1460 goes progtalk 8/1

[Dave Sarnoff]

Is the station on the air yet?

I heard Stephanie Miller this morning faintly under a barrage of static and co-channel spillover from WLEC/1450. Sounds like they flipped. (Mind you, Avon somehow is actually in WABQ's western lobe... that totally misses most of Cuyahoga County otherwise.)

No, I have no idea if "Joe Cleveland" debuted yet. Along with a delayed launch, there's no website... no advertising... no marketing... no receivable signal... no nuttin'.

No hope.

They switched last Thursday. The morning show with Joe Cleveland started Friday. And they do have commercials. And their website is up. They ran an ad in yesterday's News Herald. And how do you figure is Avon in their service area? That you heard it at all out there is surprising. BTW, I picked it up west of downtown at the West Side Market no problem. Besides, they are promoting themselves as a local Lake County station, not a Cleveland station. Finally, what's your problem? Have you ever actually worked in radio, or do you just criticize those who actually do?

 

[vjm]

Is the station on the air yet?

I heard Stephanie Miller this morning faintly under a barrage of static and co-channel spillover from WLEC/1450. Sounds like they flipped. (Mind you, Avon somehow is actually in WABQ's western lobe... that totally misses most of Cuyahoga County otherwise.)

No, I have no idea if "Joe Cleveland" debuted yet. Along with a delayed launch, there's no website... no advertising... no marketing... no receivable signal... no nuttin'.

No hope.

They switched last Thursday. The morning show with Joe Cleveland started Friday. And they do have commercials. And their website is up. They ran an ad in yesterday's News Herald. And how do you figure is Avon in their service area? That you heard it at all out there is surprising. BTW, I picked it up west of downtown at the West Side Market no problem. Besides, they are promoting themselves as a local Lake County station, not a Cleveland station. Finally, what's your problem? Have you ever actually worked in radio, or do you just criticize those who actually do?

Couple of things, Dave...

1. Could you put up a link to WABQ's website?

2. You and Nathan wanna argue, take it outside. Don't do it here.

 

[Dave Sarnoff]

1. Apparently it's still under construction, but here it is: http://talk1460.com/

2. Who's arguing? And who are you anyway, the board police? I just think it's odd that this guy has a thing for taking cheap shots at real broadcasters - "Dale Edwards is laughing all the way to the bank," "all about promotng ideology," "No hope," blah blah blah. I suspect that he, like the OMW senior contributer, has no real radio experience whatsoever. People who actually work in radio don't have the free time to dally around on boards like this because they are busy actually working.

 

[Rusty Muck]

And how do you figure is Avon in their service area? That you heard it at all out there is surprising. BTW, I picked it up west of downtown at the West Side Market no problem. Besides, they are promoting themselves as a local Lake County station, not a Cleveland station.

It surprises me too! I've even picked up the daytime pattern as far west as Vermilion on my car radio!

As long as he's trying to specifically target Lake County, he'll be okay. 1460 is a far-east suburban signal, not a Cleveland one.

I am curious as to Joe Cleveland's identity, given the few clues that were offered in the Scene article. (The primary one being a onetime host on WENZ "The End" - the only one that was first and foremost in my mind was Howie Greene, who recently had a side gig with the Huffington Post.)

 

[Rusty Muck]

1. Apparently it's still under construction, but here it is: http://talk1460.com/

2. Who's arguing? And who are you anyway, the board police? I just think it's odd that this guy has a thing for taking cheap shots at real broadcasters - "Dale Edwards is laughing all the way to the bank," "all about promotng ideology," "No hope," blah blah blah. I suspect that he, like the OMW senior contributer, has no real radio experience whatsoever. People who actually work in radio don't have the free time to dally around on boards like this because they are busy actually working.

You know Salem operates their conservatalkers solely to promote their brand of conservative ideology, right? Ratings don't matter for WHK: it's all about clearing the product and getting it to air, regardless of how poorly it fares. If they weren't about ideology, WHK would have either been sold or flipped format years ago. Pure and simple.

