February 7, 2005
NERW's big 2004 Year in Review - now
available! Click here!
Qantum Buys the Cape; Cherry Creek Buys the East End; WSMN
Goes Dark
*If the key to market dominance comes from
owning all of the biggest signals in that market, then Qantum
Communications is about to dominate the eastern tip of MASSACHUSETTS.
Frank Osborn's cluster already includes Cape Cod's top-40 WRZE
(96.3 Nantucket), classic hits WCIB (101.9 Falmouth) and rocker
WPXC (102.9 Hyannis) - and now Osborn has struck a $21.3 million
deal to acquire the Cape cluster that belonged to the late Ernie
Boch, Sr.
The sale closes down Boch Broadcasting after a very successful
decade or so, and it will give Qantum four of the Cape's seven
full class B FM signals, adding Boch's news-talk WXTK (95.1 West
Yarmouth) and AC WCOD (106.1 Hyannis) to WRZE and WCIB. To stay
clear of the FCC's market-concentration rules, Boch's oldies
simulcast of WTWV (101.1 Mashpee) and WDVT (93.5 Harwich Port)
will be put in a trust along with WPXC, pending eventual sale.
(All three are lower-powered class A signals.)
It's been a heck of a good year for Boston's sports media,
and it must be especially sweet to be Gil Santos and Gino Cappelletti.
The WBZ sportscaster and the Patriots great just got to call
their third Super Bowl win in four years on WBCN (104.1) - and
did we mention that the Sox won the series? (Just checking...or
maybe we're just excited that Sox broadcaster Joe Castiglione
will be in Rochester tonight to introduce the Sox season highlights
film.) In any event, congratulations to Gil, Gino and the whole
team - and would it be overly snarky to suggest that this is
one Monday morning when BZ's Gary LaPierre doesn't have to hide
his north Florida whereabouts?
While we're thinking of WBZ, the station has set Sunday, February
27 as the date for a memorial tribute to the late talk host David
Brudnoy. It'll start at 2 PM at the Emerson Majestic Theater,
and advance tickets are required. (You can sign up for them here.)
And yes, we'll be there.
Before we leave 'BZ, congratulations to one of our former
colleagues deep in the trenches at 1170 Soldiers Field Road:
producer Chris Palermo's been promoted to production director
at sister station WODS (103.3 Boston). Way to go!
*Down in Fall River, Portuguese-language
WHTB (1400) has added an FM simulcast. It's leasing WAKX (102.7)
in Narragansett Pier, RHODE ISLAND from new owner
Davidson Media Group, giving the area its first FM competitor
to veteran Portuguese broadcaster WJFD (97.3 New Bedford).
Meanwhile, Davidson's other acquisition, WKKB (100.3 Middletown
RI) indeed made the flip to Spanish just after we went to press
a week ago. It's now doing Spanish tropical as "Latina 100.3."
*Is it the end of the line for one of NEW
HAMPSHIRE's oldest radio stations? After 47 years at 502
West Hollis Street in Nashua, WSMN (1590) signed off Tuesday
evening (Feb. 1) at 6:00.  As
had been rumored for some time, WSMN lost the lease on the land
that was home to its studio building and three-tower directional
array, and it's not easy to find space - or zoning permission
- for a new directional array these days.
In recent years, WSMN had been leased out, running business
news as "The Tiger 1590." With that frequency silent,
WSNH (900 Nashua) running a steady diet of ESPN sports and WHOB
(106.3 Nashua) operating from new studios in Hooksett, there's
not really a local station in Nashua anymore.
 On
a happier note - or at least one that doesn't involve any stations
going dark - Nassau did some restructuring of its new holdings
in Concord and the Lakes Region last Friday (Feb. 4) at noon,
moving country from "Outlaw Country" WOTX (102.3 Concord)
to what had been classic rock WNHI (93.3 Belmont), which becomes
"93.3 the Wolf" and keeps Don Imus as a holdover from
the old WNHI. The classic rock, in turn, moves to 102.3 as "The
Hawk," which will share the format and the nickname with
the former "Big 101.5," WBHG (101.5 Meredith).
 The
Hawk isn't a simulcast, exactly, targeting separate local content
to Concord on 102.3 and the Lakes Region on 101.5. We'd suspect
new calls will show up all around as things settle down...and
we note that Nassau's promising no imminent changes on the rest
of its stations in the region. (We'd also note that both "Hawk"
classic rock and "Wolf" country are becoming regional
brands for Nassau, which has several Hawks in New Jersey and
Pennsylvania and has been doing "Wolf" over in Maine
on WTHT in the Portland market.)
