August 1, 2011

Rick Buckley Dies

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

*The ranks of major-market independent broadcast owners are a little smaller this week. Rick Buckley, longtime CEO of Buckley Broadcasting, died of a brain embolism Sunday morning, a few hours after taking ill at his Hamptons beach home Saturday afternoon.

Buckley was a second-generation broadcaster, son of former WNEW (1130 New York) executive Richard D. Buckley, Sr., who partnered with WNEW colleague John B. Jaeger in 1957 to form Buckley-Jaeger Broadcasting.

The elder Buckley started his company with the purchase of WHIM in Providence, but soon added a second signal, WDRC (1360 Hartford) - and it was that station that became the core of the Buckley broadcast holdings, which grew to include stations in San Francisco, Seattle, the Los Angeles suburbs and Minneapolis.

Buckley-Jaeger Broadcasting became simply Buckley Broadcasting in 1968, when Jaeger sold his interest in the company, and with the death of Richard Buckley Sr. in 1972, the company ended up in the hands of Rick Buckley, then overseeing sales at the company's California stations, who guided it to success over four decades.

In addition to WDRC/WDRC-FM (102.9) and its eventual Connecticut sister stations, Buckley expanded the company into other markets as close as Syracuse (WSEN/WFBL) and as far afield as Monterey/Salinas and Bakersfield, California - and he took a big gamble in the late 1980s with the $25 million purchase of WOR (710 New York), turning what had become largely a medium-market broadcast group back into a major-market broadcaster with a single big-ticket purchase.

Under Buckley's leadership, WOR carved out a distinctive niche: as an unapologetic stand-alone AM, it's maintained a somewhat old-school on-air sound featuring veteran broadcasters such as Joan Hamburg and the venerable Gambling family even as it's been a technological trailblazer, launching its own national talk network, building a new tower site in the New Jersey Meadowlands, becoming one of the first test beds for HD Radio and leading the eventual flood of stations moving their studios from midtown Manhattan to less-expensive digs in lower Manhattan.

For his accomplishments and his considerable service to the broadcast industry, Buckley received a plethora of honors, most recently his June induction to the New York State Broadcasters Association's Hall of Fame.

Buckley is survived by his wife, Connie, who serves as director of human resources for the company, and by his daughter, Jennifer, who serves as sales manager of WOR, as well as by numerous other Buckley family members who are involved in the family business, including his sister Martha Buckley Fahnoe, a board member, and her son Eric, who's general manager of WDRC and its Connecticut sister stations.

Funeral plans had not yet been finalized as of Sunday night, and of course it's far too soon to speculate on the company's future leadership - though of course even Rick Buckley himself even noted in his Hall of Fame induction speech that he frequently received offers from other broadcasters interested in acquiring WOR, in particular. Without him at the helm, will other Buckley family members be more inclined to cash out while an AM station (and one with among the best signals in the market) is still worth tens of millions of dollars?

*Another longtime NEW YORK broadcaster died last week as well. Robert Lessner was one of the founders of Beacon Broadcasting Corporation in 1967, making WBNR (1260 Beacon) the start of a broadcast group that grew to include WSPK (104.7 Poughkeepsie), WENE/WMRV in Binghamton and WTHT in Portland, Maine. Lessner began his career as a sound engineer (including work on "Candid Camera"), and he appeared on-air at WSPK for many years as "Word Builder Bob" during WSPK's morning show with Mark Bolger. Lessner sold his radio stations in the mid-1990s, but continued to own the Mount Beacon tower site until 2006. He died July 25 at age 77.

*One of the worst-kept secrets in Buffalo radio in recent years has been the plan to sell public broadcaster WBFO (88.7) to its longtime crosstown competitor, WNED. Even before both stations acknowledged way back in February 2010 that they were talking about joining forces, there was little question that the State University of New York was looking to unload its Buffalo radio operation.

