NERW 7/29/2013: “Indie” Time in Toronto

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 30, 2012

*In a year that’s been full of natural disasters from coast to coast, the tornado that cut through Elmira, NEW YORK on Thursday didn’t get much national attention. But the 110-mph, EF-1 twister took a damaging course for the city’s broadcasters, knocking out power to the Hawley Hill TV/FM site on Elmira’s west side and then partially toppling a tower just south of downtown.

The storm’s immediate aftermath Thursday evening found power out in much of the city and most of Elmira’s radio and TV dial dark as a result.

NBC affiliate WETM (Channel 18) was especially hard-hit, losing both power to its transmitter on Hawley Hill and the fiber connection to its hubbed master control at WSYR-TV (Channel 9) in Syracuse. WETM was back on Time Warner Cable screens late Friday, but it wasn’t until Saturday that the over-the-air service (which also feeds satellite viewers and outlying cable systems) was fully restored – and in the meantime, it was ABC/CBS affiliate WENY-TV (Channel 36) providing coverage of the storm to viewers lucky enough to have power.

On the radio, most of the FM dial, including WENY-FM (92.7) on South Hill and WLVY (94.3)/WOKN (99.5) on East Hill, was also off the air Thursday night in the absence of generator power, returning on Friday as power was restored. Pembrook Pines’ WELM (1410)/WEHH (1600) remained on the air from their Lake Avenue studio/transmitter facility just north of the storm’s path.

But the worst damage came just south of downtown on Milton Street, where the city’s oldest AM tower, home to WENY (1230), did not survive the tornado’s fury.

The storm bent the top of the 430-foot self-supporting tower, damaging it beyond repair and taking the 1230 signal off the air indefinitely.

It also ended a long chapter in Elmira’s radio history, dating back to the early 1920s when the Elmira Star-Gazette (the first paper in the Gannett chain) partnered with Cornell University in Ithaca, 35 miles away, to put WESG radio on the air.As a 1000-watt daytimer, WESG was licensed to Elmira, owned by Cornell, leased to the Star-Gazette and operated from studios in both Elmira and Ithaca in what must have been a most unusual arrangement for the time.

It wasn’t long afterward when the newspaper and the university went their separate ways: Cornell kept the 850 facility (moved to 870 in 1941) for what became WHCU, while the Star-Gazette won a new full-time license on 1200 (soon moved to 123o) under the WENY callsign.  It was right about then – 1939 – that the Milton Street tower went up to serve WENY, and it had been there ever since, becoming a landmark for drivers along nearby Route 17.

Now owned by Sound Communications, WENY plans to replace this tower as soon as it can work out the insurance details; it’s not yet clear whether the new tower will be another self-supporter or a guyed tower, or whether it will be as tall as the now-damaged 1939 tower was.  We’ll keep you posted…

(2013 update: A year later, the damaged tower remains in place, complete with dangling upper section. WENY continues to broadcast from the site.)

 *The week’s other big development from upstate New York was up in Utica, where what initially appeared to be an LMA of Roser Communications Network’s two AM signals instead has turned into a sale. CNYRadio.com reports former WKTV (Channel 2) executives Tom Coyne and Frank Abbadessa will pay Roser $350,000 for WUSP (1550 Utica, formerly WUTQ) and WRCK (1480 Remsen, returning to its WADR calls while Roser keeps “WRCK”), along with FM translator W238CA (95.5). Roser moved his soft AC/talk “WUTQ” format from the AM/translator combo to what’s now WUTQ-FM (100.7 Utica) earlier this year, and Abbadessa and Coyne’s “Good Guys Broadcasting Corporation” is already running the AMs and 95.5 under an LMA, programming a mix of sports and leased time.

*In Owego, Dave Radigan had plenty to celebrate last Friday: his WEBO (133o) marked both its 55th anniversary on the air and the grand re-opening of its downtown studios after last year’s flood forced Radigan and his staff out of their storefront studio across the street. The flood came less than five years after Radigan had bought the station and built the new studios (and a new transmitter site, plus a new FM translator at 107.9), and it’s a tribute to his dedication to the Owego community that he’s put everything back together so quickly.

