NYC Translator Makes Next Move

TOWER SITE CALENDAR 2011 - NOW DISCOUNTED!

Maybe you need an extra copy for the wall of your shop. Maybe you gave your first copy away as a gift. Maybe the year just got away from you and you forgot to order your Tower Site Calendar 2011.

Whatever the reason, do we have a deal for you!

We didn't quite sell out of this year's calendar...and so now that it's March, we're offering our remaining supply for just $12 postpaid. (That's a 33% discount from the original list price of $18!)

Tower Site Calendar 2011 features more than a dozen great images of radio and TV broadcast facilities all over the country (and even beyond - this year's edition takes us to Mexico!)

Thrill to a night shot of KFI's new tower! Check out the WAEB Allentown array just after it lost a tower - or enjoy the history at venerable sites like those of KID in Idaho Falls, WCAP in Lowell, KTKT in Tucson and Rochester's Pinnacle Hill.

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

Orders of 20 or more calendars get an even bigger discount. We'll even add a bow or a gift card upon request. But don't wait...supplies are limited, and the calendar will sell out soon!

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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.

One Year Ago: April 26, 2010 -

• After four decades of state support, the NEW JERSEY Network is on the verge of being cut loose. While the public radio and TV system has survived plenty of previous budget crises in the Garden State, New Jersey's new governor made it clear when he took office that he intended to end a state subsidy that currently provides a significant portion of the network's $28 million budget. (The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that New Jersey currently provides a $4 million cash subsidy to NJN, along with $2.4 million in employee benefits and $4.5 million in other resources including the use of state facilities and parking.)
• While NJN is hardly the first public broadcaster to lose its government subsidies, the time frame specified by Governor Chris Christie doesn't give the network much time to find new sources of support. Christie wants NJN to operate without state help as early as January 1, 2011, and he wants to begin the transformation by cutting NJN's $4 million appropriation in half for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. NJN's interim executive director, Howard Blumenthal, appeared before the state senate's budget committee last week to report that planning is underway for the transition, but that some questions remain unanswered - and NERW wonders whether NJN's radio network, a very low-profile cousin to its much better-established TV network, will survive the transition. Might the network of nine stations, with somewhat less than full-state coverage and relatively little local programming, end up being sold to fund the TV network's survival?
• It was a quiet week in NEW YORK, where Fordham University's WFUV (90.7) continues to tweak its signals. Now that the new 2500-watt WFUV booster is on the air from West 31st Street, aimed southeast at lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, WFUV has turned off (at least for now) its other booster, WFUV-2, which had been serving Manhattan's west side from atop Riverside Church in Morningside Heights. Meanwhile, WFUV quickly made good on its promise to add a translator signal in the Hudson Valley: it's now on the air from W233BM (94.5) high atop Mount Beacon, serving the Newburgh-Beacon area and reaching north as far as Poughkeepsie.
• If WCBS-FM (101.1 New York) morning man Dan Taylor sounds a little jet-lagged today, he has a good excuse: it's his first day back on Eastern Time after an unplanned week of shows from London. Taylor was in England for pilot training when that volcano erupted in Iceland, and his scheduled April 18 flight home ended up being delayed for a full week. The show went on from a studio at CBS News in London; meanwhile, BBC Radio 1's Chris Moyles was doing his morning show from Sirius XM in New York after being stuck Stateside when air travel was shut down. Taylor probably got the better end of the deal, starting his show at 11 AM London time while Moyles had to be on the air at 1:30 AM in New York.
• The unbuilt AM station that wanted to move from Vermont to Albany won't get to make that move after all. Alfredo Alonso and Charles Hecht applied back in 2008 to move WVVT (670) from Essex Junction, Vermont to East Greenbush, where they proposed a four-tower array cranking out 15 kW by day and 260 watts at night. But that move drew a protest from adjacent-channel WFAN (660) in New York, which complained that Hecht and Alonso had deliberately taken their ground-conductivity measurements on WFAN at the worst possible time of the year. WFAN submitted its own set of measurements, taken in January, that showed overlap between WFAN and the proposed WVVT. Last week, the FCC sided with WFAN and dismissed WVVT's application for East Greenbush. Hecht and Alonso still have until April 26, 2011 to build out WVVT's original Vermont construction permit, or to come up with a new modification application.
• There's a new signal being tested on the air in CANADA's capital city. Astral's CJOT (99.7 Ottawa) signed on last week with the same adult contemporary music it's expected to be playing when it launches officially soon. There's even a temporary website at ottawa997.com, which may or may not be the permanent home when CJOT signs on for real. CJOT's debut has pushed tourist information station CIIO off the air at 99.7; its English-language service has now moved to 101.9, which had been the French-language signal - but even that's temporary, since 101.9 will soon be occupied as well, by new blues-rock station CIDG (DAWG-FM).