*Two CONNECTICUT college stations
that have been fighting controversial proposals to add NPR simulcasts
were in the headlines again last week. At the University of New
Haven's WNHU (88.7 West Haven), university officials have apparently
backed off a plan to simulcast "Morning Edition" and
"All Things Considered" from Connecticut Public Radio's
WPKT (90.5 Meriden). The New Haven Register reports
the university's president met with more than 100 students last
week, resulting in an announcement that "the time is not
right" for a simulcast. WNHU will apparently continue to
depend heavily on community volunteers for its programming, with
an advisory board being created to help guide the station's future.
(The move also means the university won't develop a news internship
program with the public broadcaster, as had been planned.)
 Meanwhile up the
road in Middletown, Wesleyan University's WESU (88.1) has been
running automated music programming while students and university
officials wrangle over the station's future. Wesleyan president
Doug Bennet, a former president of NPR, has been trying to work
out a deal to simulcast NPR programming from WSHU (91.1 Fairfield)
during morning and afternoon drive as a way of providing some
funding for WESU.
(In an open letter on WESU's website, student station manager
Jesse Summer is admirably honest about the reality facing the
station: "The reality of the situation is that we are unable
to run our own radio station. We’ve been plagued by equipment
and furniture theft and have no official membership
list or screening process. Our Board members don’t come
to board meetings or do their weekly board hours. Our DJs don’t
come to the monthly all-DJ meetings, do their mandatory service
hours at the station, or even show up to do their shows. Our
training program is in shambles, DJs have no knowledge of the
FCC rules and regulations they break on a daily basis, and the
station has absolutely no system for maintaining the proper documentation
that federal regulations require. There is no respect for authority,
our Constitution has been rendered totally ineffective, and the
Board has essentially no degree of managerial control due to
a despicable lack of resources, oversight, and administrative
support.")
The Wesleyan Argus reports that a plan to put live
student programming back on WESU by mid-February is now in the
works, and that it will likely include the WSHU simulcasts under
an 18-month contract. The WSHU agreement would bring in $45,000
in annual revenue to WESU, which would be used to hire a general
manager for the station; it would also bring additional NPR talk
programming, including "Talk of the Nation" and the
"Diane Rehm Show," to listeners in the Hartford area
who can't presently hear those shows.
And there's been plenty of national attention to the mistaken
EAS activation on Tuesday in which state officials accidentally
ordered all of Connecticut to be evacuated. NERW wonders what's
more disturbing - that an inadvertent activation like this can
occur so easily, or that EAS gets so little attention from the
public that a broadcast order to flee the state caused no panic
whatsoever?
 *In NEW YORK, WQHT (97.1) is bringing back
its "Miss Jones" morning show on Wednesday, minus producer
Rick Del Gado and cast member Todd Lynn, as it attempts to address
the controversy over the "We Are the World" parody
that the show aired a few weeks after the Asian tsunami. Del
Gado and Lynn lost their jobs for their role in creating the
song, while the remainder of the show's cast - save for "Miss
Info," who does the news - ended up with two-week unpaid
suspensions, with their salaries being donated to tsunami relief.
Station owner Emmis Communications will also make a $1 million
donation to the relief fund.
("Miss Info," who's of Asian descent, refused to
take part in the song, an act which subjected her to repeated
on-air attacks from Jones and other cast members. She's now making
noise in the New York papers about suing WQHT for the whole thing.)
From the looks of it, the move won't be enough to pull Hot
97 out of the fire it's been drawing from Asian community groups,
who continue to put pressure on advertisers to pull their spots
from the station. Will the show be back for long? (There's no
sign of it on the WQHT website, which is never a good sign.)
Stay tuned...
 It's
a very long way from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to the East
End of Long Island, but Cherry Creek Radio is making that jump.
The small group operator based in the Denver suburbs is paying
$12 million to pick up AAA Entertainment's four-station cluster
out east, which includes AAA (the format, that is) WEHM (92.9
Southampton), Bloomberg business news WHBE (96.7 East Hampton),
rhythmic top 40 WBEA (101.7 Southold) and soft AC WBAZ (102.5
Bridgehampton).
