MORE BLOOD-LETTING AT CLEAR CHANNEL.(Living)

Byline: From staff and wire reports

You can chalk up two more Clear Channel Cincinnati firings to the some 20 that have come down at the eight-station cluster in the last couple months.

Fired last week from the weekend shifts on WLW-AM (700) are America's Truckin' Network host Eric "Bubba Bo" Boulanger and Bill Boshears, the longtime host of the "SciFi Zone," the late-night weekend show about the paranormal.

Operations manager Darryl Parks said the weekend cutbacks were part of a "station restructuring" that finds WLW exploring more ways to tie its broadcasts into Internet and broadband content.

"Both Bill and Bubba have done a wonderful job being part of the team at 700WLW," Parks said in a statement. "While they will be missed we are investing in the future as we expand and develop future content and future platforms for delivery."

For now, "future" weekend content involved repeats last weekend of Bill Cunningham shows and reruns of Steve Sommers' "America's Truckin' Network" show, that continues Monday-Friday on the station. Sommers is the son of Dale "Bozo" Sommers, who left the station four years ago for health reasons and now hosts an afternoon drive weekday truckers show from his Florida home on XM.

Boulanger said he will miss the trucker audience he developed as a weekend host on the show the last three years, calling the audience "hearty folks I've come to appreciate." Boulanger said his cell phone and e-mails have been buzzing when the truckers found out Boulanger and the truckers show was gone last Saturday morning.

"I'm sure they will complain to Clear Channel, but it doesn't sound like much will be done," he said.

Boulanger expressed surprise WLW dropped the Saturday morning version of the show, saying it is a lucrative niche overnight audience that he believes is making a sound profit for the station. Sommers expressed his own regret Monday morning to listeners about the move. Boulanger was also the main fill-in for Sommers.

Boulanger continues his regular weekday job as a morning host at Lawrenceburg, Ind., country station WSCH-FM (99.3, "Eagle Country"). Boulanger a 30-year tri-state radio veteran, said he's never been happier at the locally owned, "non corporate" station that focuses on serving smaller communities in its limited range, such as Rising Sun, Lawrenceburg, Harrison, Hebron and others in Gallatin and Boone counties.

"We just talk local, what's going on in those towns," Boulanger said. "It's really what radio is supposed to be about, servicing the community."

-- Rick Bird, The Post

HBO repeats: Starting Wednesday, two of the most celebrated series in HBO history will be joining some commercial TV networks, but fans may well be asking themselves, ummm, what's missing?

At 9 p.m., "The Sopranos" goes to A&E in repeats; at the same time, BET begins airing reruns of what may be TV's other finest drama, "The Wire."

While good, perhaps, for newcomers, hard-core fans might have other opinions. Foremost, there will be commercials, and where there are commercials there are usually rules relating to what those in the TV trade euphemistically refer to as "content issues." This means no four-letter words, nudity or extreme violence. Moreover, the presence of commercials usually means that something has been excised to make room for the commercials.

In a statement, A&E (which says this will be the first time "150 million viewers" without HBO will have access to the show) notes that "The Sopranos" will air "largely" at original length and that A&E relied in part on HBO's "library of alternative shots and pre-recorded dialogue loops."

-- Verne Gay, Newsday