NERW 12/12/2011: Philadelphia All-News Battle is Joined

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: December 11, 2010 –

There’s a new general manager at Boston’s WBUR-FM (90.9), but Charlie Kravets is a familiar name in eastern MASSACHUSETTS broadcasting, where he spent the last two decades building New England Cable News from the ground up. Kravets was NECN’s founding news director back in 1992, becoming the channel’s president and general manager in 2008 before departing when Hearst sold its interest in NECN to Comcast. And he has deep ties to his WBUR predecessor: like Paul La Camera, Kravets has roots at WCVB (Channel 5), where he was the original producer of “Chronicle” and later assistant news director.

Kravets takes over the helm of WBUR on New Year’s Day; La Camera will stick around as an ambassador for the station and as BU’s administrator of public radio.

Meanwhile, WBUR has launched a new promotional campaign for the station; you can see one of the “UR BUR” TV spots here, and you can read some pithy quotes from your friendly editor in a story about the ad campaign from Saturday’s Boston Globe.

*Our NEW YORK news starts in the Hudson Valley, where veteran morning man Mark Bolger lost his job after Thursday’s morning show at WBWZ (93.3 New Paltz). The cancellation of the “Star 93.3” morning show also left co-host Kimberly Kay without a job; so far, no replacement for mornings there has been announced. There’s a new operations manager at the Clear Channel cluster in Poughkeepsie that’s home to WBWZ, WRWD, WKIP and “Kiss” WPKF: He’s Stephen Giuttari, who’d been PD at WCTK in New Bedford/Providence and WYGY in Cincinnati and was most recently working for Hearst in Seattle. Former CC/HV operations manager Reg Osterhoudt is now the cluster’s director of engineering.

The Buffalo church that was leasing time on Citadel’s WHLD (1270 Niagara Falls) for a black gospel format appears to have found a new radio home. The former “Totally Gospel 1270” will come back on the air on the new WFWO (89.7 Medina), at least according to the church’s TotallyGospel.com website. WFWO wasn’t yet on the air when last we checked, though in October the FCC granted an application to shift the construction permit from Maine-based Positive Radio Network (the folks behind WMSJ in Freeport) to the FellowshipWorld church in Buffalo. FellowshipWorld will pay $10,000 for WFWO, and will presumably get an extra 18 months beyond the current April 22, 2011 expiration date to build out the WFWO CP.

With 2.2 kW/216′ from a site in central Orleans County, WFWO itself won’t put much signal over Buffalo (especially with first-adjacent WFBF 89.9 right in town), but it could provide FellowshipWorld with a platform from which to put translators in town. And as we noted when FellowshipWorld was programming WHLD, there’s another nifty radio connection here: the church’s home at 1420 Main Street is the old Churchill Tabernacle building that was the birthplace of WKBW radio and later the home of the WKBW-TV studios for channel 7’s first twenty years.

Nobody’s been doing more for the cause of CONNECTICUT radio history than WCCC/WWUH engineer John Ramsey, who’s been building up the Connecticut Broadcast History website. Ramsey’s presentation to the Newington Amateur Radio League on radio history in Hartford and vicinity is now on YouTube in four parts via the WTIC Alumni website; check them all out here!

Where are they now? Former PENNSYLVANIA Keymarket programming VP Frank Bell has an exciting new job: he’s the new director of radio and research for 13 Management, working with Taylor Swift. Bell has a long connection to the country star – her father worked for Bell as an account executive back in the day.

It was one of the most recognized station IDs in all of CANADA: “This is CITY-TV, EVERYWHERE!”

The voice behind that ID was silenced last week: Mark Dailey was just 57 when he lost his battle with cancer on Monday, ending a long career as an announcer, reporter and anchor at CITY. Dailey came to Canada from Youngstown, Ohio, where he worked as a policeman before crossing to the other side as a reporter. His first Canadian gig was at the legendary CKLW (800) in Windsor; he came to Toronto to work at CHUM in 1974 and then moved to CITY in 1979, anchoring the 11 PM “CityPulse” newscast, hosting the station’s late movies and of course voicing the distinctive station IDs that made CITY a unique TV station in its heyday.

