Smerconish Shakes Up Philly Talk

TOWER SITE CALENDAR 2011 - IT'S HERE!

The production process was a little more complex than usual for Tower Site Calendar 2011, but at long last we're shipping the tenth installment in what's become an annual radio tradition.

The new calendar is now back from the printer, complete with more than a dozen exciting new images including that nifty cover shot of Mount Beacon, N.Y.

And if you order now, you'll have the 2010 calendar in your hands long before the holiday rush!

But wait - there's more! We now have a small supply of the new FM Atlas, 21st edition, as well as a limited supply of Tower Site Calendar 2010 as well - plus the signed, limited-edition version of the 2011 calendar and much more in the fybush.com store!

We've got special discounts for bulk orders, too - they make great gifts for your business colleagues or friends...

We are offering "calendar bouquets" of our old editions. It's a great way to buy a bunch of beautiful tower pinups at once! For just $16, you can get the 2004, 2005, 2008 and 2009 calendars! (Special packaging available on request.)

Order now at the fybush.com Store!

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FOUNDCUTS -- The ultimate weekly 3-hour musical journey spotlights those "oh wow" hits you don't hear anymore from the 80s and beyond. Contact us to see if Foundcuts is available in your market now. E-mail Dave at foundcuts@gmail.com for a demo.

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You can have your ad here, for just a few dollars a week! Click here for information on the most economical way to reach tens of thousands of Northeast radio and TV people each week.

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, ten and - where available - fifteen years ago this week, or thereabouts.

Note that 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.

