NERW 12/9/2013: Full-Power, Translator FMs Fight for Spectrum

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 10, 2012

*The average TV viewer in upstate NEW YORK might not have noticed much, but behind the scenes, last week brought some dramatic changes to the dial involving two big group owners.

Nexstar was already an established presence in the region, owning and operating clusters in Rochester and Utica as well as just across the state line in Scranton and Erie, Pennsylvania. When Nexstar closed its purchase of most of Newport Television’s stations, it instantly became a much larger player. Nexstar’s Newport deal adds most of the cluster that was first assembled more than a decade ago by Ackerley, later passing to Clear Channel and then Newport. In Syracuse, Nexstar now owns top-rated ABC affiliate WSYR-TV (Channel 9), which serves as a hub for Watertown ABC outlet WWTI (Channel 50), Elmira NBC station WETM (Channel 18), Binghamton’s ABC affiliate WIVT (Channel 34) and NBC affiliate WBGH-LP (Channel 20). Nexstar’s Utica ABC affiliate, WUTR (Channel 20), was part of the old Ackerley group, too, and now rejoins its old sister station.

Under Ackerley, the group established a master control hub in Syracuse. The Nexstar acquisition will add a new level of hubbing: accounting and traffic for all of Nexstar’s stations in the region are being handled from a new hub at WROC-TV (Channel 8) in Rochester. Our colleague Peter Naughton at CNYRadio.com reports that consolidation meant as many as 20 jobs were lost at WSYR-TV’s East Syracuse facility, including the loss of several part-time photojournalists as well as production and business managers.

The Nexstar/Newport deal also brings two more former Clear Channel Television stations in the region under Newport’s management: CBS affiliate WHP-TV (Channel 21) in Harrisburg, PENNSYLVANIA and its JSA partner, CW affiliate WLYH (Channel 15) in Lebanon. Nexstar’s arrival in the Harrisburg market means the departure of Holly Steuart, who’d been GM at those stations under Newport; Steuart had also worked at WROC-TV in Rochester before moving to Harrisburg.

Nexstar still has another deal yet to close: it’s also acquiring Fox affiliate WFFF (Channel 44) and WVNY (Channel 22) in Burlington, Vermont, adding to what’s now a large regional footprint.

*While we knew Nexstar’s closing on the Newport stations was just a matter of time, the week’s other big deal came as a surprise – even, apparently, to Nexstar itself. This piece of the puzzle involves the last station remaining in the Newport family, ABC affiliate WHAM-TV (Channel 13) in Rochester. Because Nexstar already owned WROC in Rochester and operated Sinclair-owned Fox affiliate WUHF (Channel 31) under a joint sales agreement (JSA), it appeared that WHAM-TV would have to go to a different buyer. What nobody at Nexstar appears to have expected was that the “different buyer” would be its own JSA partner in Rochester, Sinclair, which paid $54 million on Monday and immediately took over the “non-license assets” of WHAM-TV.

Confused yet? No more so than the business pages that obligingly reported Sinclair’s official statement that it had no plans to alter its WUHF arrangement with WROC, leaving the station Sinclair actually owns, WUHF, being operated by a competitor to WHAM-TV, the station Sinclair will operate but not own. Even in the tangled web that is modern television group ownership, that’s a bizarre situation indeed, and NERW can confirm it won’t last very long.

Here’s what’s really about to happen in Rochester TV:

Nexstar’s JSA with WUHF began in September 2005, when Sinclair moved WUHF out of the East Avenue studios it had occupied for a quarter-century, shutting down its own local newsroom and relocating WUHF to WROC’s historic Humboldt Street studios. The original JSA was a seven-year deal, and as its expiration approached earlier this year, the two companies renewed the arrangement through the end of 2013.

But NERW has learned there’s a clause in that deal that allows either company to exit the JSA with advance notice – and so sometime in mid-2013, Sinclair will pull WUHF out of WROC’s Humboldt Street facility and move it over to WHAM-TV’s Henrietta studios. WUHF’s Fox affiliation and its syndicated programming (purchased by Sinclair) won’t change, but viewers will notice one immediate difference: instead of a 10 PM newscast produced by the WROC newsroom under contract to WUHF, Sinclair’s own WHAM-TV newsroom will be producing the Fox newscast. (WHAM already does a 10 PM show, which now airs on its CW subchannel.)

