Montreal's AM 940 Drops Talk

GETCHER 2008 TOWER SITE CALENDAR - BEFORE THEY'RE ALL GONE!

Still haven't ordered your 2008 Tower Site Calendar? You do realize that it's now...er...2008, don't you? We're already down to the last 35 or so calendars, and they're going fast. The 2006 and 2007 editions of the calendar sold out, and this one will do so as well, possibly as soon as this month.

This year's edition is a particularly fine one, if we do say so ourselves. From the cover photo of KAST in Astoria, Oregon to the back cover shot of the Blaw-Knox diamond tower at WBNS in Columbus, this year's calendar features 14 all-new full-color shots of famous broadcast sites far and wide. There's KROQ in Los Angeles, KFBK in Sacramento, WESX in Salem, WGAN in Portland, Black Mountain in Vegas, Mount Spokane in Spokane, and many (ok, several) more.

The calendar is just $18 with shipping and handling included - or better yet, beat our move to mandatory subscriptions later this year and get a free calendar with your $60 subscription to NERW for 2008. (Remember, the proceeds from both the calendar and the subscriptions help keep NERW right here on the web, as we head into our fourteenth year of news and analysis.)

So click right here and you can be sure to have your very own Tower Site Calendar 2008! (And thank you!)

June 11, 2007 -

• It's been nearly twenty years since General Electric sold off its NBC Radio division, dismantling what had once been arguably the most important radio station group in the country. When Walt Disney hands off the keys to much of ABC Radio to Citadel today, it will mark the end - or at least a major transformation - of a station group that had an equally large impact on American radio.
• Unlike the NBC sale in 1988, which marked the effective end of the NBC Radio Network as an independent entity and the demise of the WNBC call letters on NEW YORK radio, the sale of ABC Radio will bring with it almost no immediate changes as far as listeners are concerned. In part, that's a reflection of the independence ABC's radio properties long maintained from their sister TV operation. WABC (770) and WPLJ (95.5) operate from studios at 2 Penn Plaza, many blocks from the ABC Radio newsroom at 125 West End Avenue, which is itself a long hike from the Columbus Circle headquarters of ABC television and WABC-TV. (There are some ABC-TV facilities at 125 West End as well, so there will be some unraveling of ties there over the next few years. ABC Radio News will continue to be operated by ABC, which will license its programming to Citadel's ABC Radio Networks for distribution.)
• As best we can tell, there are no immediate programming or staffing changes in the offing at WABC or WPLJ, the only ABC Radio properties in the northeast, and indeed, the most obvious change for the now-Citadel staffers at those stations is that they've lost the Disney theme park "silver passes" they enjoyed as Disney employees. Disney keeps its Radio Disney and ESPN Radio properties, which means that for the short term, WEPN (1050) and WQEW (1560) will be tenants at the 2 Penn Plaza studios, with completely separate staffs from WABC and WPLJ. We'd expect WEPN and WQEW to move to new studios sooner or later, as will their sister stations in similar situations in Los Angeles and Dallas. There will be no changes at all at other standalone ESPN Radio and Radio Disney stations, including Boston's WMKI (1260), Rhode Island's WDDZ (550 Pawtucket), Connecticut's WDZK (1550 Bloomfield), Philadelphia-market WWJZ (640 Mount Holly) and Pittsburgh's WEAE (1250) and WWCS (540 Canonsburg).
• Elsewhere in New York, Cumulus has taken the next step toward moving WFAS-FM (103.9) closer to the lucrative New York City market. The station officially changed city of license last week to Bronxville from its longtime home of White Plains. For now, there's no change in the station's facilities - its transmitter remains at its longtime home in Greenburgh, where the station's studios and sister station WFAS (1230 White Plains) are located as well - but we'd expect to see an application filed sooner or later to move 103.9 down to a transmitter site in southern Westchester or the Bronx.
• We'll make CANADA our next stop, as we assess the fallout of the CRTC's decision to approve CTVglobemedia's acquisition of CHUM Ltd., albeit with one enormous condition. CTV knew it would have to divest some of CHUM's nationwide portfolio of television stations, but it had hoped to keep CHUM's big-market roster of Citytv outlets in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg and to spin the more marginal "A-Channel" stations CHUM owns in Ontario and British Columbia. Combining the City stations with CTV's existing national network was more than the CRTC was willing to countenance under its "one-to-a-market" TV ownership policy, though, and a divided CRTC ruled late last week that if the CTV purchase of CHUM is to go forward, it will have to be without the City stations. CTV can, if it wishes, keep the "A-Channel" stations, the rationale there being that even though A-Channel's CKVR is seen in Toronto and its CIVI is seen in Vancouver, those are actually Barrie and Victoria stations, respectively - and under Canadian regulations, those stations really do provide news and public affairs for the areas where they're licensed.
• In the wake of the ruling, CTVglobemedia isn't saying yet whether it will follow through with the C$1.4 billion acquisition of CHUM, or with the proposed C$137.5 million spinoff of the A-Channel stations to Rogers. Even without the City stations, the CHUM radio group of 34 stations and its 20 specialty cable services (plus A-Channel, if it were to stay with CTV) would combine with CTV's existing TV, cable and print outlets to create an impressive media behemoth.
• The big news in MASSACHUSETTS will come today, when WGBH-FM (89.7 Boston) moves its announcers from their longtime home on Western Avenue in Allston to the new broadcast center overlooking the Mass Pike off Market Street. WGBH-TV/WGBX will make the move later this month, and by July, the old Western Avenue facility will be history. Over on the radio side, the playlists for today's inaugural broadcasts were drawn from listener suggestions; the first track played from the new digs at 9 AM will be Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man."

