If Nassau is liquidated, it would be a sudden end to a company that was once the region’s largest broadcaster, at least by number of stations owned – and if the liquidation takes Nassau’s stations off the air, it would mean a lot of dead air for listeners everywhere from the Lehigh Valley to Maine. (We’ll have a full update later this week as we know more about what happens at the hearing.)
“We finally found a grant writer to work with but it’s too late. We’ve tried to explain that the only way WEER could survive was with community support especially in the way of benefactors. We have been unsuccessful in getting that kind of support. We have worked hard to accomplish our mission – to that end we were succeeding. But without benefactor and down the line grant support and the support of businesses and the community WEER has to say goodbye,” said the message.
The “original” VPR network (WVPS 107.9 Burlington, WVPR 89.5 Windsor, WVPA 88.5 St. Johnsbury, WRVT 88.7 Windsor, WBTN-FM 94.3 Bennington and several translators) has become a 24/7 news-talk service, with a new midday lineup that includes BBC news at 9, On Point at 10, The Story at 1 and Day to Day at 2. Meanwhile, the classical programming that was heard in middays on the main VPR network has moved to the new VPR Classical network, with new flagship WOXR (90.9 Schuyler Falls NY), WVTQ (95.1 Sunderland) and WNCH (88.1 Norwich), as well as HD-2 subchannels on WVPS, WVPR, WVPA and WRVT. VPR, which also launched a redesigned website at 
NorthEast Radio Watch 11/18/2024: Sims Gets Yankees Callup
In this week’s issue… Yankees hire Dave Sims - Wallace, Maxwell move in NYC - Gray cuts news in Maine - Remembering CT's Pinto By SCOTT FYBUSH Jump to: ME - NH - VT - MA - RI - CT...
NERW 10/1/2012: Boston TV Picks A “Plum”
In this week’s issue: WMFP takes on “Plum TV” – Barbare out at WAAF – Savage affiliates find Plan B – Remembering Steve Church – Quebec City’s CHRC silenced – TTP seeks Quebec AM growth
By SCOTT FYBUSH
*The last time we wrote about the Plum TV network in this column was back in February, when we noted that “(u)nless you vacation in a high-end hotspot such as Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket or the Hamptons, you’ve probably never heard of” the network aimed at upper-crusters. At the time, Plum’s future looked a little shaky; the network was in the midst of a bankruptcy sale that put it in the hands of a new group called PMG Media, headed by the team that had created the “LX.TV” lifestyle network and sold it to NBC Universal.
This week, Plum gets to play on a bigger stage: effective today, Plum programming moves beyond its traditional home on leased cable channels in ritzy resort areas into full-market coverage in Boston, replacing MeTV’s retro programming on the 62.1 main channel of WMFP-TV. While it’s licensed, ironically enough, to the very un-glitzy, un-resort city of Lawrence, WMFP’s over-the-air signal comes from the centrally-located Needham/Newton tower farm, and the station has cable and satellite coverage across most of eastern MASSACHUSETTS and NEW HAMPSHIRE.
As we’ve noted before, WMFP isn’t really a “TV station” as we’ve come to understand the concept over the last seven decades. In this brave new world of “incentive auctions” and a seemingly insatiable appetite for wireless spectrum, a third-tier operation like WMFP is probably worth more these days for the six megahertz of UHF spectrum it controls than for whatever sort of broadcast revenue it can bring in, which is why it’s widely expected that new owner NRJ TV will seek to cash in on the value of WMFP’s spectrum now that the FCC is ready to move forward with those auctions. In the meantime, though, WMFP still has to be programmed and the power bill on the transmitter has to be paid – so now that MeTV has moved over to WCVB (Channel 5)’s new 5.2 subchannel, it’s Plum’s programming that will be filling WMFP’s 62.1 channel from 7 AM-11 PM daily.
(The RTV retro channel stays put on WMFP’s 62.2, and at least for now, NRJ continues to run MeTV on several of its other stations, including WZME in Bridgeport, CONNECTICUT, serving portions of the New York City market. Might Plum show up there, too, eventually?)
