NERW 12/23/2013: More Shifts for New York’s AM Dial

In this week’s issue…WWRL to drop progressive talk – Long Island FMs sold – Hudson Valley AM to go dark? – FCC sorts out LPFM MX groups – And read all the way to the end…because Year in Review 2013 is coming!

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*One of the oldest radio stations in NEW YORK is undergoing a big format shuffle for the New Year. No, not WOR (710), though we’ll have more to say about its impending changes in just a bit. The change that came as a surprise when news began to emerge last week was a flip at the top of the dial, up at Access.1 Communications’ WWRL (1600 New York).

That signal still lives on in many New Yorkers’ memories as the home of R&B music in the 1970s and 1980s, but for the last few years the former “Super Soul 16” has become primarily a clearinghouse for syndicated progressive talk personalities seeking airtime in the nation’s biggest market.

After local morning host Marc Riley (a holdover from the old Air America days down the dial on WLIB 1190) and two hours of mid-morning leased time, WWRL has been carrying a lineup that has included Ed Schultz at noon, Thom Hartmann at 3 PM, Randi Rhodes at 6 PM, two more hours of leased time at 8, and then Phil Hendrie, Leslie Marshall and Alan Colmes overnight, with Caribbean music on the weekends.

That will apparently come to an end in January: WWRL’s hosts have reportedly been told that they’ll be replaced with some sort of Spanish-language programming, though the station hasn’t yet revealed any details of its new format.

Even granted that WWRL has been barely a blip in the New York ratings for years (thanks in no small part to an antenna array that seems to send as much signal upward as outward), this flip comes as most unwelcome news to the stalwarts still trying to make a go of the progressive talk format. Many of those same syndicated hosts will also lose their Los Angeles outlet next week, when Clear Channel flips KTLK (1150 Los Angeles) from progressive talk to conservative talk as the new LA home of Rush Limbaugh. Absent a new New York progressive talk voice – and one seems unlikely right now – most of those hosts will now have Chicago’s WCPT as their largest remaining outlet.

The ongoing slow shuffle of the AM talk dial in New York City took one big step last week: on Tuesday, Salem’s WMCA (570 New York) and WNYM (970 Hackensack) made their first broadcasts from their new studio home at 111 Broadway, the facility that had been home to WOR (710) for the last few years. The move returned WMCA to the east side of the Hudson after several decades in a studio facility in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, and NERW thinks it may be the first time in the long, long history of the Jersey-licensed 970 signal that it’s had its main studio in New York.

Uptown at WOR’s new home at Sixth and Canal, John R. Gambling said farewell to his listeners Friday morning, signing off an 88-year legacy of John Gamblings in New York morning radio, most of it right there on WOR. Gambling’s grandfather, John B., launched “Rambling with Gambling” way back in 1925, handed it off to his son John A. in 1959, and then John R. came on board in 1985 and became solo host in 1991. John R. moved over to WABC (770) in 2000, but returned to WOR in 2008.

Gambling’s last show included an exit interview with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who’s also leaving his job at year’s end. He signed off just before 10 AM Friday by playing “Happy Trails to You,”  closing the books on decades of middle-of-the-road talk at 710 on the dial.

The “new” WOR, of course, launches in January with Elliot Segal rocking morning drive in search of a much younger audience than the one that tuned in to Gambling and his news anchor, J.J. Kennedy, who’s also retiring from radio with the end of the Gambling show.

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The big unanswered question, then, becomes this: what will the final lineup look like at WABC once it hands off Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to WOR at year’s end? We’re now just a holiday week and a half from Rush’s relocation, and while we know Cumulus is moving Michael Savage from a 9 PM tape-delayed slot to a live clearance in his new slot from 3-6 PM Eastern (and that John Batchelor moves up from 11 PM to a new 9-11 PM slot in place of Savage), there’s still been no word from 2 Penn Plaza about what will air from noon to 3 in Limbaugh’s longtime slot.

With the demise of Cumulus’ much-ballyhooed Mike Huckabee syndicated effort, there’s not even anything plausible for WABC to plug in from syndication to fill that slot temporarily. We’ll be watching closely for an announcement about a new noon show at WABC, and we’ll update you here and on our Facebook and Twitter feeds as soon as there’s news.

