May 7, 2007
CC Selloff Gathers Steam in Maine
TOWER SITE CALENDAR 2007 - SELLING OUT FAST!!!
*Clear Channel Radio is getting closer to
its goal of selling off 448 stations in its smaller markets -
including all of its holdings in the state of MAINE, which
are among the stations being sold to a new company called "Goodradio.TV,"
headed by former ion TV (ex-Pax) president Dean Goodman.
We know, as this week's NERW comes to you late Sunday night,
that Goodradio will end up with about 180 of those 448 stations,
and that Clear Channel has found buyers for another 182 stations,
and we expect to find out for certain which of those stations
go where before the week is out.
In the meantime, though, the news of Goodradio's Maine plans
leaked early - and we now know that our original speculation
that Clear Channel would exit Maine completely proved to be correct.
 In the
Bangor market, Goodradio gets news-talk WABI (910 Bangor), AC
WKSQ (94.5 Ellsworth), top 40 WWBX (97.1 Bangor), country WLKE
(99.1 Bar Harbor), rock WFZX (101.7 Searsport), oldies WGUY (102.1
Dexter), talk WVOM (103.9 Howland) and country WBFB (104.7 Belfast)
- or at least as many of those as the FCC will allow under its
current group-ownership caps. (If we're reading the current rules
correctly, we think at least two of those FMs will have to be
spun off.)
In Augusta/Waterville, the cluster includes sports WFAU (1280
Gardiner)/WIGY (97.5 Madison), soft AC WKCG (101.3 Augusta),
oldies WABK (104.3 Gardiner) and rock WTOS (105.1 Skowhegan),
as well as three stations serving the coastal area around Rockport
- sports WRKD (1450 Rockland), classic hits WQSS (102.5 Camden)
and country WMCM (103.3 Rockland).
The latter three stations will reportedly be moving their
studios back to Rockland from Clear Channel's Augusta cluster
studios once the new owners take over.
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*There's been no official announcement yet
of the fate of Clear Channel's remaining stations in VERMONT,
but whoever ends up with them will get some new formats at two
of the signals.
In Randolph, WTSJ (1320) had been simulcasting WTSL (1400
Hanover NH), which Clear Channel has already sold - so now it's
switching originating stations to CC's "Zone" simulcast
from Burlington, already heard on WXZO (96.7 Willsboro NY) and
WEAV (960 Plattsburgh NY). Much of the syndicated programming
already heard on WTSJ was on "The Zone" anyway, so
Randolph-area listeners to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity won't
experience any disruption.
 In the
Burlington market, Clear Channel pulled the plug on "Kiss"
top 40 at WVTK (92.1 Port Henry NY), replacing it with oldies
from ABC's True Oldies Channel, the service programmed by Scott
Shannon. No local jocks here, and we wouldn't expect to hear
any until after the station and its Burlington sisters are sold,
if even then.
On the college radio side of the dial, WWLR (91.5 Lyndonville)
is operating without jocks for the moment, too, but for a different
reason. Several Lyndon State students were suspended last week
for an alcohol-related incident that the school is trying to
avoid referring to as "hazing," and it appears that
some of the student leaders of WWLR were among that group. The
station has a new interim GM and interim PD, and students are
expected to return to the air in the fall.
*Crossing the river to NEW HAMPSHIRE,
Eric Scott has vanished from afternoon drive at WKBK (1290 Keene),
with Howie Carr's syndicated show returning to that slot at the
Saga talker.
A correction to last week's story about WKXL (1450 Concord):
Gardner Hill, who left the station last week, did not work there
under prior owner Warren Bailey; he'd left the station before
that, and returned when current owner Gordon Humphrey took over
in 2004.
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*There was a tower collapse in CONNECTICUT
during the big storm there last month: the 188-foot tower
of WYBC (1340 New Haven) succumbed to the storm's high winds
late on the night of April 14, toppling into the swamp where
it sits. (It took several days for the weather to calm down sufficiently
for the tower's remains to even be found in the swamp, we're
told.)