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*In Bay State radio news, there’s a cast member missing from Greg Hill’s long-running WAAF (107.3 Westborough)/WKAF (97.7 Brockton) morning show. In his 20 years with WAAF, Kevin Barbare provided many of the show’s comic impressions, parody songs and other funny bits. He’d been working without a contract since August, and Entercom apparently chose not to offer him a new one, instead sending him packing – and spawning a rather large Twitter and Facebook outcry from his fans.
*Jeff Santos is once again looking for a new home for his progressive talk programming, which has now vanished from the schedule at WWZN (1510 Boston), which is rapidly moving to full-time sports talk with a mix of NBC Sports Network and Yahoo! Sports Radio. For now, an hour of his afternoon show is airing on delay from 6-7 AM on leased-time WRCA (1330 Watertown).
On the North Shore, Costa-Eagle’s WNSH (1570 Beverly) is applying for a power increase, jumping from 30 kW daytime to 50 kW daytime at its existing short tower near the Endicott College baseball field. WNSH will remain at just 85 watts after sunset, and the power boost won’t change the bizarre nature of the 1570 signal: perched on rocky ground near the coast, WNSH blankets the coastline from Cape Cod’s north shore clear up to southern Maine, but its signal dies remarkably quickly as it heads inland.
*As we get ready to ship out the first batches of Tower Site Calendar 2013, it turns out we have a little competition in the arena of “tower-site illustrators.” Randall Munroe’s xkcd.com has long been a favorite of ours for its thrice-weekly mix of “romance, sarcasm, math and language,” and the Somerville-based artist way outdid himself with his recent “Click and Drag,” a massive (165,888-pixel wide!) entire world inside a single cartoon. (After you’ve spent some time clicking and dragging, you can find a zoomable version of the entire thing here.)
The big revelation here, at least for NERW-land, is that Munroe is apparently a closet tower-geek: among the things you’ll spot as you click and drag your way around Munroe’s cartoon world is the KVLY-TV tower in North Dakota, the tallest in the nation – and another hilltop site that, upon closer examination, turns out to be Great Blue Hill in Milton, complete with the observatory and a rendition of the WGBH (89.7)/WKAF (97.7) tower that includes a bit of artistic license: Munroe chopped off WGBH’s main antenna on top, but left its auxiliary/HD Shively there on the left side, very much recognizable, albeit with a bit of extra mechanical beam tilt!
(Could Munroe have been reading our tour of that very site just a few weeks ago?)
*Speaking of competing tower-site illustrators, there’s some big news from our very good friend Mike Fitzpatrick, proprietor of NECRAT.us. Mike’s day job is TV engineering, and starting next week he’ll be doing it as a transmitter engineer for Fox owned-and-operated WFXT (Channel 25) in Boston, a nice move up from his current engineering post at LIN’s WPRI (Channel 12)/WNAC (Channel 64) in RHODE ISLAND. (Congratulations!)
*VERMONT Public Radio’s expansion continued in late September with the official debut of two new signals. WVBA (88.9 Brattleboro) signed on last Monday (Sept. 24), bringing VPR’s main network to a full-power facility in the state’s southeastern corner for the first time. WVBA replaces VPR’s current Brattleboro translator at 94.5. which will slide over to VPR’s classical network once the transition is complete; it also comes with a new Brattleboro studio at the Marlboro College Graduate Center. Over the weekend, VPR held its annual listener picnic in Brattleboro, featuring an appearance from “Splendid Table” host Lynne Rossetto Kasper.
VPR Classical also arrived in the Rutland area earlier in the month, as the network moved translator W223AV (92.5) from the Manchester area over to its Grandpa’s Knob transmitter site, where its 114-watt signal brings classical programming to Rutland and vicinity for the first time.
(It’s less a disclaimer at this point and more a point of pride: your editor served as a consultant to VPR as it plotted its expansion into two statewide networks, and is immensely proud to see those plans become reality. And in addition to writing the column, I’m always available to help your station or network wade through the morass of FCC regulations and navigate a signal expansion or acquisition. Let’s talk!)