Five Years Ago: December 10, 2006 –

Progressive talk will soon be history, it seems, in eastern MASSACHUSETTS, as Clear Channel’s continued corporate retreat from the format brings a format change at WKOX (1200 Framingham) and WXKS (1430 Everett), which have struggled to find an audience since flipping from leased-time Spanish (on WKOX) and standards (on WXKS) in October 2004.

Almost from the first day of the new format, rumors began flying about its possible demise. In the last few weeks, as Air America’s financial struggles worsened and other progressive talkers slipped away from the format, the rumors began getting louder. Then, last week, Brian Maloney’s “Radio Equalizer” blog spotted a Clear Channel help-wanted ad for salespeople for the new “Rumba 1200/1430,” and while the company still hasn’t officially confirmed the move, it’s becoming clearer that the progressive talk format will be replaced by Spanish tropical music within the next few weeks.

Much has been written, here and on the message boards, about the challenges WKOX/WXKS faced in finding an audience, most notably a pair of night signals that served only listeners in the MetroWest and north suburban areas, completely missing Boston, Cambridge and much of the rest of the market. Unlike some of the more successful progressive talkers around the country (most notably two other Clear Channel signals, KLSD San Diego and KPOJ Portland, Oregon), WKOX/WXKS never added any local personalities to the national lineup of Air America and other syndicated hosts it carried. In a market so intensely focused on its local politics, many interpreted the lack of local presence as a sign that Clear Channel wasn’t committed to the format in Boston over the long term.

In the end, though, local factors may not have determined the demise of progressive talk on WKOX and WXKS. Instead, it was a national trend within the company, which is in the process of pulling the format off the air in markets from Madison, Wisconsin to Cincinnati to – rumor has it, at least – Los Angeles. With questions arising about the future of Air America as a 24-hour programming network, it’s understandable that broadcasters looking for a turnkey syndicated product are getting uneasy about sticking with progressive talk, and we should note that Clear Channel’s hardly alone in that respect, with companies such as Citadel (in Binghamton) and Entercom (in New Orleans) also dropping the format in recent weeks.

Could progressive talk find a home on another signal in town? There are always “what if” options in play, it seems, and it’s never out of the question that a committed, deep-pocketed investor could purchase WWZN (1510) from Sporting News Radio, for instance, and move the format there. (We’d note that Sheldon and Anita Drobny, who were early investors in Air America before selling their stake, have been trying to grow their new Nova M talk network, for instance.)

There’s a changing of the guard at the helm of Boston’s biggest public broadcaster. After 36 years with WGBH, the last 22 of them as the station’s president, Henry Becton announced last week that he’s stepping down next fall. Becton, who oversaw a huge expansion of WGBH’s local and national production efforts, culminating in the station’s impending move to a new studio facility overlooking the Mass Pike in Allston, says he’ll remain with the station in an advisory role. Effective October 1, 2007, he’ll be replaced by executive VP/COO Jon Abbott as WGBH president.

Clear Channel is consolidating its five FM stations in NEW YORK into a single facility. It’s reportedly signed a 15-year lease for more than 120,000 square feet of space on the first four floors of 32 Avenue of the Americas in lower Manhattan. Sometime next year, WHTZ (100.3 Newark) and WKTU (103.5 Lake Success) will move across the Hudson from their separate studios in Jersey City, while WAXQ (104.3), WWPR (105.1) and WLTW (106.7) will all move south from their separate facilities in Midtown Manhattan. (Clear Channel had earlier planned to move all five stations into the Manhattan Mall, but a lease deal there fell through.)