In the meantime, WROC and Nexstar will spend the first half of 2013 in the uncomfortable position of providing services to a soon-to-be-competitor, not just in the newsroom but also in master control. Under Ackerley, Clear Channel and Newport, WHAM-TV’s master control was hubbed in Syracuse at WSYR-TV; until a new master control can be built for Sinclair’s new Rochester operation, WHAM’s master control remains in Syracuse being operated under contract by Nexstar.

Over at WHAM, Sinclair’s arrival doesn’t appear to mean any major staffing changes, and may even mean more investment in the newsroom now that it will be serving a second station. And what becomes of the actual WHAM-TV license, which Sinclair can’t own as long as it has WUHF? An application was filed with the FCC on Friday to transfer the license to Deerfield Media, the arms-length Sinclair sister company that functions as a shell company in many Sinclair markets. Deerfield will pay $6 million for the license, and will grant Sinclair a five-year option to purchase the WHAM license.

For Sinclair, then, the week’s deals result in an upgrade from the junior partner in a JSA with a competitor, to becoming the operator of two stations, including top-rated WHAM-TV. For Nexstar, it means the loss of what appears to have been a nice stream of JSA revenue from WUHF; even so, WROC’s strong CBS affiliation and a resurgent local news operation should continue to keep the station in decent shape. (NERW wonders: once WUHF has left the building, will Nexstar seek to partner with the other remaining standalone in town, Hubbard-owned NBC affiliate WHEC? And in retrospect, if Nexstar had known it would end up as a standalone player in Rochester anyway, might it have made more sense for Nexstar to acquire WHAM as part of the Newport purchase, instead selling WROC to Sinclair?)

*And we remember Don Decker, whose long career in upstate broadcasting started at WCSS (1490 Amsterdam) in the 1950s, then took him to WSNY in Schenectady and WTRY in Troy before he landed at WGY (810) and WRGB (Channel 6) in Schenectady, where he rose to become news director in 1968. Decker later worked as news director at WAMC (90.3) and then at WTEN (Channel 10) before retiring in 1998. Decker launched the careers of many of Albany’s best-known TV newspeople, not to mention the market’s first hour-long evening newscast during WRGB’s dominant years in the 1970s. Decker died Monday at 79 following a fight with cancer.

*If Decker could be considered a contender for the title of “Dean of Albany News,” there was no argument about who was true “Dean of CONNECTICUT Sports.” That was Arnold Dean, who joined the staff of WTIC (1080 Hartford) in 1965 after starting his career at WKRT (920) in his native Cortland, New York, where he was born Arnold D’Angelo. Dean wore many hats in his early years at WTIC, indulging his passion for jazz as the host of several music shows. By 1976, he’d settled into a very comfortable role as the station’s evening sports talk host. Dean’s tenure at WTIC was exceeded by only one other announcer – and nobody’s ever likely to top the legendary Bob Steele’s amazing six-decade run at the station. Like Steele, Dean gradually tapered back his work on WTIC without ever completely leaving the station. Dean was on the air just two weeks before his death on Saturday; he was 82.

*One of eastern PENNSYLVANIA’s most interesting college stations is being sold. Lehigh Carbon Community College has agreed to sell WXLV (90.3 Schnecksville) to Four Rivers Community Broadcasting for $705,000, and that means WXLV’s eclectic programming will soon give way to a relay of Four Rivers’ “Word FM,” already heard in parts of the Lehigh Valley on flagship WBYO (88.9 Sellersville). (Much more on this over at Radio Survivor, which has been tracking WXLV’s travails for several years now…)

Five Years Ago: December 8, 2008

The last time the Opie and Anthony Show was pulled from the airwaves of eastern MASSACHUSETTS, back in 1998, it was big headline news: the then-WAAF (107.3) morning team had staged an April Fool’s Day prank in which they claimed Boston mayor Tom Menino had been killed in a car crash. The duo kept making headlines after that – they moved on to a high-profile morning slot at New York’s WNEW (102.7), then lost that job (including a syndication deal that landed them back in Boston on WBCN) in 2002 after the infamous “Sex for Sam” incident. Two years later, though, O&A were back on the air in both New York (at WXRK 92.3) and Boston (at WBCN) with a partial simulcast of their XM Radio morning show – and there the matter rested, at least until last week.