It took longer than just about anyone expected, but last week finally brought the official word that WNED's parent, the Western New York Public Broadcasting Association, will pay $4 million for WBFO and its Southern Tier simulcasters, WUBJ (88.1 Jamestown) and WOLN (91.3 Olean), merging those signals into an operation that already includes WNED-TV (Channel 17), classical WNED-FM (94.5)/WNJA (89.7 Jamestown) and news-talk WNED (970), whose programming has increasingly overlapped with WBFO in recent years.

There's no LMA as part of this deal, so the existing WBFO operation on UB's South Campus will continue until the sale closes, probably sometime later this year. When it does close, it's still not clear how much of WBFO's staff will come downtown to WNED's headquarters. With a sale in the offing, the WBFO news operation has succumbed to some attrition in recent years as veterans such as Mark Scott and Mark Wozniak have retired or moved to part-time status, but there's still a solid core of newspeople there, led by news director Eileen Buckley, as well as a small but equally solid group of music programmers who've been largely cut back to weekend duty since WBFO went full-time news and talk on weekdays a few years back. WBFO station manager Mark Vogelzang, who was hired on an interim basis back in 2009, will move on after the sale closes; it's possible that some other WBFO staffers will stay with UB in other capacities.

WNED hasn't yet said how it plans to combine the two operations, but it's widely believed that news and talk will be consolidated on 88.7 using some combination of current WBFO staffers and the equally solid WNED news staff under news director Jim Ranney. And that means questions are already swirling about the future of the AM 970 signal, a highly directional 5,000-watt facility that beams north from a site south of the city in Hamburg, providing decent coverage to Buffalo proper, its north and south suburbs, Niagara Falls and even Toronto, but falling short of usability in the growing eastern suburbs and other outlying parts of the metro. The AM station spent most of its life as commercial WEBR, and it could be converted back to commercial operation with a simple bit of paperwork, thus freeing it up to be sold (along, potentially, with its five-tower transmitter site), recouping at least some of the costs of the WBFO purchase.

*When Andy Roth departed the PD chair at Entercom's WGR (550 Buffalo), the initial speculation was that he was headed to a bigger job within Entercom. The "bigger job" part turns out to be true, but not the "Entercom" part. Instead, Ohio Media Watch reports that Roth is now in place at CBS Radio's Cleveland cluster, where it's believed he'll become the PD of a new FM sports-talker that will replace either classic rock WNCX (98.5) or active rock WKRK (92.3), challenging Good Karma Broadcasting's WKNR (850) and, indirectly, the Clear Channel cluster that holds most of the market's play-by-play rights that are spread across several non-sports stations.

In Rochester, veteran WHAM (1180) program director/station manager Jeff Howlett is out - and that's about as much as we know about what's going on at the Clear Channel news-talker, where officials aren't even confirming that Howlett's gone after just over 25 years with the station. (Howlett himself, who has a long history in Rochester radio, hasn't returned NERW's messages either.) Operations manager Dave LeFrois is handling programming for WHAM and sister station WHTK (1280/107.3).

Another bit of Rochester broadcast history quietly disappeared this month: as the city of Rochester continues to raze the former Midtown Plaza property, work crews recently took down the old WVOR (100.5) antenna and supporting tower that went up on the Midtown office tower back in 1963 when both the station and the plaza were new.

WVOR moved its transmitter out to Baker Hill decades ago, and its studios moved out of their second Midtown Tower location, in the 17th floor penthouse just below the tower, in the 1980s, and now the demolition crew is stripping the tower (which also once housed the studios of WBBF/WMJQ) down to the bare steel as it awaits rebirth as a new office tower.

(As for the other radio history at the Midtown complex, the Forman building that later housed WBBF has already been razed, and demolition is underway now on the Euclid Building where WVOR - and eventually the entire Lincoln Group/Jacor/Clear Channel cluster - later operated.)

