NEW THIS MORNING: WHIO Not Transmitting Over-Air

A hat tip to our esteemed colleagues at Ohio Media Watch for taking the lead on this story...

Seems WHIO-TV 7/Dayton is not transmitting over-the-air as of last word this morning.

Quoting an article from the Dayton Daily News:

The station first began experiencing intermittent problems at about 11 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 29, (Vice President and General Manager Harry) Delaney said. By 1:30 p.m., the station stopped transmitting a signal through regular antennas and satellite providers, Delaney said.

The kicker (no pun intended) that is upsetting a lot of OTA and satellite viewers? The problems came in the midst of the Cincinnati Bengals' 16-7 win over the Cleveland Browns. WHIO is Dayton's Bengals affiliate.

Anyway, there's no word what is causing the transmission issue, and there's also no timetable for when the station will return to the airwaves of Southwest and West-Central Ohio.

We'll update you as we know more.

And by the way, we're back to full speed this morning. Yours truly's mother is basically out of the woods for now with regard to her heart troubles, so we feel comfortable coming back to our normal update schedule.

We do extend our gratitude to all those people who kept us in mind over the last couple weeks. Things like this make you realize what is really important in life...like family and your own health...

BREAKING NEWS: Ali Leaving WLWT

A source that asked us not to identify them sent us word that Sandra Ali, who has been an anchor at WLWT 5/Cincinnati for five years, has decided to leave.

The word is that after the birth of her son recently, she's decided to focus on her family and then, when the time is right for her, move on to a new opportunity.

We certainly can understand Ali's wishes, and commend her for doing what she believes is right. After all, family should be important in ANYONE's life. (Yours truly had to learn that lesson all over again this week with his mother's health scare - which, by the way, she is home and doing very well.)

We wish Ali the best in her move to raise her new family.

As another side note, we'll be back on Monday, November 30 full strength. We should have anything that breaks on Friday, but to be honest, we're not expecting that to happen. Some media folks do take the holiday off - some, not all. (Yes, John Gumm at WKRC-TV 12/Cincinnati, we're aware you are probably not off.)

Back on Hiatus UFN

Due to a developing situation with yours truly's mother, Tri-State Media Watch is now back on hiatus until further notice.

At this hour, the mother of Your Tri-State Media Watcher is in a Campbell County, KY hospital with what doctors are saying is a heart issue. We don't have many more details than that at the present time.

Our return is likely to be this Monday at the earliest, and that assumes she gets out of the hospital over the upcoming weekend.

We may not even be around to post any long form information on any breaking news, although we certainly will attempt to do so.

Keep an eye on the official twitter, located to the right of the blog or at twitter.com/tristatemedia for any news we feel needs to be posted ASAP.

Coming Back Early

We're coming back a day earlier than we announced last week, with a short update. Basically, it's all about the Christmas Music Sweepstakes, but there's one non-Christmas item to begin...

Regent Hires New Interactive Sales Director: Ben Hoffman took over the new position of Director of Interactive Sales at Regent Communications here, moving there from just up I-75 at the Clear Channel Dayton cluster, where he was Director of Sales.

He’ll work with Regent’s current VP of Technology and Digital Media Larry Downes, according to the excellent Radio-Info Newsletter last Tuesday. (You have to subscribe to read the newsletter - but it is well worth the five minutes it will take to register.)

Our congratulations to Mr. Hoffman, who has no relation that we know of to a personal friend of ours...

The Big Christmas Sweepstakes: And finally, the large elephant in the building...a lot of stations in and around TSMW-land going All Christmas.

We start in Cincinnati, where we already covered WAKW-FM 93.3/College Hill's flip before the month even BEGAN. You can now add WRRM-FM 98.5/Cincinnati to the list, which flipped their terrestrial signal last Wednesday.

Up in Dayton, still in what we consider our primary area, WLQT-FM 99.9/Kettering went to all-Christmas recently.

Let's go east on I-70 over to Columbus. Three stations there have flipped or will flip the switch soon. WLZT 93.3/Ashville, Ohio and WSNY-FM 94.7/Columbus already flipped in the last week, while WCVO-FM 104.7/Gahanna will on Thursday.

Next, down in Lexington, WLFX 106.7/Berea, WGKS 96.9/Paris and WMXL 94.5/Lexington all flipped recently. WSTV 103.7/Frankfort may flip, as well.

Heading west on I-64, Louisville stations haven't flipped, but there are three candidates for a flip, two of which will only do so on weekends. WVEZ-FM 106.9/St. Matthews goes all-Christmas from Thursday at midnight straight through to Christmas night. WJIE-FM 88.5/Okolona flips only on Black Friday and then weekends, and WMJM-FM 101.3/Jeffersontown plays Christmas music Black Friday, then on Saturdays until 7 PM.

Finally, we're heading up I-65 to Indianapolis. One station is stunting all Christmas, that being WNTR-FM 107.9/Indianapolis. That one will then change formats sometime on December 26th. They were a "Jack-like" station until they began stunting November 13.

The other station that has dropped the Christmas shoe is WYXB-FM 105.7/Indianapolis, and that is expected to go back to its normal format on December 26.