The new lineup at WBCN moves Toucher & Rich from afternoons into morning drive and Hardy from evenings to afternoons. Music director Dan O’Brien gets an airshift out of the deal, too, taking over the 7-midnight slot, presumably with the assistance of voicetracking.\

On the TV front, ShopNBC affiliate WWDP has temporarily silenced its digital signal as it prepares for transition day in February. It took a helicopter last Tuesday to remove WWDP-DT’s channel 52 antenna from its tower in West Bridgewater, replacing it with a new antenna for the Norwell-licensed station’s new channel 10 digital signal. But there’s a catch: because channel 10 remains in use by WJAR’s analog signal in Providence, WWDP-DT won’t be able to start using its new channel until February 18. So it’s off the air digitally, though it remains on the air in analog (on channel 46) from a nearby tower site until transition day.

On the HD Radio front, we’ve long maintained that public radio is about the only remaining source of programming innovation, and Fordham’s WFUV (90.7 New York) is helping to make that case. “The Alternate Side” is WFUV’s latest additional programming stream, running on WFUV’s HD3 channel and on the web at thealternateside.org. The new channel is devoted to emerging local artists in the New York market, and much of its funding is coming from the settlement money former governor Eliot Spitzer extracted from the recording and radio industries during his payola investigations. (For non-HD-equipped listeners, The Alternate Side also airs on WFUV’s main signal for a few hours at 10 PM on Fridays…)

Sad news from Clear Channel’s cluster in northwest New Jersey: operations manager and WSUS (102.3 Franklin) afternoon jock Vince Thomas lost his long battle with a rare form of cancer early last Tuesday morning (December 3). Thomas, whose real name was Vincent Toscano, was still in his teens when he started at WNNJ (1360 Newton) in 1990. He’d been a fixture at WSUS for more than a decade, though he’d been off the air for nearly two years as his illness worsened. He was just 37.

Astral Media is expanding its “Virgin Radio” brand. Following its successful August launch of “Virgin” on CKFM (99.9 Toronto, formerly “Mix 99.9”), Astral announced last week that it will reimage three more of its stations as “Virgin” next month. In Montreal, CJFM (Mix 95.9) will become a Toronto-style “Virgin,” adding more energy to its existing hot AC sound – but in Ottawa, “Virgin” will be a rocker, replacing the “Bear” branding at CKQB (106.9). The third Virgin will be out west, at what’s now hot AC “95 Crave” CKZZ in Vancouver.

Back in Ontario, CTVglobemedia’s CKRU (980 Peterborough) had applied for a move to FM on 96.7 – and while the CRTC granted that application back in May, it denied the use of 96.7, which went to another applicant. So CKRU returned with a proposal for a different frequency, 100.5, which the CRTC granted last week. Once the new FM facility is built, probably sometime next year, “980 KRUZ” will have 90 days to simulcast before silencing the AM for good – and Peterborough will lose its last AM signal.

Ten Years Ago: December 8, 2003

The 528-foot tower of WMGX (93.1 Portland ME) and WYNZ (100.9 Westbrook ME), a landmark for drivers entering Portland on I-295, collapsed Thursday afternoon about 1:30, apparently because a guy wire snapped. WYNZ was able to return to the air from an auxiliary site, but WMGX is off the air at press time. Nobody was hurt in the collapse, but WCSH (Channel 6) reports several cars were damaged in the parking lot next to the tower.
One of the oldest callsigns in NEW YORK has returned home to the facility it called home for decades. Buckley Broadcasting took over operations of Syracuse’s AM 1390 last Monday (Dec. 1), changing its call letters from WDCW back to WFBL. Those sequentially-assigned calls first saw use in Syracuse in 1922 on the station that would become 1390, and remained in place there until September 1993, when Crawford Broadcasting bought the station and changed the calls to reflect owner Donald Crawford’s initials (and to match Crawford’s other religious outlets across upstate New York, too.) When the WFBL calls went away in 1993, Buckley grabbed them – and the standards format that had been in use on 1390 – and placed them on what had been WSEN (1050), and there they remained, even as AM 1050 dropped standards for talk in May 2002. As of last week, though, the talk programming has moved to the higher-power (5000 watts day and night, versus 2500 watts day/19 watts night on 1050) operation on 1390 – and 1050, too, is back to its heritage calls of WSEN. It’ll be simulcasting oldies WSEN-FM (92.1 Baldwinsville) eventually, we’re told, though it was still simulcasting talk with 1390 this past weekend.