Syracuse isn’t usually in the vanguard where new formats are concerned, but it gets the distinction of being the first market in NERW-land to get a “Movin” outlet, the Alan Burns-consulted rhythmic AC format that gained early toeholds in Seattle and Los Angeles.

The newest “Movin” is Craig Fox’s trio of FM signals in the Salt City – WOLF-FM (96.7 Oswego), WWLF-FM (100.3 Sylvan Beach) and W243AB (96.5 Westvale), which made the flip from Radio Disney on Thursday. Radio Disney continues on the air in Syracuse on WOLF (1490), WWLF (1340 Auburn) and WAMF (1300 Fulton).

Ten Years Ago: December 10, 2001 –

Listeners to Sporting News Radio in northern NEW JERSEY have long complained about the phasing problems that have made WSNR (620 Newark) almost unlistenable in most of the area. But if the Sporting News flagship is granted its latest application, those problems will be replaced by a powerful signal over the region. In its application, WSNR wants to build seven new towers (painted, lit and 107 meters tall!) in the Hatfield Swamp of West Caldwell, near where US 46, I-80 and I-280 all meet. That’s not very far from the site in Livingston that AM 620 used for much of its life (as WVNJ, WSKQ and WXLX) before losing the land to residential development. Since that site was leveled in 1998, 620 (under later calls of WJWR and WSNR) has used a five-tower array it built just south of WLIB (1190 New York) in the Lyndhurst, N.J. tower farm. But while that site offered decent penetration into Manhattan, it forced 620 to throw a null over the very areas in New Jersey it was licensed to serve. That problem should be solved if WSNR is granted this application, which calls for 8200 watts day (from all seven towers) and 5000 watts at night (from five of the seven). We’ll keep you posted…

We’ll skip down to DELAWARE for the next bit of news: the return of WNRK (1260 Newark) to the airwaves. Local observers had given this one up for dead when it lost its transmitter site to development (detect a theme this week?) and signed off June 25, but we’re happy to report that the station returned to the air November 21. The National Radio Club’s DX News reports this week that WNRK was purchased by John Vincent (owner of nearby WAMS 1600 in Dover), who’s got the station running Christmas tunes from a 197-foot longwire antenna at a site less than 1000 feet from the old WNRK location. The plans for WNRK call for its new 250-watt nondirectional signal to move to a Valcom fiberglass antenna (like the one in use at WSHP 1480 Shippensburg PA and proposed for WGCH 1490 Greenwich CT) sometime next year.

It’s all about history in CANADA this week: Wednesday (Dec. 12) marks the centenary of Marconi’s transmission of the Morse letter “S” to Signal Hill in St. John’s, Newfoundland from Poldhu, Wales, and several big celebrations are planned. The CBC is pulling out all the stops for a “Tuning the World” special that will run from 8:30 AM until 1 PM on Wednesday on Radio One, featuring live broadcasts from around the world. There’s more going on as well on the CBC; check out their special site at www.tuningtheworld.com for all the details. (LATE UPDATE: A labor-management dispute at the CBC forced the cancellation of the live portions of the broadcast; taped segments were heard for much of the day on shows such as “This Morning” and “Ideas”.)

Fifteen Years Ago: December 10-12, 1996 –

Salem Broadcasting is wasting no time exercising its option to buy Boston’s WBNW (590) from Back Bay Broadcasting. As of Sunday morning, December 15, WBNW will drop its business news and talk format to become the latest outlet in Salem’s chain of religious and conservative-talk stations. WBNW was the product of American Radio Systems’ purchase of the call letters and format of the old WEEI (590) in August 1994. At that time, ARS was not permitted to own three AMs in Boston, so it took the WEEI calls and sports format to the former WHDH (850), kept its talker WRKO (680), and sold the 590 facility to broadcaster Peter Ottmar, who also owned WARA (1320 Attleboro MA) and WWKX (106.3 Woonsocket-Providence RI). After a few weeks of rebroadcasting WEEI, WBNW debuted in September 1994 with a mix of Bloomberg Business News, local business talk, and satellite talk such as Bruce Williams.