One more WMCA note (and WABC, too): the retirement at year’s end of beloved veteran ABC News Radio correspondent Vic Ratner ends a long career that started at 57 on the dial. Back in the 1960s, Ratner went by “Victor Jay” as one of the newsmen heard in between the “Good Guys” when WMCA was still a top-40 station. He’s been with ABC since 1973, covering Watergate and almost every Space Shuttle mission, reporting along the way from every U.S. state except South Dakota and dozens of countries around the world.

*Radio Managers on the Move: Deon Livingston’s been promoted from VP/GM of WLIB (1190)/WBLS (107.5) to president of parent company YMF Media. Livingston will retain management responsibilities for WLIB and WBLS while he moves up to replace the retiring Charles Warfield.

*Way back in 1961, Richard Heffner took a leave of absence from his job with CBS to serve as the first general manager of New York City’s first educational TV station, WNDT (Channel 13, now WNET). For two years, Heffner shepherded the fledgling station through its early challenges and helped it build a a reputation with public affairs and talk programming. Heffner continued to host the weekly “Open Mind” interview show for more than half a century, right up to his death December 17 at age 88. His family has requested that donations in his memory be directed to WNET for continued production of “The Open Mind” with a new host.

Heffner’s Channel 13 was the former commercial WNTA-TV before it went educational, and around the same time Heffner was rebuilding the TV station as WNDT, its former FM sister station on 94.7 was becoming WJRZ-FM and then WFME, the East Coast flagship outlet for a California lay preacher named Harold Camping. Camping, of course, went on to buy WFME outright for his Family Radio group, which expanded to include WKDN-FM (106.9) in Camden and hundreds of other signals around the country. His death on Wednesday at age 92 closes the book on a tumultuous few years for his radio empire, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars in 2010 and 2011 promoting Camping’s prediction that the world would end. You know what happened next: the world stubbornly went right on going on, leaving Family deeply in debt for all that advertising and forcing it to sell WFME and WKDN, among other big licenses.

By that point, Camping’s health had worsened and a new board was running the company; as a result, Camping’s death isn’t likely to provoke any sudden sales of what’s left of the network. The smaller signals remaining in the Family orbit (including the “new” WFME on 106.3 in Mount Kisco and WKDN’s AM successor on 950 in Philadelphia, ex-WPEN) aren’t going anywhere right away, though Family isn’t likely to ever again attain the size it once enjoyed.

*Up the Hudson Valley, it appears time is drawing short for WGHQ (920 Kingston). The Pamal talk station, which has mostly been simulcasting “Hudson Valley Talk Radio” with sister outlets WBNR (1260 Beacon) and WLNA (1420 Peekskill), will sign off at the end of December, according to the Kingston Community Radio programmers who’ve been leasing the 7-9 AM weekday slot from the station.

KCR says it’s trying to raise money to buy WGHQ from Pamal, or failing that to locate available time on another station. WGHQ’s 5000-watt day signal and its 78 watt night signal come from a three-tower array on a big piece of land near the Hudson River south of Kingston; it’s a pretty solid bet that the land is now worth more than the AM license itself, and as a late arrival on the dial, WGHQ is tightly wedged in among older stations on 920 and adjacent channels, making a big directional array an unfortunate necessity.

*On Long Island, Lauren Stone is moving up from PD at the AAA Licensing cluster on the East End to the owner’s chair. Along with her father, Roger Stone, she’s paying $3.2 million for the four stations AAA had been operating with funding provided by Arlington Capital. The new LRS Radio cluster includes AAA WEHM (92.9 Manorville)/WEHN (96.9 East Hampton), the stations Lauren Stone’s been programming, along with top-40 WBEA (101.7 Southold) and soft AC WBAZ (102.5 Bridgehampton).

*In Syracuse, WAER (88.3) continues to chug along at reduced analog power after a catastrophic failure of its aging CCA transmitter. The Syracuse University-owned public radio outlet notified the FCC last week that it’s finally given up any hope of repairing the transmitter and has placed an order with Harris for a new 20 kW Flexiva transmitter that’s due to be delivered January 22, 2014.

