KUFO (101.1) night DJ Marconi is teaming up with Tiny, his former co-host on KNRK (94.7), for a live, daily podcast on KUFO.com.

The pair were last heard together on Portland's air in 2004, when they made national headlines for laughing over the audio of American Nick Berg in Iraq, leading to their firing.

Their new show will be online-only, every weekday at 2 pm.

Hear a promo for the new show:

Elvis Duran has been herding the "morning zoo" on New York's Z100 (WHTZ) for 14 years, and he'll soon be heard on Eugene's KEHK ("Star" 102.3). The show was renamed as "Elvis Duran and the Morning Show" in 2008 for syndication, and KEHK will be its first West Coast affiliate.

Duran replaces local DJ Justin Phillips in the morning. Phillips tells OMC he'll focus on his other role as production director for the local Cumulus station cluster.

KEHK's new show launches Monday, March 15. You can listen to it here.

KEHK's press release is after the jump.

KATU got an online makeover today, following a similar redesign for Fisher flagship KOMO's website in November.

Troy McGuire, general manager of Fisher Interactive, tells OMC that, in addition to the obvious visual changes, the site's video player is improved and load times are faster. He points out that more photos and video are "above the fold" and that there's more emphasis on the site's neighborhood content. Navigation and content discovery are improved as well, he says.

The redesign is meeting a mixed reception among visitors, with 48 percent of poll respondents giving the new site a thumbs down, versus 30 percent who are more favorable. A strong "meh" contingent accounts for the rest.

McGuire says Eugene's KVAL will be receiving a similar makeover, though no date is set. The redesign for KATU.com comes after new sites for KGW and KPTV late last year.

New traffic reporter

Something else that's new on KATU's website is the bio for new traffic reporter Greg Knight. According to that profile, Knight has previously reported for KNRV and KREN in Reno, as well as KCSG in Utah. More recently, he was news director and operations manager at radio station KSUE in Susanville, California. Knight has lived in Portland for 5 of the last 11 years, the bio says.

Knight replaces Lauren Allison, who left KATU last month for an opportunity to anchor and do weather at KVAL.

(Thank you to Brad Taylor and Jordan Frasier for contributing leads.)

—Brian Jennings, director of talk programming at Alpha Broadcasting, to OMC following the first broadcast of KXL's new afternoon news.

Public radio's Northwest News Network went public this week with Capitol Currents, a new blog featuring Salem reporting by N3's Chris Lehman. Capitol Currents' news stories go back to September, when the site began testing and development. The Northwest News Network is co-owned by nine public radio stations who also employ its correspondents. N3 is edited by Colin Fogarty, who works out of OPB's offices in Portland.

Meteorologist Rod Hill made his first appearance on KGW this morning. Standing beside [12/1 update: purportedly, but jokingly] 7'5" Nick Allard in a live shot from Pioneer Square, the 6'1" Hill was dwarfed as he introduced himself to the audience. (They couldn't have put him on a higher step?)

As we first reported in October, today is Hill's first day on the job, though weekend evenings will be his regular on-air slot. Allard handled the forecasts this morning, but Hill will be filling in for a forecast on Thursday as Matt Zaffino heads for the Civil War game in Eugene.

Hill was fired from KATU in May to make room for KGW transplant Dave Salesky. He's since set up his own subscription weather service, Rod Hill's Forecast Check. Hill has also been a meteorologist for KPTV.

The new one-hour Cort and Fatboy show debuts at 2 pm today on errorfm after being canceled when KUFO reprogrammed its lineup last month. A podcast will be available shortly afterward.

The new Cort and Fatboy website is already online, featuring earlier podcasts, an already active forum and an events calendar.

In case you missed their interview on KOUG Radio last week, it's posted as well, and we've embedded it below. In it, Bobby "Fatboy" Roberts argues that Chris Patyk, the former program manager, should still have his job, since he selected all the music and KUFO is still using the same playlist. The station replaced him with Ditch, who pulls double-duty as KUFO's midday host:

Media Circus Update

And of course, Cort and Fatboy will be at Media Circus! on Saturday. We're up to 50 RSVP's. More guests have been announced on Twitter and will continue to be named today. Have you signed up yet? Please either use Upcoming to RSVP, post a comment with a unique username here, or email me at infooregonmediacentral [dot] com. Thank you!

