January 10, 2011

CC Shuffles Mass., Connecticut Signals

• MAINE
• NEW HAMPSHIRE
• MASSACHUSETTS
• VERMONT
• RHODE ISLAND
• CONNECTICUT
• NEW YORK
• NEW JERSEY
• PENNSYLVANIA
• CANADA
• CLASSIFIEDS
• FROM THE ARCHIVES

*Clear Channel is taking another stab at moving one of its western MASSACHUSETTS FM signals south to Hartford, CONNECTICUT - and the latest proposal to move WPKX (97.9) is part of a big batch of applications that could end up affecting at least four stations in the region.

Clear Channel had originally proposed relocating WPKX to downtown Hartford without changing its city of license from Enfield, right on the state line, but that application was withdrawn last year. The new application filed last week once again proposes to put WPKX atop the City Place I office tower in downtown Hartford, but now the station's city of license would change to Windsor Locks, closer to Hartford and more easily covered from the downtown transmitter site.

To maintain the legal fiction of "first local service" to Enfield, Clear Channel has struck a deal with Citadel to change the city of license of Citadel's WMAS-FM (94.7) from Springfield to Enfield; that's all that will change at WMAS, which will retain its present downtown Springfield transmitter site and studios at the Basketball Hall of Fame. (Citadel, in exchange, gets to use a Clear Channel-owned generator at the Sandia Crest master FM/TV site high above Albuquerque.)

The other two stations being shuffled are both on 100.9: Clear Channel's WRNX in Amherst and Hall's WKNL in New London. In order to move WRNX closer to Springfield (presumably to become the new home of the WPKX calls and "Kix" country format after 97.9 moves away, though Clear Channel's not saying as much), Clear Channel needed WKNL to agree to short-spacing.

Here's how that plays out: in exchange for agreeing to the short-spacing, Clear Channel will pay for a new directional antenna that will allow "Kool 101" to upgrade to 6 kW from its present 3 kW. Two other Connecticut stations, CBS Radio's WRCH (100.5) and Clear Channel's own WKCI (101.3), also had to sign off on the short-spacing in order for WRNX to move. Its new site will be on Mount Tom in Holyoke, not at the main tower farm there (the spacings don't quite work) but rather at the site to the north at the top of the ski area that's now home to WFXQ-CA (Channel 28). From there, WRNX will run 870 watts/859' into a directional antenna with significantly improved coverage of Springfield compared to its present 1350-watt/692' site on another ridge to the northeast.

*There's a new program director at WFNX (101.7 Lynn), but he's a familiar face: Paul Driscoll served as music director under former PD Mike Tierney, and now he takes over the PD chair, keeping his nighttime airshift for now.

*One more engineering story out of the Bay State: even as CBS Radio works to move WODS (103.3) from the "FM128" tower in Newton to the Prudential Center in Boston's Back Bay, it's not abandoning FM128, either. WODS is now operating on a temporary basis from the master antenna at FM128, which is shared by sister station WBZ-FM (98.5) and Clear Channel's WJMN (94.5) - and it's applying, along with its sister stations WBZ-FM, WZLX and WBMX, to build a permanent auxiliary site there to provide a backup should WODS, WZLX and WBMX be unable to use their main sites at the Pru.

And on the AM side, WBZ (1030) is boasting something it's never had: a toll-free call-in number. After decades of "254-5678" and then "617-254-1030," WBZ's talk hosts began promoting "888-WBZ-1030" last week. (It must be a CBS corporate thing; Philadelphia sister station WPHT has supplanted its collection of local numbers in Philadelphia, the suburbs and South Jersey with a single toll-free number as well.)

*On TV, Doug Lezette is moving on - of his own volition, he assures NERW - after just over five years as news director and lead anchor at Springfield's WSHM ("CBS3"), where he was on the team that launched the local newscasts there in 2005. Lezette, a veteran of upstate New York TV in Rochester and Albany, is heading to Providence to become assistant news director at WJAR (Channel 10).