*In Syracuse, public broadcaster WCNY is moving forward on plans to make its own studio complex in suburban Liverpool into history. The station long ago outgrew the converted factory space in a nondescript brick building, but its plans to move to a renovated warehouse on the city's Near West Side stalled out a few years ago when state funding failed to materialize. Last week, WCNY closed on its purchase of a portion of the Case Supply warehouse building on West Street, and within a few weeks it plans to start construction on a $20 million project that will rework that building, along with new construction next door, into a broadcast facility that will be as outward-facing as its current, nearly-windowless brick bunker on Old Liverpool Road is inward-facing.

The complex, being designed by WCNY's future Near West Side neighbor, the architectural firm of King + King, is set to open in the fall of 2012. It will include street-level studios for WCNY's radio services, classrooms, performance space and a new master-control hub that will serve not only WCNY-TV but also the rest of the state's public television outlets.

*More upstate TV news: In Buffalo, there's a new identity coming to independent station WNGS (Channel 67), which becomes WBBZ-TV today. New owner Philip Arno says the new calls stand for "Buffalo's Buzz," and that's what he's hoping to create with an ambitious plan to launch a slate of local programming from new studios in the Eastern Hills Mall. The station is moving its current This-TV programming to a subchannel as it affiliates with the growing MeTV network - and that's just part of a sudden burst of new MeTV affiliations up and down the Thruway, as the Chicago-based program service also lands on subchannels of Hubbard's WHEC-TV (Channel 10) in Rochester and WNYT (Channel 13) in Albany. Albany recently added an Antenna TV affiliate as well, on the 51.2 subchannel of WNYA.

In Binghamton, veteran anchor Steve Craig, who's worked at all three stations in town as well as in Scranton (WNEP), Cleveland (WEWS) and West Palm Beach (WPTV), has departed his latest anchor job at Fox affiliate WICZ (Channel 40) to take a new job, effective today, as president and CEO of Commerce Chenango, based in his hometown of Norwich. Craig will be honored September 24 at the Binghamton Broadcasters Reunion as "Broadcaster of the Year."

*There's a new 5 PM newscast coming to the New York City airwaves: WPIX (Channel 11) is joining the early-evening battle in early September, adding a 5 PM show to its existing 6 and 10 PM newscasts. No anchor has been named for the new broadcast so far.

Also in New York City, Craig Fox's Renard Broadcasting Company is selling low-power WMBQ-CA (Channel 46) to Prime Time Partners, for a cool $5.25 million.

*While we're in New York City, there's an ownership change at Inner City Broadcasting, where an investment group that includes Yucaipa, Fortress Capital and Magic Johnson is assuming the company's debt, which had been held by Goldman Sachs. The deal doesn't completely take the founding Sutton family out of the picture at WLIB (1190), WBLS (107.5) and their sister stations in San Francisco, Jackson, Mississippi and Columbia, S.C., but it's not yet clear what their new role will look like.

And as we finish up the column on Sunday night, there's no sign yet of a new format at Merlin Media's WEMP (101.9), where every radio observer on the planet is waiting for the next shoe to drop after the company's Friday launch of "FM News 101.1" at sister station WWWN (formerly WKQX) in Chicago.

Over there, Merlin had a deadline to meet: it wanted to beat CBS Radio's own move to FM, which happens this morning as WBBM (780) begins simulcasting on WCFS-FM (105.9). But in New York, CBS isn't blowing up any of its three successful FMs for a simulcast of WCBS or WINS, so it appears Merlin has more time to get the all-news product (if that's what's coming) perfected in New York before officially launching it.

In the meantime, it's more of the "FM NEW" AC format that's been running for more than a week at 101.9...

*A few more Radio People on the Move: at WXPK (107.1 Briarcliff Manor), Caroline Corley moves from nights to mornings on a permanent basis. She'd been filling in for morning host Rob Arrow after he was injured, and now Arrow moves to Corley's former night shift while keeping his music director duties and continuing to host the morning "10 at 10" segment. Upstate, Steve Smith is the new morning co-host at Family Life Network's stations that span western New York and northern Pennsylvania. Smith comes to the region from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he spent almost 20 years as morning host at KBEZ (92.9).