*In eastern MASSACHUSETTS, Clear Channel dominated the news at the start of the week as we – and everyone else – waited for the launch of “101.7 the Harbor,” the new WHBA (101.7 Lynn). Clear Channel’s $14.5 million purchase of the former WFNX evidently took a couple of extra days to close, and so the WFNX webstream kept airing on 101.7 until about 4 o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, when Clear Channel finally took over the facility.

After weeks of intense secrecy about Clear Channel’s plans for 101.7 (pierced only by our discovery of the WHBA calls a week or so ago and Lance Venta’s confirmation a few days later on Radio Insight that the new station would be called “The Harbor”), the reality turned out to be not very surprising at all. When Clear Channel finds a formula that works, it tends to repeat that format around the country – and so the recent launches of adult hits as “the Lake” in Cleveland and Charlotte ended up being pretty good previews of what was coming to Boston.

“Safe” is probably the best description of the new format, which is running jockless and commercial-free for the rest of the summer. It launched with Dierks Bentley’s “5-1-5-0″ followed by the Standells’ “Dirty Water” and Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion,” and the music that’s played since then has all been carefully-tested hits from the 1970s through today, interspersed with liners by actor Ken Hudson Campbell.

It’s about as far opposite as it gets from the modern rock that WFNX played, and ‘FNX (now in its online-only incarnation) isn’t holding its tongue about what’s become of its old FM home: in a Facebook post over the weekend, it referred to “the awful nonsense that now resides on 101.7 FM,” and then went on to take a slap at Boston.com’s “RadioBDC” (where many former WFNX staffers are now toiling) as “that New York-owned corporate newspaper’s knockoff station that hasn’t launched yet.”

So what is there to say about “The Harbor”? Not much more, really: it’s clearly designed to fill the hole for “variety hits” that was vacated last fall when Entercom killed off “Mike FM” (WMKK 93.7) in favor of WEEI-FM. If “Mike” never broke any new ground in radio programming, it was at least cheap to run and reportedly quite profitable, and that’s evidently more attractive to Clear Channel than any of the riskier, costlier moves (FM talk, Spanish, and so on) that it might have made.

“The Harbor” probably won’t do as well as “Mike” did, if only because its signal (a class A facility transmitting from downtown Boston, with only limited coverage outside the Route 128 beltway) is more limited than the class B 93.7 facility. Once it settles in somewhere in the middle of the ratings pack, it probably won’t get written about much in this space, because it probably won’t make much in the way of staffing or programming moves. But it will give Clear Channel’s sales team another set of demographics to sell that’s somewhat older and more male than the Kiss 108 (WXKS-FM)/Jam’n (WJMN) top-40 audience and considerably younger and less male than the “Talk 1200″ (WKOX) audience. (And in the process, Clear Channel no doubt hopes to at least pull a bit of audience away from Greater Media’s WROR (105.7) and WMJX (106.7) and CBS Radio’s WBMX (104.1).

*It’s not often that a local radio station buys a national network, but Boston’s WGBH (89.7) is no ordinary local station, and it could be argued that Public Radio International (PRI) is no ordinary national network these days.

On Thursday, WGBH announced it’s acquiring PRI and will continue to run it independently from the network’s Minneapolis headquarters. PRI is probably best known right now as the U.S. distributor of the BBC World Service, but it lost those rights at the beginning of July to rival American Public Media, the Minnesota Public Radio subsidiary that also produces “Marketplace” and “Prairie Home Companion.” (Confusingly, Minnesota Public Radio was also one of PRI’s co-founders back in 1983, when the network was known as American Public Radio.)

PRI’s most prominent products these days include “This American Life”; “The World,” the daily news hour produced by WGBH and the BBC; “The Takeaway,” the New York-based morning show that’s moving to middays this fall; the CBC’s “Q” and “As it Happens” – and “Here and Now,” the midday show that’s produced by WGBH’s big Boston public radio rival, WBUR.

