Couple Monday Items

We're ending August with a couple of quickies:

Quickie 1 - Grover In EW: And we don't mean a certain pro wrestling fan site which Your Tri-State Media Watcher is a member of.

No, we're talking about the publication known as Entertainment Weekly.

John Kiesewetter has this word (parentheticals mine):

He’s quoted in a story headlined “Mariah’s Mysterious Album Delays” on Page 15. It’s about the delay of her 12th album, “Memories of an Imperfect Angel,” pushed back from Aug. 25 to Sept. 29, and postponing her appearances on the “Today” show and at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

EW notes that her “Obsessed” single only reached No. 11 on Billboard’s Top 100. But she has another single coming out soon, a remake of Foreigner’s 1984 “I Want To Know What Love Is.”

The story ends with this: “You’re judged on your latest single,” says Grover Collins, assistant program director at Cincinnati’s Q102 pop radio station. “All you need is one song.”

How cool is that? I have not had all that much experience with being quoted...much less by a national publication like EW.

A side note: Yours truly was actually quoted in a caption under a photo of himself at the Florence Skate Park a couple years ago. And Tri-State Media Watch had our reports cited by Media Bridges a couple months after we broke the story about WVQC-FM 95.7/Cincinnati...

Quickie 2 - WVQC Launch Update: And we certainly didn't see this segue coming, but we need to get the word out.

As yet, WVQC-FM isn't something we can hear with any regularity yet. Last time we checked, 95.7 was occupied by static and the sounds of other stations filtering in even downtown.

But they're getting ready for a huge launch event on Saturday.

Quoting an email we received:

Join us for Free Wave Riot as we celebrate Media Bridges' 20th Anniversary and raise funds for the launch of WVQC on Saturday, September 5 at the Know Theatre from 8pm to midnight.

Free Wave Riot will feature performances by some of Cincinnati's favorite bands: IsWhat?, J. Dorsey Blues Revival, Culture Queer, Fourth Letter Gang, the Tigerlillies, Losanti and more. In addition to the music, dancing, spoken word performances and video installations, we will have the best raffle in town. Here's a preview of the hot items up for grabs:

A full year membership to the Contemporary Arts Center
Tickets to the Contemporary Dance Theatre
Enjoy the Arts membership
Gift certificates to Coffee Emporium, Total Juice, Enzo's, Chez Nora and more
Media Bridges and WVQC gear

And more..

Tickets are $9.57 and are available at the door and online. It's a sliding scale, so if you don't have that much we'll take as much as you can donate at the door.

Yours truly will attend the event and will have a full recap either Sunday or next Tuesday. (Next Monday is Labor Day, so, like most of the media biz and the rest of America, we're going to take that day off.)

We're hoping they raise the cash needed to get things off the ground. Our hope is that they've got something up...we may be headed for downtown later today, so we'll check...

Ohio Society of Professional Journalists Announces Awards

John Hingsbergen sent us word that WMUB-FM 88.5/Oxford picked up 10 awards, and had several second place showings as well, when the Society of Professional Journalists Ohio chapters (Cincinnati, Cleveland and Central Ohio) announced their list of winners.

Here's the list, as sent by John:

Radio Winners
Smaller Markets
Best Consumer Reporting
FIRST: Healing Touch,” Cheri Lawson, WMUB.

Best Continuing Coverage
FIRST: “SWAT Shooting in Lima,” Staff, WIMA.
SECOND: “Windstorm Aftermath,” News Team Staff, WMUB.

Best Enterprise Reporting
FIRST: “Fast Fungi,” Tana Weingartner, WMUB.
SECOND: “Sewing for Soldiers,” Gary Scott, WMUB.

Best Feature Reporting
FIRST: “The Two Miamis: Neepwaantiiyankwi,” Tana Weingartner, WMUB.
SECOND: “Model T Party,” Gary Scott, WMUB.

Best General Assignment
FIRST: “Palin in West Chester,” Tana Weingartner, WMUB.

Best Health Care Feature Reporting
FIRST: “Threshold Choirs,” Cheri Lawson, WMUB.
SECOND: “Healing Touch,” Cheri Lawson, WMUB.

Best Medical/Health Reporting
FIRST: “Alternative Healthcare,” Cheri Lawson, WMUB.

Best Minority Issues Coverage
FIRST: “WMUB Forum: Proposition 8 Protest,” Gary Scott and John Hingsbergen, WMUB.

Best Spot News
FIRST: “Explosion at Tuttle Construction,” Doug Jenkins, WIMA.
SECOND: “Palan Announcement Reax,” Tana Weingartner and Heather Reed, WMUB.

Radio Winners
Smaller Markets Individual/Station Honors

Best Anchor
FIRST: Body of work, Larry States, WAKR-WONE-WQMX.
SECOND: Body of work, Cheri Lawson, WMUB.

Best News Operation
FIRST: Body of work, News Team, WMUB.

Best Public Affairs Program
FIRST: “WMUB Forum: Year in Review,” Gary Scott and John Hingsbergen, WMUB.

Best Reporter
FIRST: Body of work, Tana Weingartner, WMUB.
SECOND: Body of work, Gary Scott, WMUB.

The list of all winners, across all mediums, is on the Ohio SPJ website here. There are just too many to list all of them, especially broadcast...

THIS JUST IN: Insight Subscribers Losing 3 More Basic Channels

If you subscribe to Insight's basic cable service, as we do here at TSMW...this affects you.