November 23, 2009 -

• A pioneering figure in RHODE ISLAND broadcasting has died. Art Lake came to Providence's WJAR radio (920, now WHJJ) in April 1944 as an announcer, putting him in position to be part of the on-air team that launched WJAR-TV (Channel 11, now 10) in 1949. In the station's early days, Lake (like most announcers of the era) did a little bit of everything, reading newscasts, hosting entertainment shows, working the announce booth. But he quickly specialized in one area: weather forecasting. For decades, Lake was the weather in southern New England, delivering forecasts on WJAR-TV's evening news and, starting in 1985, the station's morning show. Lake went into semi-retirement a decade ago, though he returned to WJAR for his 60th anniversary with the station in 2004 and continued to read birthday announcements on WJAR's "Sunrise Show" until health problems forced him to retire for good in 2006. Lake died early Sunday morning, at age 85.
• In MASSACHUSETTS, we know a little more about what's in store for listeners at WGBH (89.7 Boston) and WCRB (99.5 Lowell) when the former takes over operation of the latter just a week from tomorrow. The new "All Classical 99.5" will retain several familiar voices from the WCRB staff, including Laura Carlo in morning drive and Ray Brown in afternoons. WGBH's Cathy Fuller will handle midday duties on weekdays, and at least for now, it appears the station will be automated from 6 PM until 5 AM. WGBH's Brian McCreath will provide a local voice on Saturday and Sunday mornings, followed at 11 AM on Saturdays by the syndicated "At the Top" show, also heard at 5 PM Sundays. Saturday nights will continue to be the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a WCRB staple. It also appears that WCRB's classical programming will replace the WGBH feed on WNCK (89.5 Nantucket); there's no word yet whether there will be a similar flip for WGBH's Beacon Hill translator, W242AA (96.3).
• There's also not much yet to report about a new schedule for 89.7 - and indeed, it appears WGBH has not yet finalized the news/talk lineup that will replace daytime classical and the weekend folk and blues shows that go away next weekend. A live clearance for NPR's Diane Rehm show (currently heard in Boston only for one hout late at night on WBUR) seems likely for the late-morning hours, but the rest of the day appears to be in flux so far; expect a more definite schedule next week.
• There's an interesting translator development in upstate New York - Geneva and Seneca Falls, to be exact, where the Finger Lakes Radio Group is trading away 1000-watt daytimer WSFW (1110 Seneca Falls) to Calvary Chapel of Twin Falls in exchange for translator W214BR (90.7 Geneva). When the deal closes, Calvary will get much broader coverage of the northern Finger Lakes (and a long-term sweetheart lease deal on the WSFW transmitter site) - and Alan Bishop and George Kimble will take ownership of the translator that already operates from the tower of their WGVA (1240 Geneva). With a move to the commercial part of the FM dial, W214BR will presumably begin relaying WGVA, just as Finger Lakes already does with FM translators for its other AM signals in the region. WSFW's current visitor-information programming will likely go away when the AM signal becomes a Calvary religious outlet.
• And we're sorry to report the untimely death of Dene Hallam, who started his broadcast career at the old WRNW (107.1 Briarcliff Manor) back in the mid-70s, when that station was turning out a lot of future big-name talent (Howard somebody, among others), then went on to become a major force in country radio. At the age of 28, Hallam took over from Ed Salamon in the PD chair at New York's WHN (1050) at the end of 1981; a little more than a year later, he moved to country competitor WKHK (106.7), where he remained until the flip to WLTW in 1984. From there, Hallam added more big country calls to his resume, including WDAF in Kansas City, WWWW in Detroit and KKBQ in Houston; most recently he'd been in Atlanta, working as operations manager at Citadel's WKHX/WYAY and then programming the Moby in the Morning syndicated morning show. Hallam died Friday in an Atlanta hospital after spending several days in a coma. He was just 56.
• A venerable PENNSYLVANIA TV personality is calling it quits. Dave Roberts, who's spent 31 years doing weather at Philadelphia's WPVI-TV (Channel 6), announced last week that he'll retire next month after one last stint as co-host of the station's Thanksgiving Day parade and a few more weeks doing weather. Roberts' last day at the weather desk will be December 11, capping a 56-year career that began in his student days at Syracuse University's WAER (88.3), where he went on the air back in 1954.
• As "Dave Thomas," Roberts became a fixture on the Buffalo broadcast scene, working at the old WBUF-TV (Channel 17) and then, after a few years in the Army working for AFRTS, at WKBW-TV (Channel 7). Beginning in 1961, he was an iconic part of the Channel 7 team, hosting "Rocketship 7" and "Dialing for Dollars" and doing the weather on "Eyewitness News" alongside the legendary Irv Weinstein. Under owner Cap Cities, many popular WKBW personalities found their way to Philadelphia and then-sister station WPVI, and Roberts was no exception, making the move in 1978, initially as host of "AM Philadelphia," then taking over weather duties in 1983 after the skydiving accident that claimed the life of Jim O'Brien.
• In recent years, Roberts was inducted into both the Philadelphia Broadcast Pioneers and Buffalo Broadcasters halls of fame - and his own fame in Buffalo and Philadelphia was echoed on a national level by his son David, who used the family's real name - Boreanaz - as he became a star of shows such as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Bones."
• A longtime CONNECTICUT station owner has died. Daniel W. Kops, Sr. moved from the newspaper business in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to the radio business in New Haven after World War II, where he became a partner in WAVZ (1300), forming Kops-Monahan Communications. That station group expanded in time to include WKCI (101.3 Hamden), as well as WTRY/WDKC-FM in Albany, New York, and while the Albany stations were sold in 1972, Kops-Monahan remained in business in New Haven until the mid-80s. Kops, a Cornell University graduate, served on the NAB board and the board of the National United Way Association. He'd retired to Palm Beach, Florida, but returned to Connecticut, where he died Nov. 14 at the Connecticut Hospice in Branford, at age 92.