This is Cherry Creek's first outing east of the Mississippi;
its other 32 stations are all out west, from the Tri-Cities of
Washington to the California desert to rural Colorado. And the
deal takes Rhode Island-based AAA completely out of the broadcast
business in the northeast, leaving it with clusters of stations
in Illinois.
 Up in
northern Westchester County, Cumulus' WFAF (106.3 Mount Kisco)
pulled out of the simulcast of AC WFAS-FM (103.9 White Plains)
that it's been doing for just over four years now. Over the weekend,
the station was stunting as "Flix 106," with movie
soundtrack clips and even a website (flix106.com) that proclaims
WFAF to be an "Eecyrag Media" station. ("Eeycrag"
spelled backwards yields "Gary Cee," who just happens
to be the program director at Cumulus classic rocker WPDH up
in Poughkeepsie. Will that be WFAF's next simulcast parent?)
The long-rumored call change of WIXT (Channel 9) in Syracuse
will become reality in April, when the ABC affiliate drops the
calls it's had since 1976 and becomes WSYR-TV. That's in keeping
with the Clear Channel synergy strategy that recently flipped
Rochester's WOKR (Channel 13) to WHAM-TV - but it's raising the
hackles of Raycom's WSTM (Channel 3), which was the original
WSYR-TV. (It changed calls in 1980, when WSYR radio and TV were
spun off to separate owners.)
 WSTM officials say
they still get diary mentions as "WSYR-TV," and they're
concerned that channel 9's call change will cause confusion in
the market. (That wasn't a problem in Rochester, where the WHAM-TV
calls hadn't been used since 1956, when they were on a channel
that's not even in use in the market any longer.) NERW notes
that channel 9's original calls, WNYS-TV, have been in use for
a decade now on channel 43 with no apparent ill effect; we'd
also note that the WIXT calls just may have more of a news image
in the market these days than the WSYR calls - so perhaps the
answer is to change AM 570's calls to WIXT? (Just a thought...)
Our very best wishes go out to WCMF (96.5 Rochester) morning
institution Brother Wease, who told his listeners last week that
he's suffering from a rare form of sinus cancer. Wease, who does
a marathon daily shift that starts on WCMF and ends on WBUF (92.9
Buffalo), will be out of commission for at least a few weeks
while he undergoes radiation treatment and chemotherapy - and
the whole city will be pulling for him, we're sure.
And our condolences on the death January 21 of Mort Fega,
who's still fondly remembered in New York City for his days playing
jazz on WVOX (1460 New Rochelle) and later, on the overnight
shift on WEVD (1330). Fega retired to Florida in 1986, but remained
active in the jazz community (and on radio, where he hosted a
jazz show on WXEL 90.7 in West Palm Beach). Mort Fega was 83.
(If you're a fan of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, as I am, check
out Fagen's tribute
to Fega, which also sheds some light on Fagen's radio song,
"The Nightfly.")
We're also sorry to report the death, on Feb. 1, of Joseph
Shuler, former general manager of WKNY (1490 Kingston). Shuler
was 60.
*In PENNSYLVANIA, the long-running
rumor of a Philadelphia morning show move appears to be true:
All Access reports that Y100 (WPLY 100.3 Media) will lose Preston
Elliot and Steve Morrison to Greater Media's crosstown WMMR (93.3
Philadelphia) in a few months. The move will no doubt spark message-board
chatter about a format change at the Radio One modern rocker,
but we've heard those rumors often enough before. As always...stay
tuned.
WPEN (950 Philadelphia) is adding T.J. Lubinsky to its jock
lineup. The 32-year-old New Jersey native has made a name for
himself producing reunions (both live and for public TV) of classic
doo-wop groups, and he started spinning 50s and 60s tunes and
taking requests on Saturday nights from 8-11 last weekend.
Over in Johnstown, the Forever Broadcasting format swap went
down just as predicted last Monday, with AC WKYE (95.5) becoming
"Froggy" WFGI-FM, while the WKYE calls and AC "Key"
format replaced country "Mountain" on the former WMTZ
(96.5).
 When California University
of Pennsylvania got an FM license way back in 1972, students
wanted to call their new facility "WCAL," but those
calls were taken - and so the station on 91.9 in California,
south of Pittsburgh, became WVCS ("Voice of Cal State.")
But someone there was paying attention, because when those WCAL
calls disappeared a few weeks ago from their longtime (and we
mean longtime - since 1921!) home in Northfield, Minnesota, WVCS
filed to make the change, and WCAL it now is.
