Watch in a few minutes.

RTN (Retro Television Network) is on the air in Cincinnati on 25.3, at long last, after almost a month of hints and suggestions that it was almost here!

Right now, it looks like WOTH is on 25.1, WBQC/WKRP is on 25.2, RTN is on 25.3, and the old skyline shot of eastern Cincinnati near their tower is on 25.4. The cheesy White Springs TV (that) has been on 25.4 is nowhere to (be) found right now.

ABC Announces Summer Lineup: Also from Rich, comes the news that ABC will burn off episodes of several critically acclaimed TV series that didn't make the cut this past fall over the summer.

TV Week says the following at the end of their story:

ABC also is bringing back Burnoff Theater, scheduling the remaining episodes of some critically loved shows that didn’t make the cut.

“Pushing Daisies” will air Saturdays at 10 from May 30 until June 13, with “Eli Stone” taking over that slot on June 20. “Dirty Sexy Money” returns for its death march on July 18, with its finale airing Aug. 8.

Also returning this summer are "The Bachelorette"(which will kick off the summer May 18), "I Survived a Japanese Game Show", "The Superstars", "Surviving Suburbia", "Here Comes the Newlyweds", and "Wipeout".

And new this summer will be Mike Judge's new animated effort "The Goode Family", as well as a new reality show, "Dating in the Dark".

BREAKING: Holland Out At Cumulus

We're hearing that TJ Holland, the operations director at Cumulus Central HQ on Central Avenue, has been let go by Cumulus. This coming from John Kiesewetter this morning.

Holland helped keep WRRM-FM 98.5, WGRR-FM 103.5 (after buying that from Bonneville), and WMOJ-FM 100.3 (MOJO, until its sale to Radio One) near the top of the radio ratings for a long time. He also launched WFTK-FM 96.5 (96 ROCK) and started the Cumulus ownership era of WOFX-FM 92.5 (92.5 The Fox) and WNNF-FM 94.1 (Radio 94.1). We're not sure who is running the cluster right now. We'll let you know if we find out.

Holland has a website up at hiretj.com.

FOX19 "Lego My Logo" Campaign Ends

And as expected here on Tri-State Media Watch, WXIX-TV debuted a new logo. The picture is below...and it looks like a clean graphic. We'll try and capture pics of the open for FOX19 Morning News tomorrow...

Not Really In Market, Or Even Ohio.

But we have an interesting piece of news about the new NBC Primetime Show with Jay Leno. (No that's not the official name of it.)

Seems NBC affiliate WHDH in Boston, Mass. has decided preliminarily that it won't air the show, saying they believe it to be detrimental as a lead-in to the late news there.

There's a really distant connection to Cincinnati here. WHDH is owned by Sunbeam Television. Sunbeam also owns another station in Boston, WLVI-TV, the CW affiliate there. WLVI used to be owned by Tribune...where Randy Michaels is in management. Of course, Michaels formerly headed Jacor which owned Local12 WKRC-TV.

See? Told ya it was a distant connection...you had to know we'd find one.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out...and if any other affiliates decide to pull the plug like WHDH...

The Interview Everyone's Been Waiting For

UPDATE 10:52AM 4/3: IT'S UP! Look below, and let me know how I did!

We have the interview that Your Tri-State Media Watcher himself did with Katie Finnigan at Media Bridges yesterday. It's being uploaded to our YouTube account right now and will be posted there and here within the next 30 minutes. We'll edit this post and put the video below when it is up.

We'll hit the other news of the last 36-48 hours in a separate entry...