Newsman Tim Riley from The Rick Emerson Show today debuted his video blog "On Location," with first guest Clinton Kelly from TLC's "What Not to Wear":

Kelly, a professional clotheshorse, explains how he packs everything in carry-on to the point that he has not checked a suitcase in five years. He also manages to do his laundry in his hotel room. Kelly diagnoses Northwest women's fashion faults as shapeless clothes, clunky shoes, ill-fitting bras, bad denim and too much fleece.

That's Greg Nibler from Funemployment Radio behind the camera. Find more at Riley's website, Riley Live.

Media Circus Update

Both Riley and Nibler will be at Media Circus! next Saturday. We're up to 40-some guests now for the social hour. More media people will be announced on Twitter. Will you come? RSVP here, in the comments here, or by email: infooregonmediacentral [dot] com.

Greg Nibler and Sarah X Dylan, formerly of The Rick Emerson Show, have begun a new daily podcast, Funemployment Radio.

In episode one, which premiered Thursday, the two get progressively drunk as the discussion begins with Nibler's house, where the show is recorded, his bomb-making meth head neighbors, and the former marijuana grow room in his basement. Also discussed: the lack of an option for "radio host" on Oregon's unemployment website, haunted houses, crazy people on YouTube and in the Midwest, adventures in New Orleans, and the return of Ball Talk, Nibler's sports segment. The show closes with karaoke, drunkenly sung by what sounds a bit like Sarah and Bob Dylan. The audio:

Episode two is also now available.

Media Circus Update

And because everybody who's anybody is going, both Nibler and Dylan will be at Media Circus! next weekend. Will you? Please be sure to RSVP. If you have trouble signing up (and for some reason, the majority of people I know have had issues with this Yahoo site — next time: eVite), please either email me at infooregonmediacentral [dot] com, or post a comment with any real or made-up name to this post. It's important that you RSVP somehow, though, so that the venue can be staffed correctly. So please do! Thank you!

It's finally premiere night for The Jay Leno Show, a five-night-a-week interruption of primetime programming tradition. NBC's live nightly show should be plenty profitable for the network. The question for affiliates is, will it be a hit?

NBC has spent an estimated $10 million on promoting Leno's new gig. Ads have been all over TV, including during the Super Bowl, as well as on radio, in magazines and on billboards. Ads have popped up in gyms, taxis, sports arenas, grocery stores, buses, gas stations and theaters. And not just on theater screens, but also in lobbies and on popcorn bags.

The extra money in the ad budget could be coming directly from savings on production. An entire week of live Leno shows will cost less than one hour of primetime dramas to produce. The price tag on a Leno episode is estimated to be around $350,000 to $400,000, compared to approximately $3 million for a one-hour drama. That would save NBC roughly $13 million a week.

But local affiliates won't see those savings. They're only interested in the ratings, and whether a talk show can really compete against the likes of CSI. Local stations gained a concession from the network to "back-load" the show, putting some of the program's favorite elements, such as "Jaywalking," at the end, right before the local news.

By comparison, The Tonight Show was front-loaded, ending with a musical guest as more and more viewers tuned out to go to bed.

More premieres

Leno isn't the only news lead-in to debut today. Earlier, Oprah Winfrey's Dr. Oz took a bow amid a publicity campaign of its own. Local news reporters were even tweeting this morning that we should tune in to Dr. Oz to learn about some sort of nationwide sex famine.

Oprah herself came back for a season premiere today, as did Dr. Phil. In West Coast markets, the US Open preempted syndicated debuts on CBS affiliates.

Tomorrow, OMC will have the ratings for these shows and the newscasts that followed, at least for the Portland market. If anyone would like to be a source for Eugene, Medford or Bend numbers, send an email to tipsoregonmediacentral [dot] com.

Leno, meanwhile, shouldn't have too tough of an opening night. He goes up against a repeat of CSI: Miami and the last hour of Dreamgirls.