Five Years Ago: April 24, 2006 -

• The end arrived Friday for one of the most publicized morning shows in recent history. After less than five months on the air, CBS Radio pulled the plug on the floundering David Lee Roth show (heard in NERW-land on "Free FM" flagship WFNY-FM 92.3 New York, WBCN 104.1 Boston and WYSP 94.1 Philadelphia). It'll be replaced with a sanitized three-hour simulcast of XM Radio's Opie and Anthony, the duo who brought down the company's last attempt at FM talk when they were in afternoons at WNEW (102.7 New York) a few years back. The show's final two hours will be heard only on XM.
• From the sounds of Roth's show recently, the move was little short of a mercy killing, allowing Roth to escape the battles he's been fighting with CBS management and head out on tour, while giving the former Howard Stern affiliates a more proven commodity in mornings.
• Out on Long Island's east end, the AAA sounds of WEHM have returned - sort of - to their original home. Cherry Creek Radio's been doing some shuffling of its signals in the Hamptons, and it recently moved WHBE (96.7 East Hampton) to 96.9, from a new site about 12 miles west of its original location. With more signal over portions of Suffolk County that can't hear WEHM on the 92.9 Southampton facility (where the calls and format moved a few years ago, flipping 96.7 to WHBE with Bloomberg business news), Cherry Creek decided last Tuesday to pull the plug on the business news at 96.9, in favor of a simulcast with 92.9.
• There's an anchor shuffle underway in Rochester, as veteran WHEC (Channel 10) anchor Janet Lomax moves off the 11 PM news, at her own request. Weekend anchor Jennifer Johnson takes over the 11, while Lomax adds the 5 PM newscast to her existing duties at 6. Those moves in turn take 5 PM co-anchor Robin DeWind off the anchor desk (she's also the health reporter), send morning anchor Nikki Rudd to weekends and move Lynette Adams to mornings. And no sooner were those moves announced than news director Adam Bradshaw landed a new gig in a much bigger market - he's headed here to Las Vegas to become ND at Fox affiliate KVVU (Channel 5).
• A call change in CONNECTICUT: "The Fox" in Norwalk is now legally WFOX. Cox radio parked those very desirable calls at 95.9 in Norwalk last week, replacing WEFX. The WFOX calls had been on Cox's "River" 97.1 in the Atlanta market, which just became WSRV.

10 Years Ago: April 23, 2001 -

• A call swap in PENNSYLVANIA is in the works, with the new CP in Cooperstown getting WHUG-FM, the longtime calls across the state line at 101.9 in Jamestown, New York. Jamestown gets the WMHU calls that were on the Cooperstown CP; we'll have to get down that way to hear whether a format swap is also taking place.
• There's a low-priced station sale to lead off our NEW YORK report: Barnstable is transferring WFOG (1570 Riverhead) to Five Towns College for the lordly sum of $72,000. The station on Long Island's East End has been on and off the air for the last few years; we heard it in February simulcasting rock sister WRCN (103.9 Riverhead). Five Towns apparently plans to change the calls to WFTU, and we presume it will become a student-run station. That's good news for the students at Five Towns, but we've got to wonder: with the price that low, did the folks at Polnet make any attempt to add 1570 to their just-purchased WLIM 1580 down the road in Patchogue? The stations did simulcast years ago (as WPAC and WAPC), and the 1570 reaches a considerably larger Polish community than the 1580 signal (which cost Polnet $850,000!)
• Going way upstate, we hear a Tuesday format change is planned at Utica's "Wow FM" (WOWB 105.5 Little Falls/WOWZ 97.9 Whitesboro), now that the stations are owned by Clear Channel. PD J.P. Marks stays with former owner Ken Roser, helping to run "Bug Country" (WBGK 99.7 Newport Village/WBUG-FM 101.1 Fort Plain/WBUG 1570 Amsterdam). As of late Monday night, WOWB and WOWZ were simulcasting Clear Channel's CHR "Kiss" (WSKS 102.5 Rome); we'll let you know if that turns out to be a permanent move.
• Also in Utica, Nelson Suggs' Bethany Broadcasting is selling religious WVVC (100.7) to the Educational Media Foundation, which owns dozens of religious stations and translators around the country. The $1.25 million purchase of WVVC gives EMF its first foothold in New York.

15 Years Ago: New England Radio Watch, April 23, 1996

• A few weeks ago, I wrote about now-dark WRPT 1050 Peterborough NH, which according to the Commission had applied to "change city of license and power." What we didn't know until know was just how much of a change. It seems WRPT's new owner, Alexander Langer, wants to move the station more than a hundred miles to the southeast, specifically to Foxboro, Mass. (M Street had this erroneously as "Foxboro NH") Langer's application calls for the new WRPT to move to 650 kHz, with 250 watts DA-D, diplexed from the Norfolk MA transmitter/studio site of WDIS 1170. This will be a somewhat tight directional, since Norfolk is just barely north of the 0.5 mv/m contour for WFAN 660 New York. And giving protection to WNNZ 640 Westfield MA and WPRO 630 Providence RI means WRPT's 250 watts will be pointed mostly northeast...which, how about this, just happens to be the direction of Boston! Clever fellow, this Alexander Langer. (He also owns the license for currently-dark WBIV 1060 Natick MA, which has applied for 50kw ND-D, something that can only be possible with WRPT off 1050.) As for the 650 frequency, there was a longstanding CP for WBSO Clinton MA on that frequency. It was to have been a 10kw DA-2 operation, with a decent signal into Boston and a tight null towards NYC. The CP was granted in 1984 and revoked about a year ago, making this possible.
• It seems to me this is one of the more dramatic move-ins of late... comparable perhaps to the still-unconsummated move of WDMV 540 from Pocomoke City MD (on the Delmarva Peninsula) to Brinklow MD (between Washington and Baltimore), or the never-permitted move of WHMA-FM Anniston AL to the Atlanta area a decade or so ago. Admittedly, there's no station licensed to Foxboro MA (the home of the New England Patriots), but it's hard to claim to be the first service to a community when you're diplexed off an existing station's tower. In fact, Foxboro is within city-grade contours of most of the Providence RI stations as well as Boston. (WRPT didn't move to Foxboro, but it did end up in Ashland, where it's now WSRO.)