November 21, 2005 -

• It was a busy week for CANADA's regulators, as they denied a closely-watched TV application and announced hearings on several radio applications, including three in the nation's biggest market.
• The denied application was TV Niagara's, for a new independent station that would have broadcast on channel 22 from a site near St. Catharines, Ontario, from which it would have served not only Niagara Region itself but also the rest of the "Golden Horseshoe" around the western end of Lake Ontario, including Toronto. In turning down TVN's application, the CRTC said it was concerned that the company hadn't budgeted enough to pay the costs of operating a TV station with the ambitious schedule it proposed, including some 36 hours a week of local news and prime-time movies. In particular, the CRTC cited the experience of the former Toronto One (now SUN-TV), which debuted with similar ambitions a few years back and ran into devastating financial problems that eventually led owner Craig Media to be sold.
• NERW suspects we haven't heard the last of the TV Niagara folks, though; they've already told the CRTC that they believe they can run a more economical operation than Toronto One did, and they have a compelling case to make for the relatively underserved nature of Niagara, in the shadows of the much larger Toronto/Hamilton and Buffalo markets.
• That was just one piece of a busy week at the CRTC, though. It approved the move of CKDO (1350 Oshawa) to 1580, which will allow the oldies outlet to go from 10 kW day/5 kW night (with a fairly tight directional pattern) to 10 kW fulltime on a Canadian clear channel. (1580 was long occupied by CBJ in Chicoutimi, Quebec, and was later applied for by CHUC Cobourg, which instead is moving to FM.)
• And it announced a public hearing to be held January 16 at which it will review a number of interesting applications. In Toronto, Rainbow Media applies for 50 watts/131.5 meters on 103.9 for "Rainbow Radio," which would feature programming aimed at the city's gay and lesbian community. Rainbow is owned by the Evanov group, which also operates second-adjacent CIDC (Z 103.5) in Orangeville.
• Another Toronto application comes from Canadian Hellenic Toronto Radio, which wants 1000 watts on 1690 for an ethnic outlet that would be largely aimed at the city's Mediterranean population. A third comes from "World Radio," which wants 1 kW/276.8 meters, directional, for a station programming "world beat" music.
• Away from the halls of the CRTC, there's other news to report as well. In Toronto, French community station CHOQ (105.1) is testing its signal from its new transmitter site at 6 Forest Laneway. "Radio-Toronto" began testing Novemner 7 and will wrap up the tests November 28, in preparation for beginning regular programming soon. (It's been on the air under the CKIE calls for several short-term special event broadcasts already.)
• Moving stateside, NEW YORK got Christmas music in earnest this week - both in the west, where Buffalo's WJYE (96.1) and WTSS (102.5) made the flip, and in the city, where WLTW (106.7 New York) made its earliest flip yet.
• WLTW also lost one of its longest-running voices, as the station parted ways with Steven E. Roy, who was there at the beginning, in 1984, and who'd become an afternoon fixture at "Lite." There's no word yet on a permanent replacement, or on Roy's next destination.
• In NEW JERSEY, mornings are a little less local at WBUD (1260 Trenton), as the Millennium Radio Group station sheds the services of news guys John Weber and Ed Salvas. WBUD says it plans to continue its "Mercer News Morning" block, but we're hearing that Weber and Salvas won't be replaced, and that the future for WBUD is more satellite and less local (even the local voicetracking that the station's been running.)
• In MASSACHUSETTS, Michael Graham's settling in as the new afternoon talker on WTKK (96.9 Boston), filling the slot last occupied by Jay Severin, whose future whereabouts on the Boston dial remain up in the air. Graham's last two gigs didn't end well - he was driven out of WMAL, Washington earlier this year after controversial remarks about Muslims, and he was fired from WBT, Charlotte a few years earlier after some tasteless remarks about the Columbine shootings. Will he fare any better in Boston - or is that sort of high-profile controversy exactly what WTKK is banking on?