So look at how Jay Santos pays to have the liberal talk format air on WWZN/1510 Boston (including his own morning show). Same principle; he purchases the airtime on WWZN to advance liberal thought, and ratings don't matter. But he also has a foothold of sorts in social networking to raise awareness about the format, and has run ads on TV for the station. Can anyone guarantee that Gary will do that for WABQ, given his standard MO? I have serious doubts.

Oh, and you don't know who the Primary Voice(tm) really is. I sure as hell won't say. Nor should it matter about what I do. Unless you put a gun to my head and force me to post my resume on here, just back off.

 

[static_cling]

2. Who's arguing? And who are you anyway, the board police? I just think it's odd that this guy has a thing for taking cheap shots at real broadcasters - "Dale Edwards is laughing all the way to the bank," "all about promotng ideology," "No hope," blah blah blah. I suspect that he, like the OMW senior contributer, has no real radio experience whatsoever. People who actually work in radio don't have the free time to dally around on boards like this because they are busy actually working.

I hate to add to the noise, but I think Mr. Sarnoff would be surprised if he knew the identity of OMW's senior contributor. Yes, they do work in the business, and no, I'm not giving' up the goods, either.

 

[static_cling]

And how do you figure is Avon in their service area? That you heard it at all out there is surprising. BTW, I picked it up west of downtown at the West Side Market no problem. Besides, they are promoting themselves as a local Lake County station, not a Cleveland station.

I am curious as to Joe Cleveland's identity, given the few clues that were offered in the Scene article. (The primary one being a onetime host on WENZ "The End" - the only one that was first and foremost in my mind was Howie Greene, who recently had a side gig with the Huffington Post.)

Number One Son, perhaps? Aside from the ex-WENZ folks who are still in the market and/or working for other stations, he's the only other name that immediately comes to mind.

 

[gabigley1]

They switched last Thursday. The morning show with Joe Cleveland started Friday. And they do have commercials. And their website is up. They ran an ad in yesterday's News Herald. And how do you figure is Avon in their service area? That you heard it at all out there is surprising. BTW, I picked it up west of downtown at the West Side Market no problem.Besides, they are promoting themselves as a local Lake County station, not Cleveland station. Finally, what's your problem? Have you ever actually worked in radio, or do you just criticize those who actually do?

1. Apparently it's still under construction, but here it is: http://talk1460.com/

They have a photo of the Cleveland skyline on their website. The last time I checked, Cleveland is not in Lake County.

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

I suspect that he, like the OMW senior contributer, has no real radio experience whatsoever. People who actually work in radio don't have the free time to dally around on boards like this because they are busy actually working.

All I will say is that I have over 20 years of professional, paid media experience. You couldn't be more wrong if you typed your message in code. I am not at all "a name" in NE Ohio...I am, as I've said more than once, "a minor cog in the works".

Who is "Dave Sarnoff", anyway? Do you work in radio/TV/media? if so, how do YOU have time to "dally around" here? Your posts have primarily been potshots at me, Nathan and others who you think are wrong. Do you have anything positive to contribute?

OK, away from the personal stuff.

I have another confirmation that Nathan's splatter reception of WABQ as "Talk 1460" is correct. Someone driving through the station's main reception area heard it today, with Ed Schultz in afternoon drive.

Yes, that's a big Cleveland skyilne on the initial "Talk 1460" site, though Gary's contact info makes no secret he's at the WABQ facility in Painesville. There are social media links, but they seem to come with the website template (GoDaddy) and I can't find any content on there yet.

If he's indeed at all trying to target Lake County, that's a smart move given the signal. He could play well even as far west as Euclid with that signal. Downtown, you can pick it up under static in a car radio, though you lose it under the bridges after Dead Man's Curve

And the programming lineup is pretty solid, syndication wise. The DG hosts are the gold standard for the liberal talk format. No opinion on "Joe Cleveland", and I won't until I hear the show.