*The Vermont Association of Broadcasters has named its 2012 Hall of Fame inductees, and it’s quite a class. Tom Cheek, though best known for his long career announcing the Toronto Blue Jays’ games before his death in 2005, started his career in Vermont (and vicinity) radio at WEAV, WDOT, WJOY and WVMT. Bruce James’ Vermont Broadcast Associates owns much of the radio dial in the Northeast Kingdom, and Paul Sands is the longtime president/GM of WPTZ-TV/WNNE-TV. They’ll be inducted at the VAB awards banquet at the Hilton Burlington on December 1. That’s also where the VAB will present its “Broadcaster of the Year” award to past VAB president Judy Leech, owner of WVNR/WNYV in Poulteney, and its Distinguished Service Awards to WCAX-TV weather forecaster Sharon Meyer and WDEV talk host Mark Johnson.
*Great Eastern Radio is making a format change in southwest NEW HAMPSHIRE today: at 8 AM, it will start simulcasting the country “Kixx” format that’s been a fixture in the Upper Valley at WXXK (100.5 Lebanon) into the Keene market over WKKN (101.9 Westminster VT, which drops its “K-Rock” format.
PD Justin Tyler points out that in a roundabout way, the move brings WXXK back to its original home: before the facility that’s now WKKN moved into the Keene area on 101.9 a few years ago, it was up in Newport on 101.7, where “Kixx” was born in 1988 when the former WCNL-FM changed calls and format. (Kixx migrated to 100.5 in 1997.)
*New calls for southern MAINE‘s new “Hot 104.7”? Indeed: the Mainestream Media top-40 station, licensed to Kennebunkport, has requested new calls WHTP.
*As Clear Channel gets closer to taking control at NEW YORK‘s WOR (710), it will have a new hole on the schedule to fill – and so will dozens of other stations, from Boston’s WRKO (680) to Philadelphia’s WWIQ (106.9) to Pittsburgh’s WPGB (104.7), that have carried all or part of the nightly three-hour talk show hosted by the New York-radical-turned-California-conservative. On Friday, Savage won his lawsuit seeking his freedom from syndicator Talk Radio Network, but at a price: his show was immediately cancelled from the TRN schedule, and Savage will apparently have to stay off the air for a while.
The news broke so suddenly on Friday that most Savage affiliates weren’t prepared with a replacement. In the short term, most of them are expected to stick with TRN, which will be offering replacement hosts in the Savage timeslot; in the longer run, the early evening could offer an opportunity for other players such as Cumulus’ Mark Levin, who’s also live in the same 6-9 PM timeslot Savage used to occupy.
*Up in the Hudson Valley, Savage was heard on delay (9 PM-midnight) after Levin on Clear Channel’s WKIP (1450 Poughkeepsie)/WJIP (1370 Ellenville). That talk simulcast made another schedule change this week: it’s replacing Don Imus in morning drive with a local show, “Hudson Valley Focus Live with Tom Sipos.” Sipos has been hosting a Sunday version of “Hudson Valley Focus” on WKIP/WJIP, and today he takes over the 6-9 AM weekday slot there.
*Imus and Savage and Levin and pretty much anyone else doing telephone talk owe a lot of their success to one man. Steve Church, who died Friday morning at just 57 years old, was a talk show host himself when he became fed up with the lousy quality of the phone company’s interfaces that allowed callers to be heard on the air. But being more than just your average talk host (he was also the chief engineer at the station, Indianapolis’ WFBQ-FM), Church set out to do something about it: he invented the box that became the Telos phone interface, and before long he’d gone from Indianapolis to Cleveland as the chief engineer of WMMS. It was there that he’d meet another engineer named Frank Foti who had a passion for audio processing, and in time Foti’s Omnia processors and Church’s Telos phone systems and Zephyr ISDN codecs would join forces as part of today’s Telos Alliance.