*Back to Connecticut: Jason Page is out as afternoon host at Clear Channel sports-talkers WPOP (1410 Hartford) and WAVZ (1300 New Haven). He'd been hosting "The Back Page," heard from 3-7 PM weekdays, but his two-year contract expired on Thursday and he was out the door shortly afterward.

Over in Danbury, Dennis Jackson is selling translator W297BD (107.3) to Berkshire Broadcasting for $175,000 - and that appears to mean an AM-on-FM translator is in the offing for either Berkshire's WREF (850 Ridgefield) or WLAD (800 Danbury), more likely the former. The deal also includes rent-free space for Jackson to install up to two more translators on Berkshire's Danbury tower - and the title to a 2001 Chevy Astro van.

On TV, Geoff Fox is out as the top weatherman at WTNH (Channel 8), where he'd been since 1984. It's the latest in a series of talent cuts at WTNH, which didn't renew the contract of meteorologist Matt Scott at the end of 2010, either. Fox says WTNH has agreed to let him work until the end of his contract in February, and he says he's already getting interest from both inside and outside the market.

*Glenn Beck may originate his midmorning radio show from NEW YORK City, but as of next Monday the show will be without an affiliate there. WOR (710) announced last week that it's replacing Beck with Mike Gallagher in the 10 AM-noon slot and extending John R. Gambling's morning show to 10 AM instead of ending it at 9.

Gallagher has a long history in the market, having been heard locally on WABC (770) before becoming a Salem syndicated talker. He's currently being heard in New York on delay, running in the 9 PM-midnight slot on Salem's WNYM (970), which hasn't yet announced its new nighttime lineup.

As for Beck, WOR PD Scott Lakefield minced no words about the reason he's losing his perch in the city where his show originates: "The reason is ratings," he told the Daily News. "Somewhat to our surprise, the show wasn't getting what we wanted." By our count, WOR is at least the third talker in NERW-land to pull Beck's show in the last few months - there's the high-profile programming shift underway at Philadelphia's WPHT (1210), of course, and the quieter replacement of Beck with Dennis Miller up in New Hampshire at WNTK (99.7), where ratings and revenues also didn't live up to expectations.

Beck has yet to land a new affiliate in any of those markets; in New York, the pickings are slim, since Salem's flagship talker Bill Bennett airs in Beck's late-morning slot at WNYM, while WABC has the last hour of Don Imus followed by local host Joe Crummey in that timeslot.

*Long Island's WBLI (106.1 Patchogue) relaunches its morning show today. Dana DiDonato remains in place from the station's old morning lineup, but co-hosts Drew Applebaum and Randy Spears are gone, replaced by a new sidekick named "Jeffrey," one name only.

*Up the Hudson Valley, we know more about the new morning show starting next week on WBPM (92.9 Saugerties): it's "Robinson and Shannon," and it's a transplant from Rochester. Brian Robinson left his afternoon slot at WCMF (96.5) on Friday to head east, where he'll join fellow Rochesterian Shannon Ealy in the morning slot on WBPM. No replacement has been announced yet at WCMF.

Another new Hudson Valley FM station is displacing at least three translators in the area. The grant of WGNY-FM (98.9 Rosendale) affects W256BI (99.1 Red Hook), which relays WKZE (98.1 Salisbury CT) and which now has a CP to move to 105.9; W255BY (98.9 Poughkeepsie), which relays WNYX (88.1 Montgomery) and is moving to 106.9 next week; and W256BD (99.1 Warwick), which relays WTBQ (1110) and which has an application to move to 93.5.

*Two public radio signals in western New York are getting signal upgrades: in Rochester, the FCC granted WRUR (88.5) an increase from 3 kW/348' to 15.1 kW/378' DA, and construction is already underway to install the new directional antenna for the upgrade, which will keep WRUR on the Pinnacle Hill tower of sister station WXXI. And in Geneva, Hobart and William Smith Colleges' WEOS (89.7) has been granted its CP to slide one notch down the dial to 89.5, slightly increasing power from 4 kW/312' to 6 kW/312' and dropping the directional pattern it now uses to protect co-channel WITR (89.7 Henrietta) in the Rochester area.