 WYBC
quickly returned to the air with a longwire antenna. The collapse
was blamed on a guy-wire anchor that had corroded to "the
thickness of a pencil," says engineer Clif Mills, and a
replacement tower will soon be erected at the same site.
In Hartford, WCCC-FM (106.9) has turned on its HD2 subchannel,
and it's relaying the classical "Beethoven Radio" service
that's also heard on sister station WCCC (1290 West Hartford),
which will now reach a much larger potential audience 24 hours
a day on the big FM signal.
And in court, former WEZN (99.9 Bridgeport) overnight jock
Frank Ward is suing station owner Cox Radio for age discrimination
over his dismissal a few years back.
*It's been a long time coming,
but MASSACHUSETTS finally has its own Broadcasters Hall
of Fame. Massasoit Community College in Brockton is sponsoring
the honor, and it inducted the first group of honorees Saturday
night at one of its "RadioTV Classics Live" re-creations.
And what a group it was - Bob and Ray (with Tom Goulding representing
his late father), Jess Cain, Rex Trailer and Tom Bergeron.
Another group of inductees, including Don Kent, Joyce Kulhawik,
Liz Walker, Frank Avruch and Fred B. Cole, will be honored at
the spring "Media Gang" lunch next week. More on that
in the next issue of NERW...
Is Christopher Lydon getting ready to leave public radio and
his "Open Source" broadcast? That's the rumor the Globe
offered last week, suggesting that Lydon might be heading
to New York and Bloomberg Radio, taking the evening slot there
that was recently home to former Boston broadcasters Michael
Goldman and Tom Moroney. (UPDATE: Lydon and his producer at
"Open Source" are strongly denying the report.)
*The big news from NEW YORK last week
continued to be the fallout from the Don Imus affair, including
Imus' reported $120 million lawsuit against his former employer,
CBS Radio. At WFAN (660), this week's guest hosts in the former
Imus slot include John and Pat McEnroe through Wednesday, then
Geraldo Rivera later in the week, with no indication of any permanent
replacement.
Over at sister station WFNY-FM (92.3 Free FM), midmorning
hosts JV & Elvis are still suspended as well, with the "best-of"
shows that aired last week giving way to guest hosts this week,
including Cabbie and Larry Wachs.
WOR (710 New York) has hired former WABC talker Steve Malzberg
as its new 9-11 PM host, taking the slot being vacated by Lionel's
move to Air America Radio. Malzberg's show (in an extended three-hour
version) will also be syndicated via the WOR Radio Network.
Heading upstate, Chris Brunner is retiring as news director
of Time Warner's Capital News 9 in Albany. Brunner was the station's
founding news director in 2002, coming to cable from more than
two decades at WNYT (Channel 13). No replacement has been named
so far.
Among the handful of Clear Channel Radio spinoffs that haven't
found a buyer is the Utica/Rome cluster. The company says the
stations in that 4 AM/5 FM cluster aren't among the 362 stations
for which buyers will soon be announced, so we're still waiting
to find out what the fate of those stations (and others in places
like Yakima, Washington) will be.
Sorry to report the death of Tim Jentons, who was known as
"Magic Man" during his stint as morning-show producer
at Rochester's WPXY (97.9) in the nineties.
 *The start of May brought a format
swap at two Nassau stations on the PENNSYLVANIA/NEW
JERSEY line. Classic hits WSBG (93.5 Stroudsburg PA) lost
morning man Gary Smith to the Imus fallout a few weeks back,
and on Thursday, the station vanished completely when Nassau
moved soft AC "Lite" down the dial from its former
home at WWYY (107.1 Belvidere NJ). The new "Lite 93.5"
is running jockless for the moment, as is the new format on 107.1
- classic rock "107.1 the Bone," complete with the
syndicated "Free Beer and Hot Wings" morning show.
Over in Newark, the independent Newark Bears baseball team
has signed on with Seton Hall University's WSOU (89.5 South Orange)
to broadcast games on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, as
well as the post-season. The Bears were heard on WSOU from 1999-2002,
and Jim Cerny will be doing play-by-play this year, his fifth
with the team. (We'll have complete independent minor-league
baseball information in next week's NERW!)