There are two NERW connections here: Foti, of course, went from WMMS to then-sister station WHTZ in the New York market, where he set the world of audio processing on fire. And before Church came to WFBQ, he had a history in Western New York: in the late seventies, he was chief engineer at WBUF (92.9 Buffalo), where he also began his talk career with a weekend late-night talk show.
During his time at Telos, Church’s innovations received just about every honor the industry can bestow. (I interviewed him in 2010 when he received NAB’s Radio Engineering Achievement Award.) In recent years, he’d moved from Cleveland to Latvia to tap into the innovations from Telos’ research center there, though he returned to Cleveland for treatment after being diagnosed with the brain cancer that claimed his life last week.
*In Syracuse, Mimi Griswold is leaving Galaxy Communications at the end of this year after two decades with the company, most recently as its vice-president of programming, a post she’s held since 1998. Citing “a major health scare,” along with other family medical incidents, Griswold says she’s taking some time for herself, but will continue to host the “Blue Moon Cafe” show Sunday mornings on WTKW/WTKV and WOUR, as well as serving as a consultant to the company. No replacement has been named yet, and the VP/programming job isn’t even the only opening at Galaxy: the company is also seeking a program director for WUMX (Mix 102.5) in its Utica cluster, reports CNYRadio.com.
Syracuse’s channel 9 celebrated its 50th anniversary in style on Thursday with a big party on the campus of Onondaga Community College. The station (originally WNYS-TV, then WIXT and now WSYR-TV) brought back alumni from its history for the event, which was open to the public. The ceremonies were taped for later broadcast on channel 9, which is stretching out its celebration in style – the actual 50th anniversary was back on September 9th (9/9- get it?) and the show will air sometime later this fall.
(Peter Naughton, himself a channel 9 veteran, has many more pictures from the big night posted over on CNYTVNews.com!)
*And we’ll be in central New York ourselves before long: the 40th annual SBE 22 Broadcast & Technology Expo takes place Thursday, October 11 at the Turning Stone casino/resort in Verona, between Syracuse and Utica. Once again, Fybush Media will be on the show floor (booth D14), offering slideshows of broadcast technology and history – as well as the hot-off-the-presses Tower Site Calendar 2013. Hope to see you there!
*Radio People on the Move in PENNSYLVANIA: Abby Goldstein, the vice president of programming at New Hampshire Public Radio, is taking on a new job as general manager at WYEP (91.3 Pittsburgh), the community AAA station there. Goldstein will take over at WYEP on November 14th, replacing interim GM Greg Joseph, who’s been filling in since Lee Ferraro’s departure.
Over at Clear Channel’s cluster in the famed “Giant Flash Cube of Green Tree,” Gregg Henson is inbound as PD of talker WPGB (104.7) and sports WBGG (970), as well as cluster content director. Henson’s resume includes stops at KRLD-FM in Dallas and WXYT and WDFN in Detroit; his most recent gig was as PD at WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
*It’s another (mostly) bad week for AM in CANADA. Despite announcing that they’d seek buyers for the last remaining AM signal in Quebec City, and despite openly-expressed interest from two potential buyers of CHRC (800), the owners of “Quebec 800” pulled the plug on the station Sunday night, ending a legacy that dates back to 1926 and putting 14 people out of work. It’s not clear yet whether CHRC’s license has actually been returned to the CRTC or whether a sale to one of the station’s suitors is still a possibility.
Those suitors include Bell Media, which hopes to put a French-language “RDS Radio” sports station on the air in Quebec if it’s also granted permission to flip CKGM (690 Montreal) to French – and also TTP Media, which is building a new French-language talk station on 940 in Montreal and applying for an English-language talker on 600, and which Montreal media blogger Steve Faguy reports is now seeking further expansion.
In poring through Industry Canada filings, Faguy found that the Tietolman-Tetreault-Pancholy partnership has asked the agency for engineering clearance to put another new Montreal signal on the air at 850 on the dial. That’s the frequency long occupied by CKVL, the station founded by Paul Tietolman’s father, Jack, but the younger Tietolman tells Faguy there was nothing sentimental about applying for 850; it just happened to be the last available high-powered AM channel in Montreal. Once it’s submitted to the CRTC, which also must sign off on the application, TTP will be requesting a French-language sports outlet; that, of course, would put TTP on a collision course with Bell’s plans for CKGM, and Tietolman tells Faguy he’d also be perfectly happy to simply buy CKGM if Bell ends up having to shed that signal to stay under the CRTC’s ownership limits.