We'll have a closer look at all the changes on Pinnacle Hill on Friday's Tower Site of the Week here at fybush.com.

(Usual disclaimer: your editor is a part-time employee of WXXI, which operates WRUR for the University of Rochester and WEOS for Hobart and William Smith.)

*In Syracuse, the final pieces of the WSYR move to FM have now fallen into place. It took a few days for WSYR's new FM home on 106.9 to change the call letters it was using on the air; as late as Wednesday, it was still identifying as "WPHR-FM Solvay" even as its Clear Channel sister station in Florida had flipped from WSYR-FM (94.7 Gifford/Fort Pierce) to WPHR-FM. Now it's WSYR-FM in Syracuse, and we'll see in the months to come whether the simulcast on WSYR (570) is permanent or whether the AM signal will eventually flip to a new format.

As for the former "Power" urban format from 106.9, it's now on WHEN (620) and on WSYR-FM's HD2, where it trades places with the WSYR(AM) simulcast that used to be heard there. We happened across an interesting on-air moment on 620 over the weekend: the Saturday afternoon "Power Perspectives" local talk show spent some time talking about the station's shift from 106.9 to 620, and interspersed with the expected criticism of the move to AM were a surprising number of calls praising the AM station's considerable daytime reach across a much larger swath of central New York than its former FM home.

*Radio People on the Move: in Syracuse, Judy Kelly is departing the Leatherstocking Media Group (WSEN/WFBL) after more than 17 years there, most recently as general manager. SHe's Florida-bound, reports CNYRadio.com, to work at CBS Radio's WEAT (104.3) in West Palm Beach. In Ithaca, WHCU (870) evening news anchor Syl Kacapyr is heading into PR with a new job at the media relations office of Cornell University - and that means an opening for "an experienced newsperson with excellent writing and social networking skills" at WHCU. And that's not the only news opening along Route 96 this week: in Owego, Chris Schmidt leaves WEBO (1330) at week's end to take a new job with the nearby Union-Endicott School District, and that leaves a big hole for a new morning host who can also do news and sports. (And quickly, too, because Schmidt's departure leaves WEBO owner Dave Radigan doing all those jobs in the meantime!)

*Where are they now? Sherman Baldwin made a lot of headlines during his time in Albany and the nearby Berkshires, and now he's returning to the air in Florida. The talk host had been heard on WTMY (1280) in Sarasota after leaving upstate New York last summer; that show ended in December, but starting today Baldwin's "Talk Sarasota" has a new home at brokered WWPR (1490 Bradenton FL).

*Our TV news this week starts with a resolution to the festering dispute that's kept Utica NBC affiliate WKTV (Channel 2) off the Time Warner Cable system there. TWC and WKTV owner Smith Media agreed on new terms over the weekend, ending what had been a particularly nasty fight in which Time Warner began importing NBC affiliate WBRE from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to replace WKTV on cable. Neither side is talking about the terms of the deal, which also returns Smith's WVNY (ABC) and WFFF (Fox) in the Burlington, Vermont market to TWC systems there. (There's no word, meanwhile, on where TWC and Sinclair stand on their carriage dispute, which nearly blacked out Sinclair-owned Fox, MyNetwork and CBS stations in the region on New Year's Eve; a two-week extension of those negotiations expires on Friday.)

*After almost 60 years, North Pole, New York is losing its TV station. WPTZ-TV (Channel 5) has never been physically located in North Pole, and it's been a few years now since the Hearst-owned NBC station first asked the FCC to modify the table of allocations to delete WPTZ from North Pole and relicense the station to Plattsburgh, the much larger city up the road that's always been the station's home base.

The FCC is usually reluctant to delete a community's sole broadcast service, but even the bureaucrats at the Portals could hardly ignore the reality that "North Pole" was never much of a community to begin with, just a post office at the Santa's Workshop tourist attraction - which doesn't even use North Pole as its own mailing address.

