July 18, 2011
Merlin Keeps NYC Guessing
Stay tuned to our Twitter
and Facebook feeds for breaking-news updates as they happen!
*GALLUP, N.M. - As we write this week's
column in the midst of a cross-country drive (more on that in
a bit), we're still waiting for the shoes to finish dropping
at the 101.9 spot on the NEW YORK radio dial, where Randy
Michaels' Merlin Media group took over WRXP from Emmis Communications
on Friday.
 Here's
what we know so far: WRXP in its current form came to a close
Thursday, as the jock lineup (Steve Craig, Leslie Fram, Matt
Pinfield, "Drelio") exited the station and said their
on-air goodbyes. The music continued into Friday, when it was
replaced by something called "101.9 FM New," which
at least for the weekend appeared to be a female-friendly hot
AC mix.
The week may also bring new calls to 101.9, which has requested
"WEMP" (perhaps for the "EMPire State"?),
a set of calls more familiar from their longtime use in Milwaukee.
But what of the domain names that were registered for "WYNY"
on 101.9? As always with Michaels and the programmers he's assembled,
it's hard to tell what's smokescreen and what's real until it
becomes official.
Whatever the new 101.9 format will be, it didn't materialize
this morning: the "FM New" programming continued with
longtime 101.9 veteran Paul Cavalconte hosting and former WINS
(1010) traffic voice Jeff McKay giving the traffic information
- but, as of yet, no sign of the news or talk that's been rumored
for the station.
It's just that kind of chaos on which Michaels thrives; in
Chicago, the rumors of his planned flip of WKQX (101.1) to all-news
led CBS to pull the trigger on its own long-rumored addition
of an FM simulcast of all-newser WBBM (780), which will be heard
starting next week on WCFS (105.9), which had been struggling
with the "Fresh" AC format. But CBS appears to be in
no hurry to make a similar move in New York, where its three
FM properties ("Now" WXRK 92.3, WCBS-FM 101.1 and "Fresh"
WWFS 102.7) are finally healthy and profitable after years of
their own format struggles.
One more loose end: the "RXP" branding survives,
as does its sister "Q101" in Chicago, thanks to deals
that Merlin struck to sell that intellectual property to a group
that specializes in barter ad deals for radio. The new "RXP"
continues as a jockless stream at 1019rxp.com.
We'll have much more on Merlin next week, no doubt - as well
as on our Facebook and Twitter feeds, linked above, as news breaks.
 *There was a format
change in Buffalo, too, as Dick Greene's WECK (1230 Cheektowaga)
pulled the plug on his attempt to go up against talk giant WBEN
(930/107.7).
On Tuesday, WECK PD/afternoon host Brad Riter and midday talker
Nick Mendola both lost their jobs, replaced temporarily by Fox
Sports before Friday's format change to "The Breeze,"
an attempt to mix soft AC with some more contemporary tunes.
(Coldplay, for whatever reason, kept getting mentioned as a core
artist of the new format.)
Morning host Tom Donahue, a veteran of Buffalo music radio,
continues with the new format.
*Radio People on the Move: Aaron Read has exited the GM post
at WEOS (89.7 Geneva) after four years on the job - and he's
headed all the way west to become chief engineer at KCSB (91.9)
at the University of California, Santa Barbara. (That explains
why the column is coming from New Mexico this morning; your editor
hit the road with Read, a longtime friend, to help him get to
the West Coast quickly - and to experience the majesty of a coast-to-coast
road trip. Expect some interesting Tower Site of the Week installments
soon...) Back at WEOS, station manager Greg Cotterill has taken
over from Aaron.
In New York, Kristin LaBar has exited weekends at WWFS (102.7).
The Scranton and Allentown radio veteran had been with "Fresh"
since it launched in 2007, and she's now looking for new opportunities.
Where are they now? Melissa Long, who moved on from Rochester's
WROC-TV (Channel 8) to CNN Headline News a few years back and
then to Bloomberg, has landed a new job in Atlanta, where she's
the new 10 PM anchor for the newscast Gannett NBC affiliate WXIA
(Channel 11) produces for sister station WATL (Channel 36).
|
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*Could a new commercial
FM signal be coming to PENNSYLVANIA's largest market?