National program production and distribution is nothing new to WGBH – on the television side, of course, it’s one of the biggest sources of material for PBS. For the radio side of WGBH, which is still trying to define itself three years after taking 89.7 to nearly fulltime news and talk, the addition of PRI promises to be a significant shot in the arm: not only will WGBH get first crack at new PRI programming, ahead of WBUR, but WGBH-produced programming will have a natural path toward national distribution. And that, in turn, promises to make WGBH a pretty important player in an era when public radio stations will be looking for new programming as existing favorites (“Car Talk,” for instance) wind down.

*In eastern PENNSYLVANIA, they’re mourning Joe Tamburro, one of those very rare, very lucky radio guys who managed to spend an entire career at one station. For Tamburro, that station was WDAS (1480/105.3), where he broke in way back in 1964 as a sales guy but soon persuaded station managers to put him on the air as a rare white voice playing R&B music.

Dubbed “Butterball” for his girth – and commonly known simply as “Butter” – Tamburro became a WDAS fixture and an institution in the Philadelphia community. Over the decades, “Butter” served on and off as WDAS’s program director and operations manager. In recent years, Tamburro was focused mainly on reviving WDAS (AM), where he presided over a reinvigorated classic R&B format and had been tracking afternoon drive.

Tamburro died on Friday, at age 70.

*This is the week when CANADA‘s national public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada, is shutting down its remaining analog transmitters, including big ones in cities such as London, Kitchener, Sudbury and (in French) Halifax and Charlottetown. And the CBC is not the only public broadcaster shutting down analog service: last week, the CRTC granted applications from Ontario’s provincial broadcasters, TVO and TFO, to eliminate many of their smaller analog transmitters as well. TVO will silence more than 100 low-power signals in small towns, mostly up north, as well as higher-powered analog services in 14 communities including Kingston, Sudbury, North Bay, Timmins and Peterborough (see the whole list here); TFO will go dark in Sudbury, Hawkesbury, Lac Ste-Thérèse and Pembroke.

Five Years Ago: July 28 & August 4, 2008

*It may be licensed to Hackensack, NEW JERSEY, but Salem Communications has big New York City plans for the former WWDJ (970).

After spending the last 24 years under various iterations of a religious format, WWDJ changed calls to WTTT late last week, swapping callsigns with Salem’s AM 1150 in Boston. (More on that in a bit.)

But the WTTT calls, installed in Boston in 2003 when Salem flipped that station to a talk format, aren’t going to be permanent fixtures on the New York dial. Instead, the station – which is in the process of completing its daytime power upgrade from 5,000 to 50,000 watts – will change calls again, possibly as soon as today, to WNYM, becoming “970 the Apple” and flipping to Salem’s in-house lineup of syndicated talk programming.

The new schedule includes Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America,” followed by Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt. Similar formats have failed to draw significant ratings in other big cities for Salem, at stations such as WNTP (990 Philadelphia), WIND (560 Chicago) and KRLA (870 Glendale/Los Angeles). But even if it doesn’t draw much in the way of numbers in New York, clearing the talk lineup in the nation’s number-one market is likely to allow Salem to charge more for national advertising during the shows – and indeed, many have wondered why Salem didn’t pursue such a format flip sooner.

Why the WNYM calls? There’s a history there – when Salem entered the New York market back in 1981 by purchasing the former WEVD(AM) on 1330, WNYM was the new callsign the company picked. That callsign lasted until 1989, when Salem sold WNYM (which had by then absorbed WPOW, the other half of the old 1330 share-time) and purchased WMCA (570). The former WNYM on 1330 is now WWRV, and continues to transmit from the site in Hackensack shared with 970.

As for that “Apple” nickname, that has a history in New York City, too – a quarter-century ago, it was the new moniker of the former WTFM (103.5 Lake Success), and for a few short years the renamed WAPP had some success as a top-40 outlet and a rocker before going urban as WQHT, “Hot 103.5.” (Today, the 103.5 facility is dancing as WKTU, another venerable New York call, while WQHT prepares to mark its twentieth anniversary on its current frequency, 97.1.)

*Even as the Hackensack station changes its call letters, the total number of religious AM stations in the Garden State will remain constant: Millennium Radio is selling WBUD (1260 Trenton) to the Domestic Church Media Foundation for $2.3 million. Domestic Church, based just across the Delaware River in Fairless Hills, PA, will flip WBUD from its current Fox Sports format, which has been in place only since April, to a religious format once the deal closes. The station is also likely to go non-commercial, we hear.