Rival station WCAX (Channel 3) across the lake in Burlington, Vermont briefly raised an objection, saying WPTZ's allocation was meant to go to the "Tri-Lakes" (Lake Placid/Saranac Lake/Tupper Lake) area south of Plattsburgh, but it withdrew the objection in December, and last week the FCC finally laid the matter to rest, reallotting WPTZ's digital channel (14) to Plattsburgh and changing the station's city of license. WPTZ's transmitter, of course, has been nowhere near North Pole or Plattsburgh or the Tri-Lakes since the DTV transition - it's now up on Mount Mansfield in Vermont with most of the rest of the market's TV broadcasters.

(And since someone's bound to ask - no, I have no idea how channel 5, originally WIRI, ended up licensed to North Pole in the first place. The earliest listing I can find for the station, in the 1953-54 Telecasting Yearbook, shows a construction permit for WIRI in Bloomingdale, just outside Saranac Lake.)

*In Syracuse, WSYR-TV (Channel 9) is getting ready to launch its local HD newscasts. The Newport-owned ABC affiliate unveiled its new logo last week, and it says it will have the updated look on the air (including a new set) by February. (And no, despite what at least one local wag pointed out in e-mail, there's no direct connection between channel 9's new look and the longtime logo of Schenectady's WRGB, which used a "6" logo for many years that looked just like the new "9" in Syracuse, albeit flipped 180 degrees.

*Richard McCarthy had a very long career on radio and TV in the Hudson Valley, starting out on the air at WKNY and WGHQ in Kingston before his boss in Kingston, Bob Peebles, got hired to run Capital Cities' WROW radio in Albany. Peebles brought McCarthy (known on air as "Richard Hill") to Albany, working as a newscaster and then as a sportscaster on both WROW and sister station WTEN-TV. He stayed on the air at WROW until 1994, when he went to work for Ernie Anastos' WABY (1160), doing afternoon sports, a job he continued to hold well into his eighties. McCarthy died Tuesday (Jan. 4); he was 88.

Al Brumbach wasn't a well-known name in radio, but for listeners north of Albany he was a familiar weekend voice for a while, using the air name of Gene Ryan on WENU in Glens Falls and on WIPS in Ticonderoga - and displaying plenty of dedication for those airshifts, which involved a long drive north on I-87 from New York City, where he worked during the week as a Sanitation Department supervisor. In 1987, he moved to Vineland, New Jersey, where he worked as news director at WWBZ (1270) and did work for the local school department. He died last Monday (Jan. 3) in Vineland at age 63.

And we're sorry to report the passing of a veteran Rochester TV engineer. John Coon worked at WOKR (channel 13, now WHAM-TV) and then as chief engineer at WROC-TV (channel 8) for many years, with a return appearance on the night of June 12, 2009 to turn off the station's analog transmitter for the last time. Coon died Dec. 21 at age 73.

*The Voice of Russia is now being heard in metro New York, by way of a NEW JERSEY-based AM station. Multicultural Broadcasting's WNSW (1430 Newark) switched programming from Spanish religious Radio Cantico Nuevo to the English service of the Moscow-based government broadcaster right after the new year. Radio Cantico Nuevo, in turn, is now being heard on WNYH (740 Huntington NY).

There's a South Jersey format change, too: WENJ (1450 Atlantic City) has flipped from ESPN Deportes Spanish-language sports to English-language ESPN, simulcasting WENJ-FM (97.3 Millville).

And while the drama leading up to the Atlantic Broadcasting bankruptcy filing has largely subsided, some of the headaches continue: we're hearing that phone and water service at the Atlantic headquarters building in Linwood was shut off last week, much to the dismay of WMGM-TV (Channel 40), which occupies the building as a tenant, a legacy of the days when the TV station was co-owned with the radio stations under Howard Green. The TV station is reported to be actively seeking new office space to get away from the problems at its former sister stations.

*One bit of RHODE ISLAND news for the new year: while Pawtucket's AM 550 has yet to return to the air, it has new calls. With the former WDDZ calls having migrated west to Pittsburgh for Radio Disney's 1250 (ex-WEAE), the license for 550 now bears the calls WBZS. Will those be the calls once Salem takes over operations and returns 550 to the air - or could they be parked in Pawtucket en route to a Salem launch of the company's new pet format, business talk, somewhere else?