In State College, WPSU (91.5) has launched a new "WPSU2"
service on its HD2 subchannel (and on the HD2 of sister station
WPSX 90.1 Kane), bringing additional news/talk programming to
the area by day, with jazz at night.
In Pittsburgh, KDKA (1020) has hired Kevin Miller as its new
noon-3 talk host. Miller comes to KDKA from WWTN (99.7) in Nashville,
but his career also included a stop at the old WMVU (900 Nashua
NH), way back when.
Two call changes to report: in Pittsburgh, WURP (1550 Braddock)
becomes WLFP under its new ownership, while WHUZ (94.3 Saegertown)
becomes WUZZ, grabbing calls that Forever Broadcasting recently
abandoned in Lima, Ohio.
Milt Grant's career was centered on Washington, where he was
that city's version of Dick Clark on WTTG (Channel 5) in the
sixties, and later the owner and GM of independent WDCA (Channel
20). But Grant had Northeast connections, too - his Grant Broadcasting
System owned WGBS (Channel 57) in Philadelphia from 1984-1989,
when it was sold out of bankruptcy, and he later owned WNYO-TV
(Channel 49) in Buffalo, from 1996-2001. Grant died April 28,
at 83.
*And in CANADA this week, we send
our congratulations to CKOC (1150 Hamilton) and CFRA (580 Ottawa),
which both celebrated anniversaries last week. CKOC turned 85
on May 1, with a commemorative oldies concert scheduled for May
19. And CFRA marked its 60th anniversary Thursday with a gala
event at the Chateau Laurier hotel that included a recreation
of a live 1947 radio show. (Catch the video, in glorious black
and white, here.)
|
From
the NERW Archives
(Yup, we've been doing this a long time now, and
so we're digging back into the vaults for a look at what NERW
was covering one, five and ten years ago this week, or thereabouts
- the column appeared on an erratic schedule in its earliest
years as "New England Radio Watch," and didn't go to
a regular weekly schedule until 1997. Thanks to LARadio.com
for the idea - and thanks to you, our readers, for the support
that's made all these years of NERW possible!)
May 8, 2006 -
- For the second week in a row, the big story out of MASSACHUSETTS
is the tussle over the Red Sox radio rights for the 2007 season.
But this week, there's no tussle - just the dotting of i's and
crossing of t's on what appears to be a record-breaking deal
that will keep the Sox with Entercom for ten more years and a
reported $200 million in rights fees. As NERW goes to press late
Sunday night, there's still no definitive confirmation from Entercom
or from the team, and there's always the chance that anything
could happen in this topsy-turvy saga. With Greater Media having
exited the bidding war on Friday, though, the continuation of
the team's relationship with Entercom became all but inevitable.
- What's not inevitable, however, is another season of Sox
baseball on flagship WEEI (850 Boston). Instead, Entercom reportedly
plans to return the team's play-by-play to WRKO (680 Boston),
the talk station that was the Sox flagship through much of the
late eighties and early nineties (and in several earlier stints
as well.) The idea, it would appear, is to use the strength of
the Sox as a promotional tool to boost the fortunes of WRKO,
which has struggled in recent years against Greater's WTKK (96.9
Boston), among other competitors. For day games, WRKO also offers
a somewhat larger signal footprint than the more directional
WEEI, especially to the south and out over Cape Cod. At night,
however, WRKO suffers even more than WEEI from a restrictive
directional pattern - and that means Entercom will almost certainly
have to look at additional ways to make sure its pricey Sox coverage
reaches the wealthy listener base west of Route 128.
- The Sox deal was just one aspect of a pretty big radio week
in the Bay State. In Worcester, WCRN (830) pulled the plug on
its "True Oldies" format over the weekend, and today
it officially relaunches as "True Talk AM 830," returning
former WRKO morning host Peter Blute to the airwaves for a 7-9
AM show. The station's existing block of leased financial talk
continues after Blute, and then its lineup will include Laura
Ingraham (1-3 PM), Howie Carr (3-7 PM) and Michael Savage (7-10
PM). Jerry Doyle in overnights and Doug Stephan in early mornings
round out the weekday schedule there.
