By Jim Knippenberg
Enquirer staff writer

Something to remember while you sip your coffee this morning: This is the last day you'll be seeing the "old" Channel 5. The station's gigantic newsroom overhaul goes into effect Monday.

Biggest among the changes is the arrival of Sandra Ali from Detroit. The seven-year news veteran, 28, will co-anchor at 5 p.m. weekdays with TV5 veteran Sheree Paolello, then show up again co-anchoring with Dave Wagner at 6 and 11 p.m.

Ali arrived in town early last week and is still looking for a place to live and wandering around in "getting lost everywhere I go" mode. But she's looking forward to the new job, including the 5 p.m. newscasts: "I know other markets have used two females on a fill-in basis, but this is daily. I think I'm really going to like it."

The other thing she's pretty sure she's going to like is a chance to do some reporting. "We've talked about it here, and everyone agrees that once I settle in, I'll be out doing some street reporting. That's good because it's something I love."

It's something Channel 5's going to love, too. In her seven years, she has won a number of awards, including AP's 2002 Best Hard News Reporter and the Michigan Association of Broadcasters' 2003 Best Breaking News Reporter.

Other changes

Elsewhere around the TV5 newsroom come Monday:

• Morning anchor Michelle Hopkins moves to noon anchor and begins in the new position of "viewer advocate," working on stories in response to viewer concerns.

• Lisa Cooney, afternoon co-anchor, moves to the 5-7 a.m. anchor slot where she'll co-anchor with Todd Dykes and welcome Kristen Cornet, a new meteorologist from Louisville.

• Fill-in anchor and general assignment reporter Courtis Fuller moves to primary weekend anchor at 6 and 11 p.m.

Country charm

WUBE-FM (105.1) morning co-host Bill Whyte has been tapped to fill in as host of American Country Countdown with Bob Kingsley 8 a.m.-noon on Aug. 15 while Kingsley's off on vacation.

The syndicated Top 40 countdown airs on more than 1,000 stations and pulls down a weekly audience in the millions. It's the No. 1 national music show in any format and has been Billboard's Network/Syndicated Program of the Year: Country for 16 consecutive years.

This is Whyte's third time filling in, making him the only personality to sub that many times..

Where's Randy?

People keep e-mailing wanting to know what happened to Randy Little.

The popular newsman was a fixture on Cincinnati TV from 1981 to 2001, first at Channel 12 during the Nick Clooney glory years, later as a Channel 9 anchor.

He left - "a career change in that economy. Can you imagine?" - to become a real estate agent and "I still am, but I'm inactive."

That's because he's doing morning news on WUBE-FM (105.1) and WGRR-FM (103.5) and working as an adjunct professor at Northern Kentucky University. "I'm in the Communications Department where I provide student and academic support." He has also taught broadcast writing and interviewing.

As for missing TV, "No, I don't think I do. But never say never. If the opportunity came up, sure, I'd think hard about it."

Hit the bigtime

Guennadi Maslov, a Cincinnati photographer who spends a couple of weeks a year shooting the people of his native Eastern Europe, racked up a major honor last week. f-stop Magazine, the prestigious photo journal, put a portfolio of his work on-line.

Twenty haunting shots, mostly black and white, show both ordinary and extraordinary people engaged in daily activities.

He shoots the people, he says in his intro, because "Eastern Europe today is the place where human nerve endings come as close to the surface as nowhere else ... a colossal testing ground for human endurance and endeavor."

Maslov showed some of the shots locally during an exhibit at the Carnegie Arts Center last year.

You can check them out at www.fstopmagazine.com.

Eight happy years

WNKU-FM (89.7) just celebrated a big anniversary. The Golden Road, the popular Grateful Dead tribute show, had its eighth birthday.

The show, named after a Dead song, plays a lot of Dead favorites, but also mixes it up with music that has roots in the Dead. A typical night might throw in some Phish, Allman Brothers, The Band, Bob Dylan, even the Yonder Mountain String Band.

The show, with hosts Pete Delgado, Tom Sweeney and Andrew Newbold, airs 9-11 p.m. Saturdays and is followed by the syndicated Grateful Dead Hour.

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E-mail jknippenberg@enquirer.com