(The "Net Gnomes" over at RadioInsight.com picked up a few weeks ago on a Salem domain registration for "MoneyRadio950.com," which could point to Salem's WROL 950 in Boston.)

*In TV news, Susan Roberts is the new co-anchor at 5, 6 and 11 PM on Providence's WPRI (Channel 12). Roberts comes to WPRI from the CBS Newspath service, where she was a Washington-based correspondent; she fills the very big shoes left behind by Karen Adams' retirement at the end of December.

*One station sale in MAINE: the Knights of Columbus of Bath are transferring the construction permit for unbuilt WTBP (89.7) to the Presence Radio Network, which operates Catholic station WXTP (106.7 North Windham); the $1,000 sale is part of the Presence network's plan to expand its reach across more of the Pine Tree State.

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*It was a very quiet week in PENNSYLVANIA, especially at the site of WZUM (1590 Carnegie), where the station's transmitting equipment has now been removed, leaving only the three towers that will soon be taken down by Crafton Borough officials who rejected a proposal that would have reactivated the silent station; it will be deleted in March if it doesn't return to the air, and the removal of its transmitter makes a return to the air all but impossible.

Up I-79 south of Erie, there are new calls for Family Life's new station on 90.9 in Cambridge Springs: it will be "WCGF" when it signs on.

Former WXTU (92.5 Philadelphia) morning jock Kris Stevens has a new job in Charlotte, doing middays at Clear Channel's WKKT (96.9). Down the dial at CBS Radio's WPHT (1210), Gary R'Nel is the new evening host starting next week, when he slides into the 7-10 PM slot now home to Dom Giordano, who'll move to late mornings to replace Glenn Beck.

*The news from CANADA this week starts with a format change in southwest Ontario: CJSP (92.7 Leamington) quietly ditched country on Tuesday (January 4) to become adult hits "92.7 Max FM."

Owner Blackburn Radio says that when it signed on CJWF (95.9 Windsor) with country, it found more overlap with CJSP than it had expected, and it's urging country fans in the Leamington area to tune to CJWF or to sister station CFCO (630) from Chatham instead.

In St. Catharines, there's a new morning team at CHTZ (97.7), where Chris Biggs and Jason Barr will launch their "Biggs & Barr" show next Monday. Biggs had worked at Toronto-market stations including CKFM (999 Virgin Radio), CHUM-FM and CIDC (Z103.5); Barr was at CFNY (102.1 the Edge) for almost two decades. Meanwhile, HTZ-FM veteran "Iron Mike" Bensson returns to the station for afternoons.

Up north, there's a new French-language station coming to Nipissing, Ontario, where Paul Lefebvre has been granted a signal on 97.1 with 77.6 kW/447' DA.

In Prince Edward County, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, the CRTC rejected an application for a new FM signal, agreeing with stations in nearby Belleville and Napanee that rather than serving an unserved area, the proposed AAA station on 89.5 would be a competitor to those existing signals in a market that can't sustain another commercial signal.

Across the border in Shawinigan, Quebec (north of Trois-Rivieres), community/campus station CFUT is applying to move from 91.1 to 88.1, boosting power from 250 watts/30' DA to 31.3 kW/499' DA and relocating the transmitter to Mont-Carmel. Another community station on the Gaspé peninsula, CJRG (94.5), is applying to add three more relay transmitters to improve its coverage: 98.5 in Grande-Vallée, 99.9 in Petite-Vallée and 98.9 in Cloridorme.

*And finally this week: happy anniversary to us! It was seventeen years ago this week - January 14, 1994, to be exact - when the first issue of "New England Radio Watcher" burst upon an unsuspecting Usenet. The name has changed, Usenet's all but gone, and the mode of distribution has shifted a few times...but we're still here, and ready to keep going for at least seventeen more, if there's still a broadcast industry to cover come 2028.

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