*NEW JERSEY 101.5 (WKXW Trenton) is
trying to mend the rift between afternoon talk host Craig Carton
and governor Richard Codey. It's not quite an apology for what
Carton said about Codey's wife's postpartum depression, but the
station did post a statement Friday that said, "Craig Carton
announced yesterday that he has a better understanding toward
people that suffer from mental health illnesses and postpartum
depression. Carton decided to be proactive toward such an important
subject that opened up so much discussion and vowed to do more
research into this topic."
Carton will head up a station initiative to create more public
awareness for mental health - and the station no doubt hopes
the move will head off potential issues with advertisers uncomfortable
about the controversy.
*Up in CANADA, the CRTC is sending
a strong message that it's not happy with broadcasters using
local sales agreements to get around market-concentration limits.
It renewed the licenses of five stations in Halifax - CHUM's
CJCH (920) and CIOO (100.1), Newcap's CFDR (780) and CFRQ (104.3)
and Sun Media's CKUL (96.5) - but only on the condition that
they unwind the agreement by May 31, which gives the Newcap stations
and CKUL (which is operated by Newcap) just four months to find
a new studio facility and move out of the space they've been
occupying at the CHUM facility. (The CRTC also set a May 31 deadline
to terminate the LSA between Maritime Broadcasting System's CFCY/CHLQ
and Newcap's CHTN in Charlottetown, P.E.I. and the LSA between
Rogers' CIGM/CJMX/CJRQ and Newcap's CHNO in Sudbury, Ontario.)
 The CRTC also weighed
in on the controversy surrounding "Wild 101," CKEY-FM
(101.1 Fort Erie ON), giving the station a short-term license
renewal. CKEY's Canadian licensee, CJRN 710 Inc., has been in
the CRTC's cross-hairs over allegations that the station is really
being programmed and sold from Citadel's cluster across the river
in Buffalo, an accusation repeated in an intervention by former
CJRN employee Robert Vernon. CJRN contends that control of the
programming has always remained on the Canadian side, and that
the proportion of CKEY's sales coming from the U.S. will decrease
over time. (An intervention was also filed by one "Nicholas
Schimmelpenninck," aka "Nicholas Picholas" of
Wild's U.S. competitor, WKSE.)
The CRTC was less satisfied with CKEY's service to its local
community. Over 41 hours of the station's programming that the
Commission analyzed, it found that "other than the promotion
of two local events, there was no spoken word material of direct
and particular relevance to the community served, such as local
news, weather, sports, and the promotion of local events and
activities," and it was unhappy with CKEY's contention that
it was not a "regular" station and therefore shouldn't
have to broadcast hourly news. So CKEY's been renewed through
August 2006, but with the CRTC keeping a close eye to make sure
it broadcasts the required three hours of news each week.
In Montreal, there's a new morning team at "Team 990"
(CKGM), with Denis Casavant, formerly of French-language TV sports
network RDS, joining Tony Marinaro beginning today from 6-9 AM.
And a follow-up to the launch last week of CIXL (91.7 Giant
FM) in Welland: our pal Milkman at Milkman
UnLimited noticed some funky spelling errors in, well, "giant"
type on the station's newly-launched website at giantfm.com.
"Feetwood Mac," anyone? (The goofs were fixed rather
quickly...)
*We're pleased to announce the return
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|
*We're busy shipping out the Tower
Site Calendar 2005 to radio fans from coast to coast
and far beyond (would you believe New Zealand?)
 Didn't find one
under the tree this year? That's OK - we've still got plenty,
and we're shipping them out daily.
This year's calendar begins with WSTW/WDEL in Wilmington,
Delaware on the cover, ends with Sutro Tower in San Francisco
on the inside back cover - and along the way makes stops at WNBF
in Binghamton, CFNB in Fredericton, Poor Mountain in Roanoke,
KXNT in Las Vegas, WBBR in New York, Gibraltar Peak above Santa
Barbara, WDEV in Waterbury, Vermont, WRIB in Providence, WOOD
in Grand Rapids, KFJZ in Fort Worth, KYPA in Los Angeles and
the top of Chicago's Hancock Tower.
(You can see some previews of this year's calendar images
at Tower Site
of the Week - where the archive listing's newly updated!)
We're holding the price from last year, notwithstanding increases
in printing costs and PayPal fees - just $16 postpaid ($17.32
including sales tax to New York addresses). And as always, it's
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And here's an even better deal - We still have
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