Downstate, the news is all about Radio People on the Move: Pat St. John, the veteran jock who’s called stations such as CKLW, WRIF, WNEW-FM and WPLJ home, now has a new address on the New York dial. After doing weekends and fill-ins on Infinity’s WCBS-FM (101.1) for the last few years, Pat kicked off his new gig as Saturday morning host on Clear Channel classic rocker WAXQ (104.3) this past weekend. Meanwhile, Q104’s sister station WLTW (106.7) signed midday host Valerie Smaldone to another long-term contract last week. She’s been part of Lite 106.7 since the station flipped from country to AC more than twenty years ago – quite a record of longevity in the turbulent New York radio world! On the engineering side, Glynn Walden has joined Infinity as VP/Engineering. Walden worked for two of Infinity’s predecessors, CBS and Westinghouse, in the same position before joining Ibiquity Digital Radio, where his job was eliminated a few months ago. And out on Long Island, veteran DJ Scott Miller lands at WALK-FM (97.5 Patchogue) to do middays, replacing the departed Rick Martini. Miller was last heard on WKJY (98.3 Hempstead).

Just short of the decade mark at WJYY (105.5 Concord) in NEW HAMPSHIRE’s capital city, Harry Kozlowski has resigned his job as PD there (and at Vox sister station WNHI as well.) He’s staying in the market and focusing his efforts on running new LPFM WCNH-LP (94.7 Concord), which hopes to be on the air with a 24/7 classical music format sometime in January. No replacement has been named yet at WJYY/WNHI – and NERW wishes Harry all the best in his efforts to show what LPFM was really meant to do.

The upcoming New Hampshire presidential primary was enough to keep northern New England from seeing NBC’s Saturday Night Live this past weekend. WHDH-TV (Channel 7) in Boston, WCSH (Channel 6) in Portland, WLBZ (Channel 2) in Bangor, WNNE (Channel 31) in Hartford, VERMONT and WPTZ (Channel 5) in Plattsburgh, N.Y. all pre-empted the show with Rev. Al Sharpton hosting, out of concerns that it might trigger equal-time claims from his Democratic opponents. The show did air on WWLP (Channel 22) in Springfield, WJAR (Channel 10) in Providence and WVIT (Channel 30) New Britain-Hartford; the others carried a “best of” Steve Martin rerun, which we hear was quite a bit funnier than the Sharpton show anyway.

Fifteen Years Ago: December 11, 1998

Despite protests from angry listeners, including a street rally Wednesday (Dec. 9) that found several hundred of them dancing on West 43rd Street, New York’s WQEW (1560) is going forward with plans to switch to Radio Disney at midnight December 27. WQEW’s owner, the New York Times Co., will reportedly receive $40 million from Disney to lease the station for the next five years. So far, no other station has come forward to pick up the format used by WNEW until 1992 and WQEW ever since. Wanna know what WQEW mainstays like Jonathan Schwartz think of the deal? We would too — but the Times has put a gag order on its employees while the format change goes through.