*Two obituaries from the Empire State: On Long Island, they’re remembering Kevin Jeffries, whose career began at college station WCWP and included stints at commercial stations WHLI, WPAC, WBAB, WRIV, WALK and WLNG. Jeffries also worked for Cablevision as a voiceover announcer. He was 59.

And Sherman Maxwell was known on the air as “Jocko” during a radio career that began way back in 1929, when he began announcing sports on WNJ in Newark. Later heard on Jersey City’s WHOM and New York’s WRNY, Maxwell boasted of being the first black sports announcer in America. While much of his coverage focused on the old Negro League, including a stint as stadium announcer for the Newark Eagles, his career outlasted the league; he remained active on the air as late as 1967. Maxwell died July 16 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, at the age of 100.

*A NEW HAMPSHIRE morning host was abruptly ousted last week. Robert “Woody” Woodland, who’d been hosting the 7-9 shift on WSMN (1590 Nashua), told listeners on July 18 that he’d been fired, and as of Monday, the morning slot was instead home to George Russell, who’d just been hired for 9-11 AM. Woodland had been with WSMN since 2006.

*An historic broadcast facility in CONNECTICUT will soon meet the wrecking ball. “Broadcast House,” part of downtown Hartford’s Constitution Plaza urban revitalization project of the early sixties, has been vacant since WFSB (Channel 3) moved earlier this year.

WFSB is now in new quarters in Rocky Hill, and last week it announced that it had sold the property to Abdul Islam’s AI Engineers, now based in Middletown. AI will pay just $700,000 for the building and land, and Islam says he’ll demolish the 47-year-old Broadcast House, replacing it with a new “tech building,” parts of which AI itself will occupy, leasing out the rest of the space.

*In PENNSYLVANIA’s Lehigh Valley, Rick Michaels and Samantha Layne are back at their old home, morning drive on WODE (99.9 Easton), where they replace Kitty McVay, the surviving half of the Ken and Kitty morning show that broke up in March when Ken Anderson headed for San Francisco’s KBWF. Michaels and Layne had been teamed up at “The Hawk” until last summer, when she moved to Philadelphia’s WBEB and Ken and Kitty (formerly at WCTO 96.1) returned to the market after a three-year stint in Cincinnati. As for McVay, she’s looking for a new radio gig, either in or out of the valley.

Before we leave the Lehigh Valley, we note that Broadcasting & Cable is reporting that the area’s public TV station, WLVT (Channel 39), is raising $53 million to move from its present studio on the Lehigh University campus to a new building to be constructed on the grounds of the Sands Casino and Resort that’s due to open next year. We also note that B&C, once the bible of the broadcasting industry, referred to the station as “WLTV” throughout its report – any copy editors left over there?

*Broadcasters in CANADA are abandoning the AM dial in droves – and now competitors Newcap and Rogers have found a way to swap properties that will allow each of them to get rid of an AM signal, replacing it with an FM.

For Newcap in Halifax, Nova Scotia and for Rogers in Sudbury, Ontario, the CRTC rule limiting a single owner to no more than two FM signals in a market has been a problem. In Sudbury, Rogers has CJRQ (92.7), CJMX (105.3) and CIGM (790), the last remaining AM in the market. In Halifax, Newcap owns CFRQ (104.3), CKUL (96.5) and that market’s last AM, CFDR (780) – and when it purchased CKUL earlier this year, it was unable to carry out its application to move CFDR to FM, which the CRTC had granted in 2007 on the condition that Newcap sell its then-50% interest in CKUL.

So Rogers and Newcap are trading their AMs, giving Newcap a second station in Sudbury, where it owns CHNO (103.9), and giving Rogers a second station to add to its existing news station, CHNI (95.7), in Halifax. Rogers will pay Newcap C$5 million to even out the deal.

And since Rogers and Newcap each own only one FM in Halifax and Sudbury, respectively, there will be no ownership-limit issues with moving both CFDR and CIGM to FM. (CFDR’s application called for 21 kW on 88.9; there’s no word yet on what frequency or power CIGM will seek in Sudbury).