WBNW’s salespeople were dismissed on Monday, and it’s not clear whether any of WBNW’s other staffers (mostly board operators) will stay on under Salem. WBNW is likely to move from its current studios, the old WEEI facility in the Schrafft Center in Charlestown, to the studios of Salem’s existing Boston operation, WEZE (1260), in Marina Bay, Quincy. Salem will move WBNW out of its studios in the Schraffts Center in Charlestown (where 590 has been located since 1990, when it was still all-news WEEI — how long ago that now seems!), and into the WEZE studios in Marina Bay, Quincy. A published report in the Boston Globe quotes WEZE execs as complaining about the high rent they’ll also inherit for the 590 transmitter site in Medford…but there’s not much they can do about that, NERW thinks. The existing 1260 site, south of Boston in Milton, Mass., would not be suitable for 590.

Fans of the Bloomberg business programming formerly heard on 590 won’t be completely out of luck. WADN (1120) in Concord announced that it will be picking up Bloomberg business reports several times hourly during the day, as well as carrying three hour-long blocks of Bloomberg programming. WADN’s signal outside the western suburbs is spotty to non-existent, though, and the business news isn’t exactly an ideal fit to the station’s nominal format of folk music. On the other hand, WADN is also reported to be in financial trouble, and anything that can draw a few more listeners will probably be tried out there.

One more brand-new station out there: WSHX is now on the air at 95.7 from Danville VT, joining sister stations WNCS (104.7 Montpelier VT) and WRJT (103.1 Royalton VT) as AAA “The Point.” With the addition of WSHX in the Northeast Kingdom region, Northeast Broadcasting now reaches most of Northern and Central Vermont, from just north of Rutland up to the Canadian border. The Northeast Kingdom is getting awfully over-radioed, as WSHX joins existing AM-FM combos WIKE 1490 Newport/WMOO 92.1 Derby Center (locally owned and operated by Tom Steele), WSTJ 1340/WNKV 105.5 St. Johnsbury (which also own WMTK 106.3 Littleton NH), and WGMT 98.3 Lyndon, which holds a CP to increase power and move to 97.7. All that for a few thousand people and a lot of cows…yes, there’s a reason Tom named his FM “WMOO”!

A familiar voice has returned to the Boston airwaves on WROR (105.7 Framingham-Boston). Joe Martelle, the longtime morning host at the original WROR (98.5, now WBMX) began his new afternoon shift at the new ‘ROR last week, after his non-compete agreement with WBMX came to an end. It’s been more than a year since Martelle’s been heard in Boston; he was sidelined by illness, then ousted from his morning spot at WBMX in favor of John Lander.
The holiday spirit is in full swing on the New Hampshire seacoast, as WSTG (102.1 Hampton NH) returns to an all-holiday music format for the second year in a row. “The Stage” used holiday music for all of last December as a transition from its old “Seacoast 102” AC format to the current mix of AC and standards. This year’s run of holiday music started December 1 and will last through Christmas.

Sold!: Clear Channel Communications has closed on its purchase of Radio Equity Partners, creating a new radio-TV combo in the Providence market, as WWBB (101.5 Providence, oldies “B101”) and WWRX (103.7 Westerly, classic rock “WRX”) join CBS affiliate WPRI-TV 12 under the Clear Channel umbrella. The deal also gives Clear Channel WHYN and WHYN-FM in Springfield MA. WHYN is a news-talker on 560, and WHYN-FM is hot AC on 93.1. Congratulations to WHYN PD Gary James and the staff, by the way, for what NERW hears was a phenomenally successful reunion sock hop last month!

Also closed is the deal that transfers news/sports WNEZ (910 New Britain-Hartford CT) from American Radio Systems to Mega Spanish Broadcasters. Look for a format change at WNEZ any day now; we’ll keep you posted.