Until the new transmitter arrives at the Day Hall transmitter site on Mount Olympus, WAER’s usual 50 kW of ERP is down to just 6.5 kW. (The STA request, originally filed back in July, doesn’t say so, but I think WAER is using what’s normally its digital transmitter, at left in that photo from 2008, to make reduced analog power while it waits to replace that CCA.)

Engineers from Rochester’s WXXI, meanwhile, were busy last week swapping transmitters between two of their outlying sites. The transmitter that’s been powering WITH (90.1 Ithaca) was relocated northward to the WEOS (89.5 Geneva) tower site, allowing WEOS to go up to a full 6 kW nondirectional a few months after moving from 89.7 to 89.5 and dropping its old directional nulls.

Up in the North Country, WMHR’s translator on 91.9 in Gouverneur (itself relaying WMHR repeater WMHI 94.7 Cape Vincent) was bumped by the sign-on of CBC Radio One’s CBOB (91.9) across the river in Brockville, Ontario; it’s now relocated to 88.3 in nearby Richville.

*It’s been a busy December for the FCC, where Media Bureau staffers are working hard to sort through thousands of LPFM applications. That’s resulted in a slow trickle of applications that have been “accepted for filing” – generally, “singleton” applications that didn’t require any waivers of second-adjacent channel spacing – and a long list released last week of tentative mutually-exclusive (MX) application groups.

The singletons that are posted as “accepted for filing” are now subject to a 30-day window during which petitions to deny can be filed against them. If no objections are received, those applications will likely be granted quickly by the FCC, so we could see the first construction permits from the 2013 window by early in 2014.

Singleton LPFMs accepted for filing in New York last week included 104.1 Woodstock (Birds of a Feather Media Ltd.), 96.9 Watertown (Calvary Chapel North Country) and 94.7 Poughkeepsie (New York Catholic Radio).

Eight groups of New York applicants made the MX list last week: as we’d predicted, that includes seven applicants for 105.5 in Queens and Nassau County, six Long Island applicants for 104.7, five potential 92.7s in Troy, two 92.5s in Syracuse, two 97.7s in Binghamton, two 103.7s in Buffalo, three 97.1 or 97.3 applications here in Rochester. There’s also a pair of massively defective applications that somehow made the MX list: a 92.1 in Brooklyn that’s utterly ungrantable because of WNOW-FM (92.3) just up the dial, paired with an even more defective application for 92.1 in San Jose, California that specifies coordinates somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. (It’s not at all clear how either of those passed FCC scrutiny.)

Applicants on that tentative MX list will now have an opportunity to modify their proposals to eliminate the MX or to reach share-time agreements; if they can’t or won’t, the FCC will step in later in the process to evaluate those competing applications on points and pick one or more “tentative selectees” to receive CPs.

Over on the translator front, the 2003 window continues to slowly churn out new CPs. Granted last week were W294BU (106.7 Corning), to Bilbat Radio, relaying WKPQ (105.3 Hornell), W226BU (93.1 Saratoga Springs) to EMF, relaying WYKV (94.5 Ravena), and W237EB (95.3 Sanborn, near Niagara Falls) and W297BK (107.3 Attica) to Calvary Chapel of the Finger Lakes, both relaying WZXV (99.7 Palmyra).

*It was all about translators and low-power FM last week in NEW JERSEY: in Ocean County, Greater Media completed its power increase at W300AO (107.9 Manahawkin), taking that translator of WJRZ (100.1 Manahawkin) to a full 250 watts. To the north, WJRZ has applied to boost W264AM (100.7 Toms River) from 55 to 250 watts with a directional antenna. Will those translators remain WJRZ relays when the upgrades are complete – or might they end up taking on a new format via an HD subchannel of 100.1?

The FCC granted one new translator last week: W244DD (96.7 Tremley) will relay Bridgelight’s WRDR (89.7 Freehold Township) to an area around Carteret, Linden and pieces of Staten Island as well.