Family Stations quickly fell out of the headlines after founder
Harold Camping's Judgment Day prediction went astray in May,
followed by Camping's debilitating stroke in June - but alert
observers noted that Family quietly applied last week to change
its Philadelphia-market WKDN (106.9, licensed in Camden, NEW
JERSEY) from non-commercial to commercial status.
Since Family Radio itself isn't commercial, rumors are swirling
that WKDN, which has a big class B signal blanketing most of
the Philadelphia market, might be up for sale, or at least for
trade. It wouldn't be the first time Family has unloaded a big
FM signal; in recent years, it has traded commercial-band FMs
in San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento for AM stations. (And
the rumor mill obligingly notes that Greater Media has recently
upgraded a pretty big AM signal, WPEN 950, that's being underutilized
as a simulcast of sports-talk WPEN-FM 97.5 - or could the other
player be CBS, which did the San Francisco AM/FM trade with Camping
and which would no doubt love to move its Philly sports-talker,
WIP 610, to FM?)
 *Across
the Keystone State, public radio development directors gathered
for their annual convention last week in Pittsburgh, where the
public radio scene has been plenty busy lately.
The gathering produced a big honor for one local broadcaster:
Scott Hanley, the former general manager of recently-sold WDUQ
(90.5), received the Public Radio Regional Organizations (PRRO)
award for his service to the public radio system at WDUQ and
through the JazzWorks programming service he built there. Hanley's
still involved in public radio as one of the voices of the new
Pubradio jazz service that aims to supplant JazzWorks as a source
for jazz on the radio.
*And a new construction permit in Selinsgrove has call letters:
it'll be WFBV on 90.1, the radio voice of the Beaver Springs
Faith Baptist Church.
*Eastern MASSACHUSETTS will continue
to wake up to Matt Siegel and "Matty in the Morning"
on Clear Channel's WXKS-FM (Kiss 108) for a few more years. After
three decades in morning drive, Siegel just won a five-year contract
extension that will carry him to age 66.
In Worcester, the old WTAG (580) morning team of Hank Stolz
and Sherman Whitman has reunited. Stolz moved up the dial to
rival talker WCRN (830) a few years back, and this morning Whitman
joins him to do news. Whitman was laid off from WTAG during February's
round of Clear Channel cutbacks.
*In downeast MAINE, there's a new
owner for silent WRMO (93.7 Milbridge). Charles Begin's Pine
Tree Broadcasting will pay $35,000 to the estate of the late
Lyle Robert Evans for the signal. Begin, a Maine radio veteran
who's now based in Maryland, had apparently been involved with
a low-power AM operation along the coast a few years ago; this
is his first entry into full-power ownership.
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*There's a new signal on the air in CANADA:
the fast-growing "My FM" group has begun testing on
CJGM (99.9 Gananoque, Ontario), with the official launch of the
new signal near Kingston set for July 29 at noon.
And that's it for this slow summertime news week...much more
next Monday when we're back from the road.
|
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, 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: July 19, 2010 -
- For the first time since 1983, there's a new commercial FM
station transmitting from within the NEW YORK City limits. After
some on-and-off testing, Bill O'Shaughnessy's WVIP (93.5 New
Rochelle) last Monday officially turned on its new transmitter
atop the same Montefiore Medical Center residence in the Bronx
that's been home to WFUV (90.7 New York) for the last few years
- and will eventually become home to WFAS (103.9 Bronxville)
as well. From the new site (which replaces WVIP's longtime home
atop a Yonkers apartment building), 93.5's 1750-watt/433' class
A facility throws a 60 dBu signal over most of Manhattan, all
of the Bronx, most of Queens, part of Brooklyn, a big chunk of
New Jersey - and it still reaches most of its old home turf in
Westchester and Fairfield counties, too. But wait - there's more!
The new WVIP signal is in HD, at the newly-authorized -14 dBc
enhanced power level, and at least initially it has HD-2 and
HD-3 subchannels carrying a simulcast of sister station WVOX
(1460 New Rochelle) and a Music of Your Life satellite feed,
though we hear that those will be replaced by leased-time programming
(much like WVIP itself) in the weeks to come.
- (What was the last commercial FM station to move into the
city? That was "Z100," Newark-licensed WHTZ 100.3,
which relocated from the hills west of Newark to the top-top-top-top-top
of the Empire State Building 27 years ago this summer...)
- In Rochester, we're mourning Tom Noonan, whose long run in
Rochester radio included stints at WVOR, WKLX, WBBF (in its later
oldies FM incarnation) and most recently at WLGZ (102.7), where
he'd recently moved from weekends to the weekday 7-midnight airshift.
