Media Beat

Elise Jesse, the Oak Hills High School and Mount St. Joseph University alum, is leaving her hometown sports reporting job at WLWT-TV.

She's married to Mike Rehfeldt, the former University of Cincinnati basketball director of sports performance who has accepted a similar position at the University of Connecticut.

"I have decided to leave Cincinnati. It's a bittersweet moment, but I know that the next adventure will be amazing," Jesse announced Thursday on Twitter.

Geoffrey Nimmo, a second generation Cincinnati broadcaster who captained the WEBN-FM's airwaves in the 1970s, died Wednesday.

"In a group of really strange, talented, lunatic-fringe characters that were WEBN at that time, Geoff was the outer fringe of lunacy," says Frank "Bo" Wood, former owner and manager of the rock station founded by his father in 1967. "He was warm, creative, and absolutely nuts, in a positive way."

Why is Mariemont pronounced MARY-mont? Who named Loveland and Pisgah? Where was the college in College Hill? What did Knowlton and Peebles do to get their namesake Cincinnati corners?

And who the heck was Brent Spence, anyway?

Bill Rinehart, WVXU reporter and host of All Things Considered on weekday afternoons, sets out to answer in a new feature called OKI Wanna Know.

You'll have to wait three more months to see WKRC-TV's new late afternoon anchor team of Meghan Mongillo and Adam Clements.

Mongillo was heading to the hospital today to deliver her third son. She'll take her seat next to Clements on the anchor desk in October for the 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. news on Channel 12, and the 10 p.m. news on WSTR-TV (Channel 64).

The Reds delayed 2020 Opening Day game will air on WKRC-TV at 6:10 p.m. Friday July 24, as Channel 12 again simulcasts Fox Sports Ohio's telecast of the Reds first game of the season.

He didn't want to come to Cincinnati. Now he doesn't want to leave.

But Michael Baldwin, WXIX-TV Saturday night anchor and general assignment reporter, is heading to Clarksburg, W. Va., to become one of the nation's few African Americans working as a TV news director.

Around Cincinnati won't be around much anymore. WVXU's Sunday night arts and entertainment show ends Aug. 23.

It premiered in August 2005, shortly after Xavier University sold the station to Cincinnati Public Radio.

Duke Hamilton – the Queen City's reigning royalty of country music radio – will retire from WUBE-FM (B105.1) on Thursday, July 2.

Hamilton, inducted into the Country Radio Broadcasters' DJ Hall of Fame in 2003, debuted on WUBE in December 1977, eight years after the station went country.  His 50-year radio career began in 1970 at KPCR-AM in Bowling Green, Mo.

The show must go on! With the coronavirus canceling the Cincinnati Opera's 100th anniversary season, opera fans can enjoy some of the company's greatest hits on WGUC this summer and a one-hour special about its history.

Summer is here, and so are deals on golf, travel, outdoor adventures, gardening and other seasonal specials at WCET-TV.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns WKRC-TV and 190 other stations, will launch a national newscast early next year on its local CW or My Network affiliates and on Stirr, Sinclair's free streaming platform.

One of the nation's biggest TV station owners, Sinclair is hiring 25 new anchors, reporters, producers, editors, photographers and directors for the project.

Legendary Cincinnati news anchor Al Schottelkotte – called "the first name in news" by WCPO-TV – would be the last man you'd think of seeing in a TV western.

But on Oct. 10, 1964, the no nonsense news anchor appeared as a bailiff in Gunsmoke, the popular CBS western starring James Arness, Dennis Weaver, Amanda Blake and a young Burt Reynolds. Schottelkotte's  "Old Man" episode airs 7 p.m. Saturday on ISPN, formerly the Inspiration Network (Spectrum Channels 53 and 1387; Fioptics 506; DirecTV 364; Dish 259; AT&T U-verse 564; Verizon Fios 286).

May sweeps ratings, Part Two: The demographics are in for May, and WXIX-TV is the big winner.

From his childhood in the Cincinnati Reds' clubhouse to playing outfield next to his father in Seattle, the MLB Network premieres a 90-minute film about Ken Griffey Jr. on Father's Day.

MLB Presents: Junior (8 p.m. Sunday) chronicles Griffey Jr.'s journey from Cincinnati to "becoming the face of baseball throughout the 1990s," MLB Network announced Monday. The network will devote all of Sunday programming to Junior.

"I think I've eaten enough," says Polly Campbell announcing her retirement as Cincinnati Enquirer restaurant critic and food writer on June 19.

Campbell has been one of the most influential – if not the most influential – person on the Greater Cincinnati  food scene since her hiring in 1996. More than anyone, she chronicled the Vine Street restaurant explosion which fueled the revival of Over-the-Rhine.

You can listen to my interview with author Richard Haw here.  

I thought I knew a lot about the Roebling Suspension Bridge. Maybe you do, too.

I knew that construction was suspended during the Civil War…. It was the first bridge linking the North with the South when it opened in 1867… And it became the prototype for Roebling's Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.

UPDATED 11 A.M. FRIDAY JUNE 12:  The Wheeler family will do an online Zoom memorial service for Lonnie at 2 p.m. Sunday June 14.

"We wish we could gather every single one of Lonnie's friends and family together in one big room, hear every one of your stories in person, and hang around as you inevitably tell inappropriate jokes as the crowd thins.

WVXU's revival of Rod Serling's 1955 O'Toole From Moscow show about the Cincinnati Reds is now available on podcast platforms.

O'Toole From Moscow, the Cold War comedy about a Russian Embassy security guard playing outfield for the Reds, premiered on Cincinnati Public Radio March 25.

The Cincinnati Bengals' last Super Bowl appearance from 1989, and the Reds' "Johnny Bench Night" with his final Riverfront Stadium home run, replay this week on cable sports channels.

At 8 p.m. Friday, the Bengals' Super Bowl XXIII loss to Joe Montana's San Francisco 49ers will air during "Super Bowl Week" on the NBC Sports Network and NBC, which also features Joe Namath and the Jets upset victory in 1969 and Mike Ditka's dominating Bears in 1986.

After 30 years of getting up before the bars close, WKRC-TV morning anchor John Lomax finally will have some more daylight to enjoy his family and photography.

Starting Monday June 1, Lomax will go part-time to anchor the second half of Good Morning Cincinnati, from 7-9 a.m. on WSTR-TV (Channel 64) and 9-10 a.m. on Channel 12.