*Outside urban Quebec, the last remaining full-power AM signal is heading for the FM exits: the CRTC has approved an application from CFLM (1240 La Tuque) to move to FM, running 18.2 kW average DA (32 kW max)/127.3 m.
*In Ottawa, meanwhile, one of the remaining AM signals is growing. Bell has received permission from Industry Canada and the CRTC to boost CFRA (580)’s nighttime signal from 10 kW to 30 kW, a move made possible by the disappearance of other 580s in northern Ontario, eastern Quebec and Nova Scotia.
New call letters? Dan Sys’ “Canadian Radio News” has ’em: the new “Indie 88.1” in Toronto will be CIND, Torres Media’s suburban-Toronto signal at 105.5 in Uxbridge will be CIUX, and up in Alliston, My Broadcasting’s 92.1 will be CIMA.
And My is growing again: Dan also reports the fast-growing small-town broadcaster has struck a deal to buy CHCD (98.9 Simcoe, the FM successor to the old CHNR 1600) from Radiocorp Ltd., further solidifying My’s control of the radio dial outside the larger markets in central and western Ontario. Terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed.
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*You can be one of the first readers to own the 2013 Tower Site Calendar!
This is the 12th edition of our annual calendar, which features photos of broadcast towers taken by Scott Fybush on his travels.
The 12-month wall calendar boasts a full-color photo each month of a well-known broadcast transmitter site.
This year’s edition includes sites in Florida, Wisconsin, Kentucky, California, Iowa, Idaho, Las Vegas, Colorado, Boston, Cleveland, Albuquerque, upstate New York and western Massachusetts. We’ve also redesigned the calendar to make it more colorful (don’t worry; the pictures are still pristine) and make the spiral binding our standard binding — your calendar will hang even better on your wall now! And of course, we still have the convenient hole for hanging.
Order 20 or more for a 10% discount! And while you’re at the Fybush.com store, check out the new National Radio Club AM Log and the final stash of FM Atlas editions.
For more information and to order yours, click here!
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: October 3, 2011 – *The creditors holding the debt for NEW JERSEY‘s Nassau Broadcasting Partners are moving quickly on their attempt to force the company into Chapter 7 bankruptcy and liquidation: they’ve persuaded Judge Kevin Goss of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware to move up a hearing on the petition to this Thursday morning at 10, claiming “there is a genuine concern that assets of the alleged debtor’s estates may be used for purposes other than those directly related to the normal course operations of the alleged debtor’s businesses.” The petition from the lenders, led by Goldman Sachs, says they’re worried that Nassau money may be used “to further the personal and parochial interests of” Lou Mercatanti, who’s run the company since 1986.