Noonan suffered a fatal heart attack after his Tuesday-night
shift on "Legends 102.7," and the station mourned his
passing in class, including an on-air tribute in his usual timeslot
Wednesday night. Noonan was 63.
- We close with one more Empire State obituary: newsman Roberto
Cano was known on-air as Bob Ortiz during a career that included
stops at WBAI, WPLJ and most notably at the original WKTU (92.3),
where he was part of the late-seventies airstaff that took the
disco station from nowhere to first place. Cano also worked at
Boston's WBZ-TV in the seventies; he died June 28 and a memorial
service is scheduled for July 24 at 11 AM at Grace Church at
10th and Broadway.
- It turns out that the sale of WGAJ (91.7 Deerfield) that
we reported on last week was just a prelude to a bigger station
transfer in western MASSACHUSETTS: the WFCR Foundation, the nonprofit
group that raises funds and provides support for the University
of Massachusetts' WFCR (88.5 Amherst), is not only buying the
former Deerfield Academy station for $10,000 - it's also ponying
up just over half a million dollars to purchase WNNZ (640 Westfield),
the Clear Channel-owned AM signal that WFCR has been operating
under an LMA since 2007. The WFCR Foundation will pay a total
of $525,000 for the WNNZ license, but Clear Channel will keep
the three-tower transmitter site on Root Road north of Westfield,
leasing it back to WFCR for at least the next ten years. From
that site, the 640 signal blankets most of western Massachusetts
with 50,000 watts by day, but at night it's much more limited,
with just a kilowatt. WFCR's existing program lineup on WNNZ,
which provides a news-talk alternative to the news/classical
blend on WFCR's main FM signal, is expected to continue unchanged.
The sale will leave Clear Channel with one AM station (WHYN 560)
and three FMs (WHYN-FM 93.1, WRNX 100.9 and WPKX 97.9) in the
Springfield market, though there's also a pending application
to relocate WPKX to the Hartford, CONNECTICUT market to the south.
Five Years Ago: July 17, 2006 -
- It was a bad week at NEW YORK's Black Rock - but even more
so for more than a hundred CBS Radio staffers around the country,
including some veterans of the company, whose jobs were cut in
a mass layoff.
- Among the biggest names in New York City to fall under the
budget-cutting axe were Chad Brown, general manager of "Jack
FM" WCBS-FM (101.1 New York) and Rob Barnett, president
of programming at CBS Radio. Out in Los Angeles, where he led
KROQ to revenue dominance, general manager Trip Reeb (a veteran
of Rochester's WCMF, way back when) lost his job.
- WSPK (104.7 Poughkeepsie) has a new morning guy - Chris Marino
moves north from WLDI (95.5) in the West Palm Beach, Florida
market to take the spot last occupied by "Woodman,"
who's reportedly leaving the business. Marino starts his new
gig August 4.
- Across town in Poughkeepsie, the old WKIP (1450) building
at 20 Tucker Drive was demolished last Tuesday. Chief engineer
Bill Draper tells NERW that Clear Channel originally planned
to keep the building (which dated from 1968), but with no easy
way to connect it to the two-year-old studio complex next door
that now houses WKIP and its sister stations, the decision was
made to demolish it and replace it with a new addition to the
current studio building. (Longtime WKIP/WRNQ morning man Van
Ritshie came up from Florida to take the first whack at the old
building.)
- The CBS Radio cutbacks in MASSACHUSETTS claimed several top
sales managers at WBZ, WODS and WZLX; WBMX (98.5) marketing director
Anne-Marie Kennedy - and Edward Hyson, better known as "Oedipus,"
the longtime program director at WBCN (104.1 Boston). Oedipus
stepped down from the WBCN PD chair two years ago, and had been
working as CBS Radio's VP/alternative music, but with the gradual
disappearance of that format from prominence at CBS, it wasn't
hard to see the writing on the wall.
- In RHODE ISLAND, Opie and Anthony's syndicated show has arrived
on WSKO (790 Providence) and WSKO-FM (99.7 Wakefield-Peace Dale),
and that means some schedule changes at "The Score."