November 20, 2000 -

• Just in time for Thanksgiving, the radio waves of Western NEW YORK have brought forth a cornucopia of news...and where better to begin than at the far western extreme of the NERW listening area, out in the Jamestown area? That's where WKZA (106.9 Lakewood) hit the air over the weekend, with a signal being heard as far north as the Buffalo suburbs. Calling itself "Kiss," and IDing with Jamestown and Warren PA, we're told WKZA is running a modern rock format. We're hoping to catch it for ourselves as we head west towards Indiana later this week for a Very NERW Thanksgiving. (More on that later on...)
• [And this update: We ended up driving through Jamestown itself as we avoided the snowed-in Buffalo area on Tuesday, and had plenty of time to listen to "Kiss." It's actually a CHR/Pop outlet, operating from the Hotel Jamestown and sounding pretty good...]
• Meanwhile in Buffalo, the on-again, off-again sale of WNEQ (Channel 23) is again very much "on," and this time in a way that promises to avoid the earlier legal problems encountered by the seller, the Western New York Public Broadcasting Authority. This time, the buyer is LIN, parent company of Buffalo's CBS affiliate, WIVB (Channel 4). LIN plans to move channel 23 to WIVB's North Buffalo studios and program it as a commercial independent, complete with a WIVB-produced 10 PM newscast. More on those plans in a moment -- first a bit of history: WNYPBA put WNEQ on the air in May 1987 as a second outlet, to complement existing public TV station WNED-TV (Channel 17). A decade or so later, though, the impending costs of the digital TV conversion at WNED (not to mention the debt load of WNED's palatial new downtown studio complex) led WNYPBA to put the second station up for sale. Sinclair Broadcasting stepped forward, offering $33 million for the station in May 1998. WNEQ would have become the duopoly partner to Sinclair's Fox affiliate, WUTV (Channel 29) -- but instead, the deal ended up facing a serious challenge, thanks to the unusual licensing arrangement for Buffalo's public broadcasters. WNED, the primary station on channel 17, actually operates on a commercial allocation, a vestige of its 1950s past as NBC O&O WBUF(TV). When NBC shut down its UHF experiment, it donated channel 17 to what became WNYPBA, but the channel remained commercial. In order to sell WNEQ, on the noncommercial-reserved channel 23, WNYPBA needed to persuade the FCC to move the noncommercial reservation from channel 23 to channel 17, turning 23 into the commercial channel. It may sound like a bunch of legal minutiae, but it took the FCC over a year to approve the move, and appeals from concerned WNEQ viewers now have that approval tied up in federal court. The uncertainty, coupled with Sinclair's own financial problems, brought the Sinclair sale to an end last year. (A few months later, Sinclair instead bought WB affiliate WNYO (Channel 49), for $51.5 million.)
• Which brings us back to LIN and its WNEQ purchase. Here's how it works: Sometime soon (perhaps as early as January, speculates the Buffalo News), LIN will begin leasing channel 23 from WNYPBA. Once the lawsuit over channel 23 is resolved, LIN will pay $26.2 million, in two annual installments, for WNEQ (less whatever amount it's already paid in lease fees). And here's the kicker: If WNED loses the lawsuit and channel 23 has to stay noncommerical, WNYPBA will instead sell WNED's channel 17 to LIN, bumping the sale price up to $31.2 million for the stronger signal. (That's OK, WNYPBA president Don Boswell tells the News, because with DTV the present channel assignments will disappear anyway...though NERW notes that most stations will continue using their NTSC channels as a "virtual" channel number.)
• A final historical note: If LIN does end up with channel 17, it will close a forty-year circle in Buffalo broadcasting history. The present WIVB studios at 2077 Elmwood Avenue were built in the late 1950s by NBC, as a state-of-the-art studio for none other than WBUF-TV 17! When WBUF folded, the building sat vacant for several years before becoming the home of channel 4, then WBEN-TV. The tower out back served as the channel 17 tower for years, until the current WNED/WNEQ site on Grand Island was built.
• With that, we move on to Elmira, where the city's oldest radio station is picking up stakes and moving its studios down the road to Corning. WENY (1230) and WENY-FM (92.7) are joining Eolin Broadcasting's four stations (WCBA AM-FM, WCLI, and WGMM) at the "Radio Works" facility on Davis Road beginning next Monday (Nov. 27). In the process, they'll drop their current formats (oldies on the AM, soft rock "Y 92-7" on FM) and begin simulcasting two of the Eolin outlets. WENY(AM) will join WCLI (1450) as "Two-Way Radio for the Twin Tiers," with a mostly-satellite talk format. On the FM side, WENY-FM will simulcast WCBA-FM (98.7)'s AC format as the "Elmira-Corning Crystal Network," with WCBA-FM's Jack and Bob in the morning.
• We'll leave New York with an interesting rumor: AllAccess says, quoting M Street, that WEVD (1050) could be near an $85 million sale -- and the buyer isn't Clear Channel or Infinity. (NERW wonders: could it be ABC and "ESPN Radio 1050," following on ABC's recent buy of LA's KRLA?)
• On we go, to VERMONT and the launch of a new oldies station. You read it here first (NERW, 10/16/2000): the former WGLV (104.3 Hartford) has moved from its interim sports format (simulcast with sisters WNHV 910 and WTSV 1230) to oldies, under the calls WWOD, "Oldies 104."
• Across the river in NEW HAMPSHIRE, Bob Vinikoor has flipped his WNTK (1020 Newport) from talk to what he's calling "Home Town Music," a mix of classic country, folk, and blues. Fredie Dee is doing mornings on the station, while Rush Limbaugh continues to be heard from 12 to 3, simulcast with WNTK-FM (99.7 New London), where the talk format lives on.
• One story, and one only, from CANADA this week: The AM 1220 outlet in Cornwall, Ontario, vacant since June 1999, is back on the air testing. 1220 was CJSS, but that station and its country format moved to FM (as "101.9 the Blaze"), leaving in its wake an application by owner Tri-Co Broadcasting for a "new" adult standards outlet. To be known as CJUL, "the Jewel," the new 1220 will reportedly make its official debut Thursday (Nov. 24), and we're told personalities such as Jack Curran and Chuck Phillips (of Montreal's defunct CIQC) will be part of it.