*There’s a TV station sale in PENNSYLVANIA: WTVE (Channel 51) is licensed to Reading but serves most of the Philadelphia market through the use of a “distributed transmission system” that employs multiple RF channel 25 transmitters scattered across the region. Richard French, who owns WRNN in the New York market, paid $13.5 million for the station at a bankruptcy sale in 2008. He’ll get $30.4 million from NRJ TV for the signal, and it’s not at all clear yet what NRJ plans to do with WTVE. NRJ recently bought two former Shop at Home stations, Boston-market WMFP and San Francisco’s KCNS, and thus far it has made no change to those stations’ programming. That’s fueled speculation that NRJ is less interested in running TV stations than in reaping the value of the UHF spectrum on which those stations operate; in an interview with TVNewsCheck.com, NRJ principal Ted Bartley (sort of) denied those rumors, saying “We’re trying to buy at a price to operate them efficiently and make money as broadcasters,” but also saying of the possible auction of TV spectrum to wireless operators, “We are certainly not speculating on that as the only way to make money.” *On the other side of the state, there’s a programming change at Pittsburgh’s WINP (Channel 16): the ShopNBC programming that had been running on 16.1 is gone, replaced by the main-channel programming from new owner ion Media. When ion bought the station (formerly WQEX) from public broadcaster WQED, it inherited the ShopNBC contract, but now that it’s over, WINP is taking on the usual set of ion multiplex channels seen elsewhere in the country: ion’s main channel on 16.1, with Qubo and ion Life on 16.2 and 16.3. *It’s been a week of big radio changes in CANADA, starting with the demise of the last high-power CBC station on the AM dial between Newfoundland and Manitoba. With its new FM outlets, CBEW (97.5 Windsor) and CBEW-1 (91.9 Leamington), now on the air and some interference issues with cross-border signals resolved, the CBC shut down CBE (1550 Windsor) early on the morning of October 1, the sixty-first anniversary of CBE’s sign-on in 1950. The sign-off itself happened without fanfare; indeed, the scheduled midnight end to CBE was stretched out for a bit as the station popped back on and off the air several times before finally dropping audio at 12:25, leaving just a dead carrier on 1550 instead of the “tune to FM” audio loop that has accompanied other CBC AM-to-FM moves in the past. Earlier in the day, CBE offered a little more acknowledgment of its move, including segments on CBC Windsor radio and TV newscasts about the station’s history. There was also an open house Saturday at the CBC Windsor studios, part of a national set of CBC open houses to mark the network’s 75th anniversary and Canada’s Culture Days weekend. *While CBE’s passing into history, a Toronto broadcaster is poised to make history with a new station launch today. Fitzroy Gordon’s CKFG (98.7) will make its official debut later this morning, with an 11 AM news conference scheduled to announce the station’s on-air identity. Gordon fought for years to establish a station owned by and serving Toronto’s Afro-Caribbean community, operating his “CARN” on 98.7 for several successful test runs and overcoming objections from the CBC about potential interference to its CBLA (99.1) signal in order to win a license from the CRTC. *One of NEW YORK state’s newest radio stations may also be the next to leave the airwaves. Out on Long Island’s East End, Hamptons Community Radio won a construction permit in 2008 for a share-time operation at 90.7 in East Hampton, a facility it eventually augmented with the acquisition of the former WPKM (88.7 Montauk, now WEER) from Connecticut-based WPKN. But while the Hamptons are home to some of the wealthiest people in America, it’s been a challenge for broadcasters out there to convert their listenership into money. We’ve reported at length on the struggles Peconic Public Broadcasting has faced in converting what’s now WPPB (88.3 Southampton) to local ownership, and for the folks at Hamptons Community Radio, things have been no easier. Last week, Hamptons posted an announcement on its website, saying WEER is shutting down.
The station is holding out hope for a last-minute turnaround: in its farewell note, WEER says it could keep going if it can find eleven other area businesses willing to join one existing sponsor in covering the station’s expenses, which include $4,000 in monthly tower rent. If WEER doesn’t make it, the terms of its $60,000 purchase of the 88.7 facility (which specified payment in 60 monthly installments of $1,000 each) specify that the signal will return to WPKN, which had been using it as a Long Island relay of its main Bridgeport signal; it’s not clear what would become of Hamptons’ two unbuilt construction permits, the part-time WEEG (90.7 East Hampton) and WEEW (89.1 Westhampton). *There’s a new TV newscast in southern NEW HAMPSHIRE, where Bill Binnie’s WBIN (Channel 50, ex-WZMY/WNDS) quietly launched its local news operation last week. “News Now at 10” starts off as a nightly half-hour in standard definition, with Amanda Decker as anchor and Kyle Dennis (rather than longtime channel 50 staple Al Kaprielian) doing weather. Binnie has big plans for the station, including co-sponsoring a Republican presidential debate in Hanover next week. (Bloomberg and the Washington Post are the other sponsors for that event.) Five Years Ago: October 1, 2007 – *A month after the death of beloved MASSACHUSETTS talk host Paul Sullivan, WBZ (1030 Boston) has named a replacement for its weeknight 8-midnight slot – and in keeping with tradition at the CBS Radio-owned news-talk station, it’s an in-house move. “NightSide with Dan Rea” makes its debut Monday night on WBZ, and if it doesn’t sound like a major shift in the station’s sound, that’s the idea, since Rea has been sharing fill-in duties on Sullivan’s old timeslot for months now. (WBZ weekend/swing host Jordan Rich has been the other regular fill-in on Sullivan’s show; he’ll return to his usual duties now.) Rea, of course, is best known to Boston audiences for his 33-year reporting career on WBZ-TV (Channel 4), which included the exoneration of convicted murderer Joe Salvati. But before he joined the TV side in 1974, Rea was a talk host on WBZ radio, so in a sense he’s coming home to his roots by rejoining the AM station. *After years of effort and planning, VERMONT Public Radio achieved a long-held goal Monday morning, as it split its programming into two statewide networks.