June 9, 2003 -

• By itself, the news that WQDY (1230) in Calais, MAINE signed off for good and returned its license to the FCC at the end of May would be an interesting but not terribly unusual event. After all, the past two decades have seen a long parade of Maine AM stations move from graveyard channels to the radio graveyard. Fort Kent, Madawaska, Presque Isle, Houlton, Machias, Brewer, Belfast, Lincoln, Dover-Foxcroft, Auburn - the list goes on.
• What makes this particular AM shutdown interesting, though, is the reason why it had to happen, what it says about the ownership-limit rules that were just tweaked by the FCC a week ago - and the fact that it puts one owner in control of pretty much every daily advertising opportunity in Washington County.
• There's a back story here, of course, and it goes like this: back in March, Citadel, owner of WCRQ (102.9 Dennysville), applied to the FCC to sell the station to William McVicar (for $185,000, which has to be a record low for a full class C FM facility!) McVicar already owned WQDY, WQDY-FM (92.7 Calais) and a half-interest in WALZ (95.3 Machias), the other three commercial stations in Washington County. (There are two noncomms as well: Maine Public Radio's WMED 89.7 in Calais and high school station WSHD 91.7 in Eastport.) Under the FCC's interim market concentration rules, an owner in a small market like Calais was allowed to have an attributable interest in no more than half the stations in the market. In the transfer application for WCRQ, Citadel and McVicar told the Commission that there were six stations in the Calais market: WCRQ, WQDY, WQDY-FM and WALZ, as well as CHTD (98.1 St. Stephen NB) just across the water from Calais and CHSJ (700 Saint John NB), whose signal reaches down the Straits of Fundy from 100 or so miles away. By agreeing to put WQDY(AM) up for sale, McVicar claimed, his new cluster of WCRQ, WQDY-FM and WALZ would make up only three of six stations in the market.
• There were just two problems with this scenario. First, no buyer turned up for WQDY(AM), which was no great surprise; would you want to compete with what promises to be such a dominant FM cluster, armed with only a pipsqueak AM signal? Second, as alert NERW readers may recall, is that CHSJ in Saint John hasn't been on the air at AM 700 for more than five years. The CHSJ calls and country format live on - but at 94.1 FM, on a signal that can just be heard in Calais and can't possibly count against any conceivable market definition there. (The duopoly map submitted with the application even acknowledged, with respect to CHSJ(AM), "FCC unsure of operational status." Too bad they don't read NERW - or at least admit that they do!)
• So instead of McVicar's threesome making up half of a six-station market, they make up three of a four-station market - and that's being generous and including CHTD, which is aimed almost exclusively at the Canadian side of the border. And unlike the much-cited case of Minot, North Dakota, where Clear Channel took advantage of loopholes in the ownership rules to end up with six commercial radio stations (albeit with a daily newspaper, several TV stations, two commercially-licensed religious stations and a public radio outlet as competition), advertisers in Calais have no daily newspaper or local TV stations to use as leverage should the rates get too high at WQDY/WALZ/WCRQ.
• Now, the saving grace here is that McVicar's not a bad owner. In fact, he's a very good owner. WQDY has long been one of the best small-town operations in NERW-land, with excellent coverage of local events and support of local causes. WCRQ, by contrast, was voicetracked from Citadel in Syracuse, and will no doubt become a much more local station under its new ownership. And if you go back less than a decade, there was no WCRQ (or CHTD), so the only option for Calais advertisers was...WQDY. (What's more, the new FCC market-definition rules will include noncommercial signals, so McVicar's stations really will become three of six, against CHTD, WMED and WSHD.)
• What does it all prove? To quote one of the most experienced industry sages we know, "Radio is full of so many different sizes and types of stations and markets that it is impossible to come up with a truly fair and consistent set of rules to govern it."
• As first hinted here on NERW a few months ago, there's an allocations shift in the works for upstate NEW YORK, and it involves WMJQ (105.5 Brockport). Right now, George Kimble's station is operating at low power with a directional antenna from one tower of WASB (1590 Brockport), whose religious and Spanish programming has been simulcast on the FM for a few years now. A CP to move to a taller tower a few miles north in the town of Hamlin has been stalled by local opposition. Now WMJQ has a new plan: an application to move down the dial to 104.9 and to move its transmitter site eastward, toward Rochester. From the new site in Ogden, alongside route 531, 104.9 would use 4900 watts at 111 meters above average terrain, which should put a much more respectable signal over the city than 105.5 currently does.
• In Syracuse, WSTM (Channel 3/DTV 54) is becoming a duopoly, sort of: owner Raycom is buying WAWA-LP (Channel 14), the market's UPN affiliate. Expect WAWA to finally get Time Warner cable carriage as a result, replacing Boston's WSBK.
• "Kiss" today goodbye in CANADA: Rogers made an abrupt format flip on CISS (92.5 Toronto) at 4 PM last Wednesday, ditching the dance top 40 of "Kiss 92.5" and replacing it with the latest hot format north of the border, the mixture of classic hits and current hot AC tunes known as "Jack FM." Already on the air at Rogers stations in Vancouver and Calgary, "Jack" has an interesting history that begins south of the border - Long Island, to be exact, where the format was conceived as a Webcast by New York air talents Bob "Cadillac Jack Garrett" Perry and Russ "Famous Amos!" DiBello. The format they created at www.jack.fm (where you can still hear it as a nice-sounding Webcast) was, shall we say, "borrowed" up north - but it's all legitimate now, and the Jack gang are looking to market their format to U.S. broadcasters as well.