I assume Gary will stream at some point...WVKO/1580 did under his direction.

I don't at ALL have it out for Gary. I like the guy, and admire the smaller operator. But a signal even as modest as 1540 would be a better shot at housing a "Cleveland" station. It's a daytimer, but 1460's night power loses much of what it has in Cuyahoga County.

Considering what's going on in the sports radio world right now, maybe Gary will be able to LMA it for a song not too far down the road.

 

[vjm]

1. Apparently it's still under construction, but here it is: http://talk1460.com/

2. Who's arguing? And who are you anyway, the board police? I just think it's odd that this guy has a thing for taking cheap shots at real broadcasters - "Dale Edwards is laughing all the way to the bank," "all about promotng ideology," "No hope," blah blah blah. I suspect that he, like the OMW senior contributer, has no real radio experience whatsoever. People who actually work in radio don't have the free time to dally around on boards like this because they are busy actually working.

1. Thanks for the link.

2. Am I the board police? No, but there IS a board police, and they will tell people to take disputes "outside" as it were (i.e. off the thread) if the snipping keeps up.

When you go personally after another poster, (be it OMW, Nathan, myself, or whoever), you know that they're gonna fire back to defend themselves, and then the thread just degrades into back and forth snipping at each other.

I've had off-board discussions with both OMW and Nathan in the past, and though I'm not gonna sit here and say we're BFFs or anything, I can say with a straight face that when it comes to media goings on, they have their stuff straight most of the time (nobody's perfect).

If they whiff on something, they'll take their lumps, just like anyone else.

But to take personal pots shots is un-called for.

And yes, Gary Richards IS all about putting the liberal POV on the airwaves, however he can get it.

 

[Dave Sarnoff]

They have a photo of the Cleveland skyline on their website. The last time I checked, Cleveland is not in Lake County.

Last time I checked, Painesville doesn't have much of a skyline.

And by the way, I DO know the identity of OMW's senior contributor. Like I said, MW has no real radio experience. Shall I elaborate?

 

[fybush]

I drove through the WABQ coverage area, such as it is, earlier this afternoon on the way to the annual family vacation with the in-laws in Indiana. The signal was just fine in Lake County. The programming needed some work - unless 2 minutes of dead air between the end of the network talker (Ed Schultz, leading up to 3 PM) and the network news gets the job done. Oh, and the network news started out with about a second of bumper music, then another few seconds of dead air before the newscast resumed mid-sentence.

There was, to be charitable, a legal ID right out of Ed leading up to the dead air. Maybe I just caught it at a bad time. I'll be back through on the way home in a couple of weeks and will gladly give it a second chance.

As for OMW, I've known its founder and "Primary Editorial Voice" for close to two decades now, and through all that time, with the exception of some health-related issues, that person has been gainfully employed at real, market-leading radio stations with call letters you'd recognize. If OMW doesn't know the radio business, I don't, either. (And I'm sure some out there would argue that point, too.)

 

[vjm]

They have a photo of the Cleveland skyline on their website. The last time I checked, Cleveland is not in Lake County.

Last time I checked, Painesville doesn't have much of a skyline.

And by the way, I DO know the identity of OMW's senior contributor. Like I said, MW has no real radio experience. Shall I elaborate?

This is almost like Becker5 vs Maxwell.

Does OMW owe you money, Dave?

Seriously though...why are you so insistent on picking a fight with OMW and/or Nathan?...

This really isn't the place for it.

 

[Rusty Muck]

This is almost like Becker5 vs Maxwell.

Does OMW owe you money, Dave?

Seriously though...why are you so insistent on picking a fight with OMW and/or Nathan?...

This really isn't the place for it.

Honestly, I don't want to know what Dave's grudge is against me and the Primary.

I only stick my head out there because I have nothing to lose (i.e., DCRTV's Dave Hughes and the aforementioned Scott Fybush). Others, however, do.