- And we conclude our Massachusetts report this week with some
sad news: veteran helicopter traffic reporter Joe Green died
last Wednesday (May 3) at 76. Green began his career at WHDH
in 1963, but in 1968 he moved to WBZ, where "Joe Green in
the BZ Copter" became a staple of the Hub commute for more
than a quarter of a century. Green kept to himself (your editor,
who worked at the station for five years, never met him), but
he found his way into the headlines with several daring rescues,
saving two boys stranded on a raft in Dorchester and rescuing
a University of Lowell student from the Merrimack River. Green
was also featured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo in 1975,
landing his helicopter on a rooftop in what proved an unsuccessful
attempt to rescue a woman from a burning building.
April 22, 2002 -
- With the impending sale of Nassau's WTTM (1680 Trenton) to
Multicultural, the ESPN sports programming heard on 1680 moves
down the dial to WJHR (1040 Flemington). WJHR had been relaying
the business-news programming of Nassau's WHWH (1350 Trenton),
which picks up the Trenton Thunder games that had been heard
on 1680. Expect 1680 to go ethnic when the sale closes; Multicultural
has a pending, but on-hold, application to move the station south
to Lindenwold in the Philadelphia market.
- MASSACHUSETTS is getting a new radio station, but not a very
powerful one. A settlement between Toccoa Falls College and Friends
of Radio Maria will give Toccoa the CP for a new station on 91.1
in Winchendon. The station will run 155 watts at 63 meters above
average terrain, from a site near the WINQ (97.7) tower just
north of Winchendon. We expect all the programming to come from
the college's Georgia headquarters (the "TFC Network,"
based at WRAF 90.9 in Toccoa Falls) - and as for listeners up
there who try to tune in the local news and talk from WBUR (90.9)
in Boston, well, they'll have to comfort themselves that the
"public interest, convenience and necessity" are indeed
being served...
- In NEW HAMPSHIRE, WKVT has applied for a 250-watt booster
in Keene. The proposed WKVT-FM-1 would operate from a directional
antenna aimed southeast from a tower on Route 12 northwest of
Keene. Saga notes in its application, "with an overabundance
of caution," that it has a license for translator W272AX
(102.3) in Keene, which relayed WZID from Manchester before being
silenced due to interference concerns.
- Another Pax TV outlet wants to move its analog service to
its DTV allocation; in addition to the stations in Boston, Providence
and Scranton, Pax's WPXB (Channel 60) wants to shift its analog
signal to channel 34. The transmitter location (atop Mount Uncanoonuc
in Goffstown) and the power (1410 kW visual from 293 meters)
would remain unchanged, but the new WPXB-TV 34 would alter its
directional pattern, sending a bit more signal south towards
Boston.
- WBPX carries ShopNBC home shopping, by the way; Pax service
to New Hampshire comes from WPXG (Channel 21) up in Concord,
relaying WBPX (Channel 68, applying for channel 32) in Boston.
- Up north, WMTW (Channel 8) from Poland Springs, MAINE has
applied for two new translators to help restore service to viewers
who lost its signal when it left Mount Washington in favor of
a new stick in Baldwin, Maine.
- The ABC affiliate was granted CPs this week for W26CQ in
Colebrook, N.H. and W27CP in White River Junction, Vermont.
May 8, 1997-
- We begin this time in VERMONT, Brattleboro to be exact, where
WKVT AM/FM (1490/92.7) and WVAY (100.7 Wilmington) have been
sold to Richard Lightfoot, the owner of WKNE AM/FM (1290/103.7)
across the Connecticut River in New Hampshire. Lightfoot says
he's not planning any format changes at the stations, which are
currently running talk on the AM and rock on the simulcast FMs.
The seller of WKVT AM/FM is James Plante, who tells the Brattleboro
Reformer that he'll probably leave the area once the transition
to new ownership is complete. WVAY is being sold by Martin and
Robin Rothschild, who LMA'd the station to Plante earlier this
year. The deal closes a circle that began back in 1959, when
WKNE's original owners built WKVT. Lightfoot is operating WKVT
and WVAY under an LMA while he awaits FCC approval of the purchase.