*Our PENNSYLVANIA news begins, sadly, with the death of a well-known local tower climber. Dan Plants Sr., whose Daniel Plants Tower Service was based in Triadelphia, WV, was killed last Monday (Sept. 24) when he fell more than 100 feet from one of the towers of WGBN (1150 New Kensington), where he was working on dismantling a self-supporting tower that was to be replaced after being damaged in a thunderstorm earlier this year. Plants, 51, had worked on many of the towers in southwestern Pennsylvania; OSHA is now investigating the fall that killed him. In other Steel City news, the “Man Talk” format at CBS Radio’s WTZN (93.7 Pittsburgh) is over, just six months after “The Zone” was launched in early April as part of the company’s highly-touted “Free FM” talk initiative. On Monday, the station began stunting with Christmas music, while dropping hints about a possible return to the frequency’s heritage with top 40 as “B94” WBZZ. (As we go to press Monday night, there’s a site up at www.pitts-urgh.com that makes copious reference to that “missing B” in the middle…get it?) Out of work are midday host John McIntire, afternoon host Scott Paulsen and late morning host Paul Steigerwald – and off the air, at least for now, are syndicated hosts Opie & Anthony and Dennis Miller. In TV news, PBRTV.com reports that Pittsburgh’s WPXI (Channel 11) will begin broadcasting from its new studios on Evergreen Road on October 6, ending 50 years of TV history at 341 Rising Main Avenue, aka “11 Television Hill,” though that site closer to downtown will continue to be the station’s transmitter site. And up in Erie, WSEE-DT has signed on at full power on channel 16, with CW affiliate “WBEP” now being seen on the 35.2 subchannel there, as well as on cable. Moving east, there’s a call and format change in the State College market, as Forever flipped AC “Lite 99.5” WLTS (99.5 Centre Hall) to adult hits “Magic 99.5” on Sept. 17, changing calls a week later to WMAJ-FM, which nicely matches sister station WMAJ (1450 State College). Ten Years Ago: September 30, 2002 – It was supposed to be NEW JERSEY’s newest radio station, but 14 years after its first construction permit was granted, WKNJ (550 Lakewood) has become radio history — without ever broadcasting so much as a station ID. When the FCC cancelled Steven Wendell’s construction permit and deleted the call letters last week, it ended a story that began back in 1988, when Wendell originally proposed a station in the north Jersey community, just south of the New York state line. Neighbors of the proposed site on the New Jersey side of the line fought the construction, and when the FCC began cracking down on long-unbuilt CPs a few years ago, Wendell tried another tack to get his station built. Changing the community of license to Harriman NY, Wendell modified the CP to specify 250 watts, daytime only, from the existing site of WRKL (910 New City), on US 202 in Pomona, Rockland County. But while WRKL rebuilt its site, adding two towers for night use, WKNJ remained unbuilt. The FCC said last winter that it would cancel the CP (which had been renewed most recently in December 1998), but Wendell appealed, telling the commission this year that he had been unable to build WKNJ because engineers in the New York area had been too busy with the World Trade Center recovery. The FCC didn’t buy it, noting that Wendell made no effort to hire engineers from outside the area, and WKNJ is now officially gone. (The back politics here: WKNJ’s existence would have made the upgrade of WLIE, on 540 in Islip, impossible; while the Long Island station pushed