That's all I care to say about on this subject.

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

And I'm done with it. It's off-topic on this board, and I really have nothing against Dave here... and I wish him very well, seriously.

I'll just close with the note that I have certainly never claimed to have been infallible.

In fact, quite the opposite. I'm pretty sure if you do a search for "could be wrong" on the blog, it'll cause the Wordpress servers to melt down. I'm also quite out front when I am wrong, either here or on the blog...and I was wrong in the initial speculation about what-is-about-to-become 92.3 The Fan as well, as I admitted when this thing started coming together.

I'm also going to report one of my own messages on another thread here, as I do not want to taunt other users. It's not my style. (ETA: Oops, it doesn't allow you to report your own messages - moderator, please delete my message at the end of page 27 of the NEW SPORTS STATION thread. While you're at it, edit out the first three lines of reply #48 here.)

Thanks, Scott, Tim and others who know me, for sticking up for me.

So, on topic...and I apologize for any part in this side diversion.

 

[Rusty Muck]

I am curious as to Joe Cleveland's identity, given the few clues that were offered in the Scene article. (The primary one being a onetime host on WENZ "The End" - the only one that was first and foremost in my mind was Howie Greene, who recently had a side gig with the Huffington Post.)

Number One Son, perhaps? Aside from the ex-WENZ folks who are still in the market and/or working for other stations, he's the only other name that immediately comes to mind.

I was able to catch a nice bit of "East Side Express" - the long-running morning news block that Joe Cleveland is co-hosting alongside Gary Webster (for perspective, Gary W. has been at One Radio Place since it was MOR/talk WBKC/1460 in the mid-90s - if not far longer - and has stayed through all of 1460's incarnations in the same 6am-9am block).

Virtually all of the service elements from that news block remain in place, along with some assorted commentary from Joe. Not that different from most typical 'news and views' morning drive blocks, and Joe and Gary W. seem to have a very good rapport together on-air.

I actually am pleasantly surprised that they kept that news block on, given that Bill Press' show seemed to be taking that slot (or it may have been a misprint in the Scene article). It keeps a nice and vital link over to the Lake County audience.

I drove through the WABQ coverage area, such as it is, earlier this afternoon on the way to the annual family vacation with the in-laws in Indiana. The signal was just fine in Lake County. The programming needed some work - unless 2 minutes of dead air between the end of the network talker (Ed Schultz, leading up to 3 PM) and the network news gets the job done. Oh, and the network news started out with about a second of bumper music, then another few seconds of dead air before the newscast resumed mid-sentence.

There was, to be charitable, a legal ID right out of Ed leading up to the dead air. Maybe I just caught it at a bad time. I'll be back through on the way home in a couple of weeks and will gladly give it a second chance.

There was (at 11am today) a straightforward "AM 1460 WABQ Painesville" TOH leading into a live CNN Radio/Marketwatch.com update. They seem to be ironing out those glitches.

My impression is that said technicalities - including the 'outdated news' - could have simply been from having to draw up an entirely new automation schedule from scratch. Who knows really how WABQ operated under their gospel format, if anything was ever scheduled (or if Dale used ANY automation whatsoever to run it). Without directly asking Gary R. or Gary W., that might have been why this formats' launch was delayed by a few days.

As WABQ's morning block has always had CNN/Marketwatch newscasts (and has since WW1 shut down "NBC Radio News" sometime in 2004), they should run their TOH updates around the clock. Eventually.

 

[raccoonradio]

Re: The Cle. skyline on the site--Salem ran conservative talk on AM 1150 in Boston for awhile and the website had a skyline photo in the background but it sure didn't look like Boston.

It was Baltimore. There you go...

 

[Rusty Muck]

Re: The Cle. skyline on the site--Salem ran conservative talk on AM 1150 in Boston for awhile and the website had a skyline photo in the background but it sure didn't look like Boston.