Once it's complete, WKVT, WKNE, and WVAY will operate under the
name "Northland Radio." No word on purchase price;
but NERW wonders if this isn't the "NH/VT AM/FM Combo"
that was being advertised in the trades this week for around
$750,000...
- NERW research director Garrett Wollman was watching the auction
on New Hampshire Public TV (WENH-TV 11 Durham, etc.) this week,
and noticed that several of the Knight Quality (soon to be Capstar)
radio stations donated advertising time as an auction item! Lucky
bidders could snag 30 sixty-second spots on WXHT (95.3 York Center
ME) for a suggested price of $1100. WBHG (101.5 Meredith) also
donated spots to the auction.
- One bit of RHODE ISLAND news: "Mancow" Muller,
the Chicago-based syndicated morning host, has signed WDGE (99.7
Wakefield-Peace Dale) as his first East Coast affiliate. M Street
says Block Island's WERI-FM (99.3) has flipped from hot AC to
AAA; we'd love to hear tape from anyone down in that area who
can hear the signal. The FCC has granted WBRU (95.5) an extension
of time to move to 50kw and move its transmitter from the WHJY
stick in East Providence to Neuticonkanut Hill in Johnston, as
well as granting WPNW (550) an extension of time to raise power
to 4600 watts day, 3400 watts night. (A side note: When we went
to plot the coordinates of these two on the DeLorme CD-ROM mapping
software we've been using here at NERW Central, we found "Wpjb-fm"
and "Wgng-am" already shown on the maps...guess they
date from the 1970s!)
- From CONNECTICUT this week, the FCC has designated a hearing
on the license of WHCT (Channel 18) in Hartford, to settle a
very long-running dispute over this long-dark station's license.
Back in 1983, Shurberg Broadcasting filed a competing application
against WHCT's renewal, and rather than face a competitive hearing,
WHCT's then-owner, Dr. Gene Scott's Faith Center, took advantage
of the FCC's distress-sale minority-preference policy and sold
WHCT to Astroline Broadcasting for $5 million. So far so good...except
that Shurberg alleged that Astroline was not in fact minority-controlled.
The dispute percolated its way upward through the court systems,
and in the meantime Astroline went bankrupt and WHCT went off
the air. Last year, Two if by Sea Broadcasting took control of
WHCT from the bankruptcy trustee, and this past February WHCT
returned to the air running programming from Lowell Paxson. Meanwhile,
Shurberg filed a petition to deny WHCT's license renewal, and
Astroline then filed a petition to deny against Shurberg's Channel
18 application. Now, the FCC has denied Astroline's petition
to deny against Shurberg, and it will soon hold a hearing to
determine the extent of minority control at Astroline. If the
FCC finds that Astroline misrepresented the facts, we could see
yet another change of control at poor old Channel 18...stay tuned.
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*It's here! As seen in the St.
Paul Pioneer Press, the Chicago
Sun-Times, and soon on WCVB's "Chronicle,"
Tower Site Calendar 2007 is not only now shipping - it's
close to a sellout! If you're waiting for the 2007 edition to
go on clearance sale, don't keep waiting - the word from the
shipping department is that only about 25 copies remain,
and we expect to sell them all in the next few weeks.
 This year's edition
features what we think are the finest tower images yet - from
the cover image of WCCO Minneapolis all the way to the back-cover
centerfold of WBZ in Boston, and from KGO San Francisco to KOIL
Omaha to Philadelphia's famed Roxborough tower farm, captured
in a dramatic dusk shot with the lights all aglow.
This sixth annual edition once again contains plenty of historic
dates from radio and television history in the Northeast and
beyond, and as always, it comes to you shrink-wrapped and shipped
first class mail for safe arrival.
You can even get your 2007 calendar free with
your new or renewal subscription
to NERW at the $60 level.
Visit the Fybush.com
Store and place your order today - and be among the first
to get the Tower Site Calendar 2007!
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2007 by Scott Fybush. |
