The location of the new local weather TV station has been revealed; it can be found at Comcast cable channel 209 and digital channel 19.2. Offering a local weather forecast every 10 minutes, beginning at 2 minutes after every hour, the new 24-hour station also offers some news. It went on the air in “early September,” according to a release which dubs it “CBS19 News Weather Now.”

Update: News director Jeremy Settle says the station actually hit the airwaves on August 24, and they tinkered with it before making today’s announcement.

Comments(2)

Today former Governor Mark Warner (D) ended nearly a year of speculation about his political future and revealed that he will run for Virginia’s seat in the U.S. Senate soon to be vacated by five-term veteran John Warner (R) (no relation). Warner’s announcement was a tad anticlimactic, after the New York Times and the Washington Post already had the story in this morning’s papers, but the means by which he threw his hat into the ring is worth noting. Instead of a big pep rally with balloons and a rally-the-troops speech, Warner did what thousands of bloggers do every day: he sat down, spoke into a camera, and uploaded it onto YouTube.

According to UVA professor and political pundit Larry Sabato, that’s (more)

Comments(3)

Contrary to the tacit claim of over 100 sit-in student protesters, it wasn’t racism that generated the now-infamous “Ethopian Food Fight” cartoon, says a columnist this morning in the beleaguered Cavalier Daily. While a September 5 letter to the editor of the paper accuses the editors of “demonstrating ignorance and intolerance,” UVA law student Alec Solotorovsky suggests a more mundane motive.

“Editors approve the publication of sloppy work in order to save time, fill space, and spare the feelings of incompetent subordinates,” says Solotorovsky in today’s column. “When you combine the shaky judgment of youthful editors with an excess of democratic feeling, the result is a paper that will print just about anything.”

In this case, the editors printed a cartoon on September 4 by a student named (more)

Comments(10)

With Clear Channel unloading 448 radio stations across the country– including the six they hold in Charlottesville– the fate of those local stations has remained up in the air. No longer.

This morning, newly formed Monticello Media LLC announced its intention to buy all six stations and continue to operate each of them under the same call letters and format– at least for now.

The stations purchased: WCYK-FM 99.7, WCJZ-FM 107.5, WSUH-FM 94.1 and 102.3, WHTE-FM 101.9 and AM stations WCHV 1260 and WKAV 1400.

George Reed, the CEO of the newly formed LLC and a media broker who helped Clear Channel negotiate the purchase of the Charlottesville stations back in 1998, says he didn’t expect to be buying a station– much less six– (more)

Comments(10)

In a column headlined “Tear down this wall,” Cavalier Daily columnist Christa Byker denounces Charlottesville’s free speech monument, which was unveiled in 2006, as a trivialization of free speech, since its concept– anonymous scribblings– “is nothing more than a cheap, interactive platitude.”

Comments(15)

For years, listeners in the vast WVTF broadcast area have awakened at 6:50 every Friday morning to the dulcet, southside Virginia accent of Dr. James “Bud” Robertson, Virginia Tech distinguished professor, talking about the Civil War. Today, the war is over– or at least Robertson’s long-running series on WVTF is.

“I’ve done over 300 and that’s enough,” says Robertson, 77, from his Blacksburg home. “Doing the show is like digging in the ground: the deeper you dig, the harder it gets.”

To be exact, Robertson has done 312 shows, the first one airing September 3, 1993. “This is the most popular series we’ve ever produced and aired,” says WVTF news director Rick Mattioni. (more)

Comments(2)