*Smooth jazz has been fading away on the airwaves for the last few years, and now two of the last smooth jazz outlets in NERW-land have signed off within days of each other.

Central PENNSYLVANIA was the last sizable market on the U.S. side of our coverage area to still have a terrestrial smooth jazz station, WSJW (92.7 Starview) - but it's gone now, replaced late last week by nonstop stunting en route to a new format. "Listenership to Smooth Jazz in this area never reached predicted levels," says the station's placeholder website.

(Early Monday morning, 92.7 flipped to classic rock as "92.7 KZF," with new calls WKZF; an alert NERW reader notes that one more small-market smooth jazz outlet survives in the region, independently-owned WEIB 106.3 in Northampton, Mass.)

Fans of real jazz, meanwhile, have a new outlet in the Steel City: "Pittsburgh Jazz Channel" makes its official launch today at PGHJazzChannel.net, kicking off with a 24-hour Tony Mowod marathon. The new service picks up where WDUQ (90.5) left off before being transferred to the new Essential Public Radio operators a month ago, and it has not only Mowod but several other ex-DUQ'ers behind it, including former WDUQ chief engineer Chuck Leavens, who's running the show now at the PubRadio programming service that includes the Pittsburgh Jazz Channel.

*In Erie, they're mourning one of the market's best-loved radio voices. Frank Martin started out in Erie radio back in 1954 and spent most of his career at WJET, first as a top-40 "Good Guy" at its original home at 1400 on the AM dial and later at WJET-FM (102.3), where he was half of the popular Martin and Warvel morning team. Martin (whose real name was Francis Wambaugh) later went on to WFGO (94.7, now WXBB) before retiring in 2003. Dubbed "The Morning Mayor" by a former (real) Erie mayor, Louis Tullio, Martin was inducted into the hall of fame at the Museum of Radio and Television in 1994. Martin died last Monday after a struggle with lung cancer; he was 85.

Radio People on the Move: Bobby Domingo (aka "Bobby D") moves from WTWF (93.9) to Erie country competitor WXTA (97.9), where he's replacing Truckin' Tom in afternoon drive.

*And the nice folks at Arcadia Publishing are out with another volume on broadcast history. Following close on the heels of a new book of Philadelphia radio images, as well as Donna Halper's excellent Boston compilation, radio historian and engineer Tim Portzline has put together a book of Harrisburg radio and TV photos that's being released today by Arcadia.

EQUIPMENT WANTED FM GEAR NEEDED -- Seeking two-bay low-power FM antennas (Jampro, PSI, Dielectric or others) at 96.5. Also looking for 1 kW FM transmitter, tube type OK. We pay shipping. Contact Allen, dba Alleo, alleo21@yahoo.com or 770-300-9287 (8 AM-9 PM). 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.

*Another college radio voice is disappearing from the RHODE ISLAND FM dial. On the heels of Bryant University's move of its student broadcasts from WJMF (88.7) to an HD subchannel, Brown University's student-run Brown Student Radio is gone from WELH (88.1 Providence) as of today.

The BSR/WELH situation was always an odd one, since BSR didn't own WELH. The station belongs to the private Wheeler School, which leases out most of its airtime to other groups. BSR had been airing on WELH from 9 PM-3 AM daily, but the school terminated that lease-time deal in July, telling BSR it plans to lease the newly-upgraded 88.1 signal to a new 24/7 tenant.

BSR will continue as a 24/7 online service at BSRLive.com.

*And while Bruce Sundlun is being remembered primarily for his late-in-life political role, serving as governor of Rhode Island from 1990-1994, he's being recalled in the broadcast world for his role two decades earlier at the helm of the Outlet Company, where he took a clothing retailer that owned a legacy broadcast signal, WJAR in Providence, and transformed it into a broadcast conglomerate that at one time owned radio stations from Los Angeles to Washington and a sizable cluster of TV signals as well. Sundlun died July 21 at age 91; his survivors include his daughter, Kara Sundlun, who's now an anchor at Hartford's WFSB (Channel 3).

