Cox Communications decided to go outside its industry but stay regional to find a person to head up its Southern Arizona system. The company announced last week it has named Lisa Lovallo to be its vice president and system manager, filling the position vacated in December when Anne Doris was promoted by the company to run its operations in Cleveland.

Lovallo has been director student affairs and advancement at the University of Arizona and is an adjunct professor in the UA’s Eller College of Management.

In 2006 she ran for the state House of Representatives. She is the chair of the Governor’s Workforce Policy Council and Pima County Small Business Commission. She has also held several positions with North American Enterprises.

Lovallo also worked in private industry, including as chief operating officer and vice president of a local business, North American Enterprises, and with Procter & Gamble.

Names in news

One of the good guys has landed: Former KOLD general sales manager Adam Weyne is now sales manager at KNXV, the ABC TV affiliate in Phoenix owned by the E.W. Scripps Co.

Kimberley Kelly, operations manager at the Jolt KJLL 1330-AM, says the station has made some changes to its nighttime line-up of talk shows. Lou Dobbs now airs from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. followed by Alan Colmes from 9 p.m. to midnight.

Gone is Randi Rhodes, who quit her national talk show on Air America after being suspended for remarks she made as part of a personal appearance in San Francisco on behalf of the affiliated station there. An online video of the appearance shows Rhodes dropping the "f" bomb a lot but probably what really got her in trouble was referring to both former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton as whores.

More TV screen clutter

If you think your TV screen was already a bit cluttered, now the Federal Communications Commission is requiring broadcasters to do even more.

The commission has ordered the nation’s TV stations to provide more than $1 billion worth of messages about the changeover to digital transmission and the end of analog broadcasts as of Feb. 18, 2009.

TV stations have three options, the first two for commercial stations and the third for non-commercial stations:

• Within each of four six-hour timeframes - 6 a.m. to noon, noon to 6 p.m., 6 p.m. to midnight and midnight to 6 a.m. - stations must air two public service announcements (PSAs) and two ticker crawls. That increases three times per six-hour block as of Oct. 1. At least one PSA and crawl must run in prime time. The PSAs must be at least 15 seconds long.

• Stations must air an average of 16 PSAs and 16 ticker crawls each week between 5 a.m. and 1 a.m. with at least 25 percent of them each quarter between 5 p.m. and 10:35 p.m. The PSAs must be 30 seconds long, but can be split in half with two 15-second PSAs in a commercial break. Additionally, stations must air a half-hour informational program between the hours of 8 a.m. and 11:35 p.m. before Feb. 17, 2009.

• Non-commercial stations are required to broadcast at least one minute per day of consumer education announcements, with at least 7½ minutes each month between 6 p.m. and midnight. The time requirement doubles as of May 1, then increases again to three minutes per day (with 22½ minutes per month between 6 p.m. and midnight) as of Nov. 1.

The announcements must explain what a viewer needs to do to continue watching the station, providing specific details about the station’s transition, including changes in broadcast coverage area, channel number changes and the addition of multicast channels and/or high-definition channels.

On top of all of this, starting Nov. 10, TV stations will be required to begin a 100-day countdown showing how many days remain before analog signals are shut off. The countdown announcement must run at least once per day, lasting anywhere from five seconds to 15 seconds.

Can’t you just imagine how much fun the Tucson stations are going to have this summer between these announcements and summer storm alerts? It makes you wonder if there will be any room left on the screen to show the programs.

Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237. Inside Tucson Media appears weekly.