New England Radio Watch, November 18, 1995

• As expected, the CBS shareholders voted overwhelmingly (99.5% yes) to approve the $5+ billion purchase by Westinghouse. The only remaining hurdle is FCC approval of the transfer of the CBS broadcast licenses...and THAT will have to wait for the FCC
  to reopen. The New England implications come here in Boston, where Westinghouse will add CBS's WODS-FM ("Oldies 103") to its WBZ(AM) and WBZ-TV. Additionally, Westinghouse will get CBS's newly-purchased WPRI-TV Providence RI, and I believe a minor waiver will be needed because of the overlap between WBZ-TV and WPRI-TV. The most immediate consequence of the transaction will be the disappearance of the "Group W" name after four decades. The entire group of 39 radio stations and more than a dozen TVs will be known as CBS. This is going to take some getting used to... (inevitable disclaimer -- I work for Group W, I mean, CBS, but I do not speak for them).
• A minor correction: The low-power TV in Providence is not officially WRIW(LP), at least not yet. The FCC database still lists it as W23AS. However, the Providence translator of WLNE-TV 6 New Bedford MA is now known as WLNE(LP), from
  W48AE.
• Congratulations to all the winners of this year's "Achievement in Radio" awards, handed out this week. WBZ's David Brudnoy won the A.I.R. Lifetime Achievement Award. Other winners included Kiss 108's Matty Siegel as best morning drive personality, Lady D of Jam'n 94.5 (WJMN) for afternoon drive, and WBMX's Joe Cortese for middays.
• A bit less local programming these days on Boston's business station, WBNW 590 (simulcast on WPNW 550 Pawtucket RI), as Jeannine Graf has departed her 1-3 pm "New England Business" program. Graf says she simply chose not to renew her contract. The program has been replaced by the Dolans from the WOR Network.