There was another AM-to-FM move in Ontario last week, but CHOK (1070 Sarnia ON) isn’t going silent. Because Blackburn Radio already owns two FM signals in Sarnia, CFGX 99.9 and CHKS 106.3, it can’t flip CHOK completely to FM. It can, however, add an FM booster for in-city coverage, and that’s just what happened last Wednesday (July 23) at 7:10 AM, as CHOK-FM1 signed on at 103.9. The station is now known as “Country 103.9,” and its airstaff remains intact.

The former “Roger, Rick and Marilyn” morning show at Toronto’s CHUM-FM (104.5), more recently “Roger and Marilyn,” is once again at full strength as Darren B. Lamb joins the morning shift; he’d been doing afternoons at CHUM-FM.

Speaking of CHUM, new owner CTVglobemedia is selling the station’s building at 1331 Yonge Street to a developer. Aspen Ridge Homes is paying C$21.5 million for the property, which has been home to CHUM (1050) and CHUM-FM since 1959. There’s no word on where or when the CHUM stations might move – or what might happen to the neon “DIAL 1050” sign that has been part of the landscape on Yonge south of St. Clair for half a century now.

(NERW notes that this will mark the second major studio move stemming from CTV’s purchase of CHUM; the spinoff of former CHUM TV property CityTV to Rogers is forcing that station to move from its own iconic home on Queen Street West after several decades there.)

In Ottawa, they’re mourning two broadcasters who died far too young. CHEZ (106.1) news anchor Cindy Woods-Lunney died July 17 after a long fight with breast cancer; she was 46. And on Friday (July 25), CFGO (Team 1200) lost morning co-host Tim “Buzz” Kilpatrick. He had been in the hospital for about a week after being diagnosed with a lung infection; he was just 41.

Ten Years Ago: July 28 & August 4, 2003

*The news from CANADA this week seems to be the same as the news from Canada last week, and the week before…yet another station has dropped a top-40 format to stake its hopes for higher ratings on the classic hits/hot AC hybrid variously known as “Jack” (the original, developed down on Long Island by Bob “Cadillac Jack Garrett” Perry and friends), “Bob” and “Dave.”

When the CHUM Group does it in places like Ottawa and Brockville, it’s Bob – as listeners to London’s CHST (102.3) discovered Thursday night, when top 40 “Star 102.3” went away and resurfaced as “102.3 Bob FM.” What frontiers still remain for this format? Canada’s #1 market already has it, of course – though there’s an interesting rumo(u)r that CHUM actually contemplated flipping CHUM-FM itself to “104.5 Bob FM” before Rogers beat it to the punch and flipped CISS (92.5) from “Kiss” to “Jack” – but there’s still Montreal and Windsor to conquer. And we’ll be interested to see whether U.S. broadcasters begin taking note of Jack and Bob’s ratings success north of the border and hop on the Bob-wagon.

*Speaking of Toronto, CHIN-1-FM (101.3) is moving spots on the dial. We hear its new 91.9 signal is already being heard in the Etobicoke area; 101.3 will go away soon to make room for the new Canadian Multicultural Rado signal up there. (CHIN-1-FM simulcasts CHIN’s AM 1540 signal, a separate program feed from the big CHIN-FM 100.7 signal.)

*And a launch date has been set for Toronto’s new TV station. “Toronto One” will sign on September 19, promising a program lineup that includes locally-produced entertainment shows, “Monday Night Football,” the Toronto Raptors and Fox’s baseball playoff schedule, the World Series and all. Toronto One will appear for broadcast viewers as CKXT-TV (Channel 52), with a low-power relay on channel 45 in Hamilton. On cable, it’ll show up somewhere below channel 14, though a definite position hasn’t been announced yet.

*The newest radio station in PENNSYLVANIA signed on Friday. WPHD (96.1 South Waverly) is stunting as “Fab 96,” playing nothing but Beatles music for a coverage area that stretches north and east to Elmira, NY; that’s the same stunt that owner Kevin Fitzgerald used to relaunch what’s now “Cozy 104,” WCOZ (103.9 Laporte), a few months back.