The Enquirer reported today on NKY.com that Insight's Basic Cable subscribers will lose three more channels on September 1. That would be Tuesday.

Gone from BASIC ONLY: Oxygen (Channel 37), C-SPAN2 (Channel 12) and QVC (Channel 26).

If you've got the Digital 4.0 service, you're not affected, and those channels do remain in their original positions.

Basic customers who want to continue watching the three channels may request free equipment for a year from Insight by calling 1-877-542-5868, says the Enquirer report

Our take: Another move by Insight that will drive customers to either their digital service (or they hope so)...but, it might have the opposite effect.

We're not sure. But, we'll see if digital subscribership increases after the switchover...

The Follow Up On the Bengals Situation - CORRECTED/UPDATED 11:35 AM

We did some digging, and here's what we know and what we don't know about the affiliates around the area with regard to Thursday's not-sold-out Cincinnati Bengals/St. Louis Rams game:

We Know - Cincinnati: We do know that WKRC-TV 12/Cincinnati won't of course air the game live here.

We reported yesterday that Local12 says they will air it on tape-delay at 11:35 PM, blowing out "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson".

We Think We Know - Louisville: We don't think WMYO 58/Louisville can carry the tilt between the Bengals and Browns if they use the WKRC-TV feed.

This of course doesn't rule out them using the St. Louis Rams' feed to carry the contest...but we're betting against that.

Our best guess, and maybe if you're reading from Louisville you can help us confirm this, is that WMYO just airs the MyNetwork schedule tomorrow night in pattern.

UPDATE: And just as we get this off to press, we find this little nugget on Bengals.com:

The game will air live on WSYX-TV (Ch. 6) in Columbus and WDRB-TV (Ch. 41) in Louisville.

Except...WDRB is carrying ANOTHER game...as the Miami Dolphins take on Tampa Bay.

So, although we did not think they would do so, WMYO WILL carry the Bengals tilt.

We Know - Dayton: We know Dayton fans will still get to see the game either way.

Usually, WRGT 45/Dayton airs the game over the weekend, after WKEF 22/Dayton carries it live.

Even though most likely WKEF won't carry the live airing, WRGT still plans to carry the tape-delayed game Sunday at 12 noon according to their program schedule. (You know, the same schedule where we could not figure out where ABC 22 was bouncing regular ABC programming to?)

Oh, and from the above Bengals.com link comes word that WKEF will ALSO do tape-delay - shoving news viewers over to FOX45 for the 10 PM news. (Wonder how THAT will affect ratings?)

And, on a related note, speaking of programming schedules: If you use TitanTV...ignore it this week. We suspect that the affiliates in all three cities won't air the games live, but again, there will be tape-delayed broadcasts...and we suspect all three cities will clear regular network programming tomorrow night.

Time-Warner Reorganization Update

UPDATE #2: We're hearing the entire metro area should have the new channel lineup by 10:45 PM tonight. Just to be safe, I would recommend you watch the SD versions of the major networks tonight for your Tuesday night viewing.

And if your cable hasn't reset by morning, please email us.

UPDATE: Mike just talked to someone at TWC. They are going piece by piece across southwest Ohio with the new lineup...we're guessing it will be like a wave, moving north to south across the area. We do know Northgate should get it by 6 PM, and that would mean to anticipate most areas being switched by prime-time tonight.

We just heard from Friend of TSMW Mike Taylor regarding the new channel lineups Time Warner is launching today.

As of 3:55 PM, at his home in Colerain Township (NW Hamilton County), his cable box hadn't reset and the new lineup hadn't made its way into his home as of yet.

If you're a Time Warner customer, and your channel lineup doesn't change by late this evening, please e-mail us. We'd like to know who has the lineup, and who doesn't yet...

NFL NOT Live on Local12 Thursday Night

We've just found out that, per the NFL's 72-hour blackout rule, the Bengals' tilt with the St. Louis Rams this Thursday will NOT air live on WKRC-TV 12/Cincinnati.

Instead, Local12 will pre-empt "Late Show with David Letterman" and "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" to air the game on tape-delay after the 11:00 news. Both those shows won't air in Cincinnati.

If you can pull in Dayton stations, WHIO-TV 7/Dayton will have both of those programs on at normal time...

We're working to find out how this affects affiliates in Louisville and Dayton...

FOLLOW UP: Isaac Officially Announced As Morgan's Replacement Nights on Q

We just heard that Jon Isaac (who we have just referred to by his first name thus far) is officially named as the replacement for WKRQ-FM 101.9/Cincinnati DJ Holly Morgan, thus completing the shuffle up at Bonneville Mountain between WKRQ and the country stations of WUBE-FM 105.1/Cincinnati and WYGY-FM 97.3/Ft. Thomas. We had it preliminarily one week ago from Grover Collins (who was moved to B105/Wolf Program Director duties in the wake of the firing of Travis Moon), but can now solidly confirm what he told us thanks to a post from John Kiesewetter.

Kiese reports that Isaac majored in communications at NKU, and has worked at Q102 for 2 and a half years in promotions, as well as doing fill-ins.

Morgan, of course, moved to Q102 middays 10 AM-3 PM when Collins moved to the PD slot at B/Wolf...and anybody who doesn't know Collins and Morgan are married off-air, has never been to either of their facebook pages...