*Our news on a fairly quiet week in MASSACHUSETTS begins on the TV side of things, where independent WSBK (Channel 38) announced this week that it will move its nightly 9 PM newscast, produced by sister station WBZ-TV (Channel 4), to 10 PM when WSBK becomes a MyNetworkTV affiliate in September. The move to 10 will put the WSBK newscast directly against news from Fox O&O WFXT (Channel 25) and the WHDH-produced newscast on WLVI (Channel 56).

Public broadcaster WGBX (Channel 44) has gone HD on its 44-1 channel after testing an HD service on 44-5; the SD feed that had been on 44-1 is now gone.

And on radio, Entercom has now placed its WEEI sports programming on the HD2 subchannels of two of its FM signals, WAAF (107.3 Westborough) and WKAF (97.7 Brockton). WEEI had previously been heard on the HD3 of Entercom's third Boston-market FM, WMKK (93.7 Lawrence), but that subchannel disappeared a while back.

*Clear Channel has been cleared to add another FM to its Hartford, CONNECTICUT cluster: last week, the FCC granted the construction permit to move WPKX (97.9) from its current home in the Springfield, Mass. market. WPKX will change city of license from Enfield to Windsor Locks as it moves its class A signal from Provin Mountain across the state line to the City Place I office tower in downtown Hartford; Citadel's WMAS-FM (94.7) will stay put at its Springfield transmitter site while changing city of license to Enfield. (The FCC has already signed off on another part of this shuffle, which will move Clear Channel's WRNX 100.9 closer to Springfield while upping the power of Hall's WKNL 100.9 in New London.)

*Earlier in the column, we noted that the last smooth jazz signal on the U.S. side of NERW-land has gone dark. But WSJW wasn't the only smooth jazz station wrapping things up last week: in CANADA, where CIWV (94.7 Hamilton) was the last major-market smooth jazz operation remaining, the format's also going away.

In place of the smooth jazz that's been a staple on "The Wave" since the station signed on in 2000, the frequency is flipping this morning to country as "KX 94.7," with new calls CHKX. That's the same imaging as on Durham Broadcasting sister station CJKX (95.9 Ajax) across Lake Ontario, east of Toronto, but the new "KX94.7" won't be a straight simulcast of "KX96" up in Durham Region.

Durham plans to continue "The Wave" as an online streaming service, at least for now - and it's not at all clear what Hamilton's existing country station, CHAM (820), will do now that it once again has an FM competitor. (The last time an FM station challenged CHAM, it responded by flipping to talk, only to return after the FM station, CING 95.3, dropped country for classic hits.)

*In Kingston and vicinity, Michael Lumsden joins the new "My 99.9" in Gananoque as news director. He moves from My's sister station in Pembroke, where Milkman UnLimited reports Laura Earl replaces him as morning host. My has also named a new general manager for Gananoque, Gary Perrin. Meanwhile, Jennifer Yascheshyn becomes the second PD at CTV's CFLY (98.3)/CKLC (98.9) in Kingston to move on to a teaching job. She'll be teaching at Loyalist College in Belleville.

Radio People on the Move in Ottawa: Darryl Kornicky moves from Kingston and mornings at CIKR (K-Rock 105.7) to afternoons at CKQB (106.9 the Bear), while "Brother Bob" Derro, late of the former "Oldies 1310" CIWW, is the new midday man at CJWL (Jewel 98.5).

And in London, Milkman reports Christian station CHJX ("Inspire FM") is about to complete its move from 105.9 to 99.9, which also includes a transmitter move and power increase.

NorthEast Radio Watch is made possible by the generous contributions of our regular readers. If you enjoy NERW, please click here to learn how you can help make continued publication possible. NERW is copyright 2011 by Scott Fybush.