to have WKNJ taken off life support, Wendell filed for another 540 facility, this time in Jaffrey, N.H. That application is still pending….) An obituary to report in PENNSYLVANIA, but the passing of Walter Annenberg ends a broadcast chapter that extended far beyond the Keystone State. Annenberg’s Triangle Broadcasting group was best known for its ownership of WFIL AM-FM-TV (now WFIL 560, WIOQ 102.1 and WPVI-TV 6) in Philadelphia, but it also included WNHC AM-FM-TV (now WYBC 1340, WPLR 99.1 and WTNH-TV 8) in New Haven, Connecticut, WNBF AM-FM-TV (now WNBF 1290, WAAL 99.1, WBNG-TV 12) in Binghamton, N.Y. and WFBG AM-FM-TV (now WFBG 1290, WFGY 98.1 and WTAJ-TV 10) in Altoona, Pennsylvania, among others. Annenberg’s print holdings included the Philadelphia Inquirer and TV Guide, which he founded nationally in 1953. In later years, he served as ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. He died Tuesday (Oct. 1) at his home in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, reportedly of pneumonia. Annenberg was 94. Fifteen Years Ago: October 2, 1997 – Rochester, NEW HAMPSHIRE’s 96.7 unveiled its new format Monday morning, and it turns out to be oldies. The former WSRI is applying for the WQSO calls. Oldies had last been heard on the Seacoast on “Cool 95.3” WCQL (York Center, Maine), which is now hot AC WXHT. The new WQSO keeps Imus in the Morning from its previous modern AC format. There’s a new program director at WEEI (850). Jason Wolfe had worked as the sports station’s assistant sports director. His first big task will be to oversee the new 10-noon talk show featuring John Dennis (formerly of WHDH-TV) and Gerry Callahan of Sports Illustrated, which replaces the Fabulous Sports Babe. The long, strange saga of WVAY (100.7) in Wilmington, VERMONT has taken yet another turn: WVAY is now simulcasting AAA WRSI (95.3) from Greenfield, Mass. This is the fourth station WVAY has simulcast in less than three months. A simulcast with Richard Lightfoot’s WKVT-FM (92.7) Brattleboro ended August 1, when Lightfoot’s option to buy WVAY expired. Since then, WVAY has simulcast three different area stations owned by Jeff Shapiro (WHDQ Claremont NH, WSSH Marlboro VT, and now WRSI), as well as offering its own programming for a brief time when the deal to sell the station to Shapiro stalled. On to NEW YORK, where there’s been a programming shakeup at ARS rocker WCMF (96.5) in Rochester. Nighttime DJ Beth Donahue and afternoon cohost “Bull” are out, with “BJ” going solo in afternoons and Uncle Roger taking over evening dutries. Down the hall at AC WRMM (101.3), evenings are now being handled by Audiovault automation. In Buffalo, a successor has been named to replace Michael Collins as head of the Western New York Public Broadcasting Association. Donald Boswell comes to WNED-AM-FM-TV, WNEQ-TV, and WNJA-FM from North Texas Public Broadcasting (KERA FM-TV/KDTN-TV) in Dallas. He’ll start in January. In the New York market, WXLX (620 Jersey City NJ) is set to go all-sports on Tuesday, and new owner One-on-One Sports has applied for the WJWR calls to go with the new format. And just over the state line in Tunkhannock, Pa., the classic rock format of “Endless Mountains Rock,” WEMR-FM (107.7) has come to an end. WEMR-FM and its sister AM station on 1460 have been sold to Citadel, and it’s now rebroadcasting the CHR format of WBHT (97.1) Mountaintop-Wilkes-Barre. Citadel also owns WARM (590), WKQV (1550), WKQV-FM (95.7), WMGS (92.9), and WZMT (97.9) in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre market. |
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