Meantime in the Big Apple, Chancellor Media dropped “Big 105” from WBIX (105.1) Friday night, Dec. 4. The new format is “Jammin’ Oldies,” similar to what the company has been doing with great success in Chicago, LA, and other markets. New calls are sure to follow. And Chancellor has hired former WNEW (102.7) jock and New York radio legend Scott Muni. Early next year, he’ll start doing a one-hour show weekdays at noon, playing music and offering commentary and interviews. The show will give midday jock Maria Milito a one-hour lunch break during her shift. Yes, that was Muni who surfaced on WFAN (660) for a guest slot talking sports last week…

Elsewhere in NEW YORK, it’s been a busy couple of weeks for Jacor’s “second tier” of stations in the Rochester market. On Thanksgiving eve, they looked like this: WYSY (106.7 Irondequoit) and WISY (102.3 Canandaigua) simulcast very soft AC as “Sunny 106.” WMAX-FM (107.3, still licensed Honeoye Falls but already ID’ing with its new South Bristol city of license) was rhythmic CHR as “Jam’n 107.”

Then things began shifting. First WYSY dropped the “Sunny” format and began simulcasting “Jam’n” on the evening of Nov. 25 — while WISY kept going as though nothing had changed. For a week, in fact, WISY continued to ID as “Sunny 106” and act as though it still had a sister station in Rochester. The only thing missing was a legal ID. Finally, the voicetracks caught up with reality, and WISY now IDs properly as “Sunny 102” — but the soft AC and Delilah can’t reach most Rochester listeners anymore.

Next up, “Jam’n.” Monday afternoon (Dec. 7), it began announcing “The End of Jam’n.” And with all the excitement of a roll of toilet paper being changed, the ID that hit a few minutes after 5 PM was the first to call the station “Kiss 107.” And aside from adding a few more non-rhythmic hits (Shawn Mullins, anyone?), nothing else has changed at WYSY/WMAX-FM. The station still has no jocks, for starters. Why the new name? Gee, we noticed Jacor’s new Cincinnati CHR is called “Kiss 107” while we were there last week…

One more Rochester-area note: WASB-FM (105.5 Brockport) was heard testing for a few hours on Friday, November 27, with a loop of country music — but has not been heard since. When it comes on for real, it will have a hard time in eastern Monroe County, where Oswego’s co-channel WTKV puts in a very respectable signal on 105.5.

Lots of news in New England, and we’ll start with CONNECTICUT, where WTNH (Channel 8) in New Haven became the Nutmeg State’s first DTV outlet with the debut of WTNH-DT (Channel 10) last Friday (Dec. 4) at 9 AM. WTNH-DT will simulcast Channel 8’s local news while awaiting the availability of more HDTV programming and equipment.

Home shopping “en espanol” is on its way to southern Connecticut, with the sale of Paxson’s WBPT (Channel 43) in Bridgeport to a company called “Cuchifritos Communications.” They’re paying $22 million for the signal so they can use it as the first outlet for “Compar de su Casa,” which means (drumroll, please) “Shop at Home.” Paxson says it will sell all its non-PaxTV outlets, which presumably means WHCT (Channel 18) in Hartford is available as well.

Next up, RHODE ISLAND, where the South County is losing a local radio voice, but gaining NPR service, with Boston University’s purchase of WERI (1230 Westerly) from Bear Broadcasting. When the $300,000 deal is complete early next year, WERI will become WXNI, a 24-hour relay of WRNI (1290 Providence), which is itself a relay of WBUR-FM (90.9 Boston) with some Rhode Island news inserts in drive time. WBUR is promising more RI programming, including a local talk show, in 2000. Meantime, WERI’s Mark Urso says the local programming from AM 1230, including a popular weekend sports-talk show, will migrate to WERI-FM (99.3 Block Island).

A not-very-historic MASSACHUSETTS callsign is back on the airwaves. The WBNW calls, which graced AM 590 from 1994 until 1997, resurfaced Dec. 1 on the former WADN (1120 Concord), where they go with the business-talk format that replaced the late, lamented “Walden Radio.”

Jerry Villacres is the new general manager of Mega’s Boston-area Spanish stations. WBPS (890 Dedham) and WNFT (1150 Boston) took their new names and formats Dec. 1, becoming contemporary “Estrella 890” and CHurban “Mega 1150,” respectively. Villacres was president and GM of the now-defunct CBS Americas network.

Down the Cape, WKPE (1170 Orleans) returned to the air this month under new calls, becoming WFPB and relaying WUMB (91.9 Boston). WFPB(FM) in Falmouth, also 91.9, becomes WFPB-FM. (And yes, that makes sense to the FCC, anyway…)