If we've missed any in any of these cities, please let us know by either email or twitter. We'll get Around Tuit (tm OMW) tomorrow or between bites of leftover turkey on Friday...

BREAKING: Steve Mann Jumps From WGRR to Rewind

We've confirmed today that Steve Mann, who has been a DJ at WGRR 103.5/Hamilton, has left there for the 2-7 PM shift at WREW 94.9/Fairfield.

Mann was announced by Rewind as the new PM drive guy today at 1:40 PM via their Twitter.

We hear that Danny Erals is doing Mann's slot on WGRR from a post on the Cincinnati Radio-Info message board.

We first read about Mann's jump through the above twitter post, however we didn't put two and two together until after seeing the message board post.

As we said before - we would come out of hiatus if something happens in local media that's worth a post. And this CERTAINLY qualifies.

By the way - Your Tri-State Media Watcher appreciates that some of This Space's readers are keeping him in thought at this time.

We're still dealing with Life As It Is, and we're hanging in there. It has, to be sure, been a trying 3 days.

But, hang in there, faithful readers...we will be back, better than ever, and maybe even before our announced date of Friday, November 27.

We'll probably draw up a post on Wednesday, November 25, just to summarize happenings before the holiday, then for sure on 11/27.

Keep us in your thoughts - and keep an eye on our Twitter feed, that'll let you know if we have something to share, or just make our return...

Clearing the Plate

Just a couple quick, and I do mean QUICK, updates, then an announcement.

Lou Dobbs' Replacement: Nothing we can solidly, 100 percent confirm this morning, but, just from what we're hearing, an update to our post from the other day on Lou Dobbs' CNN exit last Wednesday.

We're hearing that John King, currently host of CNN's "State of the Union" broadcast on Sundays, will take over the timeslot in 2010.

Until then, it looks like our earlier thoughts were wrong - Wolf Blitzer WILL continue doing "Situation Room" in an expanded, four hour slot.

It's not known what the 7 PM hour will be named after King takes over that 7 PM slot in 2010...

UK On STAR: We get word from both the Kiese Blog, and the website of WSTR-TV 64/Cincinnati.

WSTR will air three University of Kentucky Basketball games this week. The first is tonight, when UK takes on Miami University of Ohio at 7 PM.

The other two games that have been announced will be a tape delay of UK vs. Sam Houston State (10 PM Thursday night) and a live airing of UK vs. Rider University (4 PM Saturday).

Fox Sports Ohio New Policy: We don't really know why they did it, but, Fox Sports Ohio is now giving total priority to the two pro teams currently playing games. We got most of the story off the Kiese Blog - but the hat tip for the initial alert on the story goes to a reader of our colleague at Ohio Media Watch in this item.

Specifically, viewers of FSO will see ALL of the Columbus Blue Jackets' and Cleveland Cavaliers' games scheduled to air on the cable network on the main channels...even when teams like Xavier University or the University of Cincinnati are playing at the same time.

That, of course, bounces the college teams to alternate channels. And, as you can imagine, fans of both those teams are NONE too pleased.

We've got an e-mail out to FSO - and we'll let you know what we hear if anything. But...this is a segue we didn't plan...

An Announcement of an Impromptu Hiatus: We'd originally announced that we planned on fewer updates from Thursday onward. But...your local Media Watcher has decided he needs to just clear his entire schedule for a few days.

We're overloaded, stressed, and frankly, we don't want to end up like our aforementioned, very esteemed colleagues up in Northeast Ohio (who are dealing with illness at the present time).

So, our updates will be very near nil between the time this is posted, at 8 AM today, and Black Friday, to give us an extended break.

Of course, if we feel we need to, we'll update just to make sure that our return doesn't get TOO overloaded. And breaking media news will be available asap.

But...personal life needs to come first...and at this point, yours truly is near his breaking point...so, we're stepping away.

TSMW Remembers Jim Knippenberg

Sad news to report, as we noted via our twitter yesterday afternoon.

Jim Knippenberg, the Enquirer's gossip columnist for 37 years before his retirement last year, has died. He was 63 years old.

The Enquirer reports in the above link that he had been ill for several days - but it doesn't appear to be flu-related. It's not clear what illness he may have had.

Knippenberg is, as we note, best known for 37 years as the "man about town" who would, as he said in a column:

"...go to stuff – parties, benefits, restaurant openings, cast parties on opening night, hot new nightspots. All the time, just trying to keep up with who’s doing what around town. Then, I report back to readers who wanted to get to that glitzy party but had baby-sitter problems or the sniffles or too bad a day at work.

“Ideally, this yields columns full of names of interesting people doing interesting things.”

For those 37 years, if you wanted to know who was doing what and where in Cincinnati...the "Psst!" column was where you looked to figure that out.

Knippenberg could do it all. He was a copy boy from 1965 to 1968 for the paper. He left there to teach journalism for three years at Newport Central Catholic - but couldn't stay away, and in 1971 rejoined the Enquirer as a general news writer, eventually rising to his position as a columnist and editor, and the rest is history.

By the way, you can view Knippenberg's columns from 1996-2003 via this link. And here's a well done tribute by current Enquirer TV critic John Kiesewetter.

We here at TSMW extend heartfelt sympathies to his friends, family, and colleagues...