*Can you believe it’s 20 years this week since WVNJ-FM (100.3 Newark) sailed (very softly) into the sunset? It was August 1, 1983 when Malrite took over that signal and turned it into a major player in the NEW YORK market – and so we wish a very happy birthday to WHTZ, “Z100,” though we hear there won’t be much in the way of on-air celebration of this anniversary. (Frankly, having just come from a Ringo Starr concert that featured Colin Hay of Men at Work, Sheila E. and John Waite, we’re equally convinced that the audience that loved those tunes on Z100 in 1983 isn’t still listening to the station these days…)

*TV viewers in Utica had two choices last week if they wanted to see local news. This week, they’re down to just one after Clear Channel shut down the news operation at ABC affiliate WUTR (Channel 20), closing the books on a newsroom that’s struggled in second place in the Mohawk Valley ever since the station’s 1970 sign-on. For a little while in the mid-nineties, WUTR almost caught up to dominant NBC affiliate WKTV (Channel 2), but the station’s eventual sale to Ackerley – putting it in the same hands as ABC affiliate WIXT (Channel 9) 45 miles away in Syracuse – put the pieces in place for its eventual demise.

While WUTR got a snappy new graphics package from WIXT, it also lost much of its independence as Ackerley moved the station’s master control and, later, its morning newscast to Syracuse. Weekend news came and went on channel 20, setting in motion a vicious circle that gave WKTV more viewers and WUTR less money to work with. So it was no great surprise on Friday (Aug. 1) when WUTR’s 5 PM newscast failed to appear, and in its place was the WIXT broadcast, with all that news of Oswego and Auburn and Cortland and DeWitt that Utica viewers care so little about. And WIXT’s newscasts are all that WUTR viewers will see now, if they bother to watch. Clear Channel, which bought WUTR and WIXT (and four other upstate stations) from Ackerley, says it will provide additional coverage of Utica-area weather and news on the WIXT/WUTR newscasts – but do WIXT viewers want coverage of New York Mills and Herkimer? (We’d bet not.)

*In RHODE ISLAND, the new owners are touting their plans for WALE (990 Greenville), telling a very gullible Providence Journal-Bulletin reporter some of the tall tales that seem to be endemic to that troubled facility. The ProJo obligingly reported over the weekend that WALE will soon power up to serve an area that will include “Hartford, Worcester and Boston” (does WXCT 990 in the Hartford market know?), and that the calls will change to “WMAX” when the sale closes this fall. (Those calls are already taken, on AM in Bay City MI and on FM down in the Atlanta market.)

Fifteen Years Ago: July 27 & August 3, 1998

*If at first you don’t succeed…shuffle your anchors around and try again. That seems to be the philosophy in MASSACHUSETTS at Boston’s WBZ-TV (Channel 4), where the latest anchor shuffle splits the team of Jack Williams and Liz Walker after almost 20 years together. Here’s how it plays out: Walker will move from co-anchoring the 6 PM newscast to a new hourlong newscast at 5. Williams will anchor the 6 by himself, at least for now (although Virginia Cha is rumored to be joining him there sometime soon), and Joe Shortsleeve gets promoted to co-anchor at 5 and 11. Getting ousted from their evening spots are veteran meteorologist Bruce Schwoegler and anything-but-veteran wrestling-announcer-turned-anchor Sean Mooney. Schwoegler moves to weekends for now, although NERW hears he’s looking at other jobs both on and off the air. Mooney goes to mornings after less than a year as 11PM co-anchor; always-tactful BZ chief Ed Goldman tells the Boston Globe he’s “not going to say we screwed up” by putting Mooney in such a high-profile slot. Ed Carroll, who came to WBZ from Springfield’s WGGB (Channel 40) a few years back, gets the top weather slots at 5, 6, and 11, with Barry Burbank joining Mooney, Suzanne Bates, and Scott Wahle on the morning crew in Carroll’s old spot. At noon, WBZ radio legend Gary LaPierre keeps his TV side gig. NERW’s sorry to see Schwoegler get demoted; as with Williams’ removal from the 11 last year, we don’t see what’s to be gained by taking a well-liked, well-respected broadcast veteran off the air.