Andy Gresh and Scott Zolak move from mornings to the 9-noon slot,
which displaces John "Coach" Colletto from the station's
lineup. (And just as NERW goes to press this Monday comes word
that O&A have also added Buffalo's WEDG, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton's
WBSX and WMOS out on Long Island's East End to their lineup.)
- Up to CANADA we go next, for the latest round of media consolidation
- the C$1.7 billion deal that will make CHUM Ltd. part of the
Bell Globemedia family. BGM already owns the CTV television network,
the nation's largest commercial network, as well as the Globe
and Mail national daily, 17 cable networks and a minority share
in the Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptors. By adding CHUM, BGM immediately
becomes a major radio player, with 33 radio stations in the country's
largest markets. CHUM's 21 cable networks, including MuchMusic,
will add substantially to BGM's cable portfolio.
- As for broadcast TV, here's where things get a little complicated.
BGM will keep CHUM's "Citytv" stations, including flagship
CITY-TV (Channel 57) in Toronto - but it will have to sell off
the "A Channel" outlets CHUM has assembled around the
country, including CHRO (Channels 5/43) in Ottawa/Pembroke, CKVR
(Channel 3) in Barrie and CFPL-TV (Channel 10) in London. As
soon as the deal was announced, CHUM began making deep cutbacks
in its news operations around the country. While Citytv in Toronto
was left mainly intact, we're told there were 22 people cut in
Barrie, where news coverage will be scaled back to focus mainly
on the station's home turf in Barrie and vicinity. In Ottawa,
the "A Channel" noon news has been cancelled - and
the cuts were even deeper out west, where Citytv newscasts were
cancelled in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.
10 Years Ago: July 18, 2001 -
- We'll begin this week in CANADA, where CTV is consolidating
its hold on the broadcast outlets that carry its network signal
across the country. Out in Vancouver, the CTV-owned "VTV"
(CIVT Channel 32) is about to begin carrying CTV network programming
after several years as an independent, and back East, the network
has struck a deal to acquire its Montreal affiliate for a whopping
C$ 121,500,000. CFCF-TV (Channel 12) was part of the WIC group
that merged with Global earlier this year, causing all that shuffling
out west as well. In Montreal, though, Global already owned CKMI
(Channel 46), which meant CFCF needed to be put in trust until
a buyer could be found. CTV and parent BCE were the obvious choice,
since CTV has been on an acquisition spree that's snapped up
almost all of the stations that were once privately-owned affiliates.
(You'd have to look all the way to St. John's, Newfoundland,
we believe, to find the biggest private CTV affiliate remaining!)
What will become of CFCF's distinctive on-air look and its "Pulse"
newscasts when the Great Homogenizers of CTV take over? We suspect
the generic blue set and CTV logo will end up gracing CFCF once
the deal closes...we'll keep you posted.
- We'll cross back to the States in NEW YORK, noting that Buffalo's
WWKB (1520) is still running that business format (with no legal
ID noticed on one recent top-hour break) instead of the promised
70s pop, and there's no sign of Opie and Anthony on WCMF here
in Rochester, either.
- In fact, about the biggest news we can offer this week is
Eolin's conversion of its LMA in Elmira to an outright purchase.
You might recall that Eolin, which operates four stations in
Corning, has been running WENY (1230) and WENY-FM (92.7) for
White Broadcasting under an LMA for a few months now; this week,
Eolin announced it would pay $2.2 million for the pair, which
simulcast news-talk WCLI (1450 Corning) and satellite AC WCBA-FM
(98.7 Corning), respectively. The purchase finally separates
the radio stations from sister TV outlet WENY-TV (Channel 36)
after more than three decades of common ownership.
- Over in Binghamton, Paul Szmal (formerly of Utica's WRCK)
and Maggie Page (formerly of crosstown WYOS) kicked off their
new morning show on Clear Channel's "Mix" WMXW (103.3
Vestal) this morning. Meanwhile, AC competitor WLTB (101.7 Johnson
City) has filed to move translator W273AB (102.5) down from Ingraham
Hill, where WLTB itself now operates, to the old 101.7 site a
few miles west in Endicott.
- A very happy 90th birthday to WTIC (1080 Hartford) institution
Bob Steele, who's still going strong with a monthly Saturday-morning
show, 62 years after joining the staff at WTIC. A check of the
NERW archives reminds us that Steele did promise to retire a
few years ago - but not until his 100th birthday a decade from
now!
15 Years Ago: New England Radio Watch, July 20, 1996
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