It was Baltimore. There you go...

Ha! That faux pas by Salem was far worse, given that Baltimore is nowhere close to Boston... ;D

 

[gabigley1]

In fact, quite the opposite. I'm pretty sure if you do a search for "could be wrong" on the blog, it'll cause the Wordpress servers to melt down. I'm also quite out front when I am wrong, either here or on the blog...and I was wrong in the initial speculation about what-is-about-to-become 92.3 The Fan as well, as I admitted when this thing started coming together.

I assume Gary will stream at some point...WVKO/1580 did under his direction.

What was the wrong with your speculation about the FAN 92.3?

Gary had someone volunteer to build his website and stream his audio for WVKO. This person streamed his WVKO-AM via his Ohio Majority Radio here:
http://www.ohiomajorityradio.com/aboutus/ It appears that the Ohio Majority Radio is no longer interested in helping Gary Richards
with his new website and streaming audio issues. So, don't look for streaming audio any time soon, if ever for 1460 Progressive Talk Radio.

One thing I'm sure will appear on 1460 this September... Local High School Football with Gary at the microphone.

Here is a letter to the Columbus Dispatch, from Ohio Majority Radio and why Gary lost WVKO radio THREE years ago:

SUBJECT: So I'm a Catholic Now?

Tim:

I know that newspaper writing sometimes verges on telegraphese, but
imagine my surprise when I read:

"WVKO (1580 AM) was unable to gain support for its liberal-talk format
and switched to a religious format."

Not to be picky, but when WVKO celebrated it's 1-year anniversary this
month at Studio 35, people had to be turned away at the door. So there
was support.

If you meant there was not enough support to keep the station going
and growing, I don't think that conclusion is evident.

In fact, what happened was a Catholic group bought the station out
from under Gary Richards, who had a month-to-month contract. At least
that's how I understood what he told me.

So it was not Gary, or Cowtown Communications, that got religion. It
was the ownership that changed. (And, if we progressives all suddenly
converted, I would think it would have been front page news.
Especially the extreme right-wing Obama-bashing Catholics you hear on
1580 now. "The most anti-life administration in American history...".
Sheesh!)

And we at Ohio Majority Radio (separate from WVKO) are not giving up.
Our web site continues to stream progressive radio. Just add antennae.

Meanwhile, we are asking fans to go to the web site and continue to
support our past sponsors.

Thanks!

Dave Daulton

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

Gary had someone volunteer to build his website and stream his audio for WVKO. This person streamed his WVKO-AM via his Ohio Majority Radio here:
http://www.ohiomajorityradio.com/aboutus/ It appears that the Ohio Majority Radio is no longer interested in helping Gary Richards
with his new website and streaming audio issues. So, don't look for streaming audio any time soon, if ever for 1460 Progressive Talk Radio.

Well, of course Ohio Majority Radio "is no longer interested", they're a Columbus-based group and aren't connected to Northeast Ohio as far as I know.

Streaming for a small station scenario like 1460 is ridiculously easy to get going. Heck, he could go with the Pro side of Live365...several small stations do that. He doesn't need the OMR folks. I expect Gary to stream 1460 at some point.

The "wrong" speculation I was talking about was early on in the NEW SPORTS STATION thread, where I said (in late May) that the chances of CBS launching the then-rumored sports station "were between slim and none, and I hear slim just left town".

Later on, of course, I started seeing the avalanche of supporting information saying it WAS going to happen - and not just me, Nathan and others got some of the same - or even different - information from different places than I did. The noise was too loud to ignore, to steal a line from the Randy Michaels Era at Jacor.

As for the new information reported by Nathan (which I think I'll ask him to repurpose for the blog, my heart's just not in it this week) on 1460, good call. Any attempt to specifically serve the station's strong signal area with local programming is a very smart move by Gary, and yes, I assume he'll sell/call Lake County sports, too. Glad to hear that Gary Webster is still aboard, too.