*Somebody tell the folks at 5 TV Place they can go home now: This week’s issue of TV Guide has an article about children’s TV, with a mention of the “now-defunct WCVB” in Boston. (Well, it must be — after all, WHDH-TV is alive and well, right?)

*In NEW YORK, the morning team of Mason and Sheehan will soon be history in the Albany market. After moving from WPYX (106.5) to WXCR (102.3 Ballston Spa) last year, the duo apparently failed to provide the ratings boost that the newer rock station hoped for, so WXCR is buying out their contract effective August 31. Across town at WFLY…was the Hillary Clinton banner stunt we told you about last week actually done with the full knowledge of station management? And was the one-day “suspension” of the jocks involved actually a planned publicity stunt? That’s what we’re hearing, and we’re not surprised. And, hey, it landed WFLY a mention in Time magazine this week…

*In the Albany market, funky little AAA WXLE (104.5 Mechanicsville) passes from Foley Broadcasting to the decidedly un-funky folks at Capstar, with a reported $2.6 million going the other way. It joins the former SFX Albany group — WTRY (980 Troy/98.3 Rotterdam), WPYX (106.5 Albany), and WGNA (1460/107.7 Albany) under the umbrella of the Hicks, Muse folks from Texas. Staying in the Capital District for a moment, we note a series of changes at Brian Larson’s religious stations north of Albany, with WNGX (91.9 Argyle) changing to WNGN and the former WNGN (97.5 Hoosick Falls) taking the WZEC calls in preparation for its future as a simulcast of Auritaur’s WBEC-FM (105.5 Pittsfield MA). W04DA in Troy becomes WNGX-LP, just to keep the calls in the Larson family. And congratulations to veteran Albany broadcaster (and friend of this column) Joe Condon of WROW/WYJB. He’s been nominated for “Medium Market Personality of the Year” in the Marconi awards, and you can guess who NERW’ll be rooting for come October. (Other Empire State Marconi nominees: New York’s WQEW (1560) for Adult Standards Station and WSKQ (97.9) for Spanish Station of the Year.)

*In the Hudson Valley, it looks like WVIP (1310 Mount Kisco) won’t go permanently silent after all. Jonathan Becker’s Suburban Broadcasting, which owns WGCH (1490) just over the Connecticut state line in Greenwich, has agreed to pay the estate of Martin Stone $675,000 for the dark station. You’ll recall that WVIP was silenced last fall by a fire that destroyed its studio.

*What’s the callsign, Lowell?: There’s still a lot of confusion over the call letters of the future PaxNet stations upstate. Batavia’s (or, if you’re PaxNet, “Buffalo/Rochester’s”) WAQF (Channel 51) is still listed as such in the FCC database, but on the website at http://www.pax.net it becomes WUPX (which should just thrill the Fox folks at WUTV Buffalo and WUHF Rochester). Syracuse’s Channel 56 appears on the website both under its current WAUP calls and its future identity as WSPX. From what we hear, neither station will be ready for air when PaxNet launches August 15.

*It’s been a while since we’ve had a RHODE ISLAND story, but this week’s NERW features two of ’em: After more than eight years on the air, Mary Ann Sorrentino’s contract with WPRO (630 Providence) isn’t being renewed. Sorrentino was allowed on the air for the first few minutes of her 9-noon shift last Friday to say goodbye to her listeners. Afterward, she held a news conference to express her disappointment with WPRO management, particularly operations manager Ron St. Pierre. Morning host Steve Kass has had an extra hour added to his shift, which now ends at 10, and WPRO is looking for a replacement host for the 10-noon show.

*Down in Newport, WADK (1540) is back on the air after a series of technical mishaps kept it mostly silent for several days. WADK’s transmitter was damaged by lightning in June, and a transformer blew last Friday morning, knocking the station off the air for the weekend. The station was back to normal by Tuesday midday, according to Providence newspaper reports.

*Moving north, we find no news in NEW HAMPSHIRE but plenty in MAINE, where Tryon-Seacoast closed on its purchase of WCME (96.7 Boothbay Harbor), flipping it to a simulcast of Augusta country station WKCG (101.3) at 6 PM Monday. Tryon-Seacoast is itself being bought by Cumulus, but that deal has yet to close.