June 11, 1998-

• Just minutes after NERW went to press last week, CBS finally completed its $2.6 billion takeover of American Radio Systems, adding ARS' clusters in Buffalo (WLCE, WBLK, WJYE, WYRK, WECK), Rochester (WZNE, WCMF, WPXY, WRMM), Hartford (WTIC AM-FM, WZMX, WRCH) and Boston's WBMX (98.5) to its existing Northeast presence in Boston (WBZ, WZLX, WODS, WBCN, WBZ-TV) and New York City (WCBS AM-FM, WINS, WNEW, WXRK, WFAN). To satisfy FCC ownership limits, Boston's WNFT is in a trust awaiting sale; CBS is still required under a separate agreement with the Justice Department to sell WRKO, WEEI, WAAF, and WEGQ within six months. Despite persistent rumors of a Jacor Boston buy, there's no oficial announcement of a buyer so far. NERW notes that ARS' Rochester stations had the new "CBS" IDs on the air as early as 6:00 last Thursday night.
• WBPS (890 Dedham) won't be Salem Media's newest property after all. Salem subsidiary New England Continental Media asked the FCC this week to dismiss its proposed purchase of the station.
• News from the noncomms: WBIM (91.5 Bridgewater) and WSHL (91.3 Easton) will both stay on the air 24 hours a day again this summer, relaying the Talking Information Center's reading service for the blind. And WRPS (88.3) at Rockland High School is also going 24 hours, running an automated hot AC format when no students are around. WRPS is also now in stereo for the first time.
• Mike Adams is leaving One-on-One Sports' WNRB (1510), ending his partnership with Jack Farrell. The former New England Cable News sports host is heading to WEEI (850).
• Former WAAF (107.3 Worcester) afternoon jocks Opie & Anthony have found a new home, two months after they were fired for their April Fools' Day claim that the mayor of Boston was dead. Their new home, according to published reports? CBS's WNEW (102.7) in New York, where they'll do afternoon drive.
• Less than a year after fire destroyed his radio station, WVIP (Mount Kisco) founder Martin Stone has died. Stone was hospitalized after watching AM 1310 burn to the ground last fall. He was 83 years old. The WVIP license remains active, but there's no sign that the station will return to the air.
• Buffalo sports legend Van Miller did his last regular sportscast for WIVB (Channel 4) Friday night. Miller was with Channel 4 for an amazing 43 years; he stays on as the voice of the Buffalo Bills.