Six groups of New Jersey translator applicants fell into MX clusters, including six 95.9 applicants in Orange, Maplewood, Kearney, Passaic and Wayne. In Bergen County, two 94.3 applicants were MX’d, and two 102.3s in Elizabeth and Hazlet were MX’d against a 102.3 over in Brooklyn. The remainder of the MX list is made up of applicants for 107.7 and 107.9 in three groups: one MX cluster in Dover and Parsippany, one in Fords and Woodbridge, and a group of three South Jersey applicants ranging from Cape May Court House to Galloway.

Singleton LPFMs accepted for filing: 97.5 Newton (Sussex County Community College), 101.1 Cape May Court House (South Jersey Christian Academy),

*CBS Radio’s sports stations in PENNSYLVANIA were in the headlines last week. In Pittsburgh, a pre-holiday budget cut eliminated several on-air jobs at KDKA-FM (93.7 the Fan), including midday co-host “New York Vinnie” Richichi and morning co-host Paul Alexander. Andrew Fillipponi moves from evenings to middays to co-host with Ron Cook, Colin Dunlap takes the evening slot and Josh Miller will join the morning crew. Next door at KDKA (1020), local newscasts will now end at 8 PM instead of 11 PM; PBRTV.com reports reporter Adam Kirk was let go and veteran weekend overnight host “Dr. Knowledge” (Charles Reichblum) is ending his show after December 29 to work on writing a book, though he’ll continue to do feature segments for KDKA’s weekday news blocks.

At the other end of the Turnpike, WIP-FM (94.1 Philadelphia) is also moving airstaff around. Glen Macnow, who’s been taking vacation time from his usual 1-6 PM weekday shift, moves to a new position in which he’ll contribute to sister all-newser KYW (1060) and continue to host the 10 AM-1 PM Saturday slot on WIP, as well as being heard on Phillies coverage at another CBS sister station, WPHT (1210). Rob Ellis moves to afternoons to co-host with Anthony Gargano, and Josh Innes moves to WIP from CBS sports outlet KILT (610) in Houston to handle the 6-10 PM shift when it’s not preempted by sports.

In State College, Invisible Allies Ministries continues to seek a facility change for its WRXV (89.1), but “Rev FM” keeps having to revise its application. After initially applying for 730 watts non-directional, then 700, WRXV’s latest application calls for 600 watts/1089′ in an attempt to avoid overlapping interfering contours with WQSU (88.9 Selinsgrove) to the east. WRXV wants to drop its current directional array, which sends 4.4 kW in a lobe mostly away from State College, and add horizontal polarization to its vertical-only signal.

The LPFM MX list includes eight groups of applicants across Pennsylvania, and the big clusters are right where we thought they’d be, in and around Philadelphia. Eleven applicants seeking 92.9, ten seeking 106.5, five seeking 98.5 in one suburban Philadelphia cluster and three more seeking 98.5 in another in-town cluster all ended up on the MX list. So did a pair of 107.9s in Erie, a 99.1/99.3 pair in Hazleton, three 95.5s and a 95.7 in and around York, and two 107.1 applications in Berks County.

There was just one Pennsylvania singleton on the “accepted for filing” list last week: 97.5 Wilkes-Barre, from the Wilkes-Barre Metropolitan Development Association.

*One of the more enigmatic LPFMs out there from the first window a decade ago is CONNECTICUT‘s WWBW. Licensed to Higganum, in the Connecticut River Valley southeast of Middletown, this religious outlet on 96.9 actually located its transmitter just south of Norwich, 20 miles or so to the east. Listeners in the area haven’t reported hearing WWBW-LP on the air very much, and they won’t hear it again on 96.9. Waterford-based Connecticut River Educational Broadcasting has applied for a license to cover for WWBW’s move to 97.1, from a new site west of the Thames River off I-395.

Five LPFM MX groups included Connecticut applicants, and the biggest by far is a pile of four 103.3s and three 103.5s in and around Hartford. A separate group of 103.5s includes three applicants in and around New Haven, including the application tied to the local community weekly. Three 107.5 applicants in suburban Hartford were MXd, as were a pair of 92.9s in New London and nearby Westerly, R.I. And on 101.7, an application in Enfield was MX’d with three applicants across the state line in Springfield, Massachusetts.

There was one Nutmeg State singleton on the list: the Valley Community Baptist Church’s application for 106.3 in Avon was accepted for filing.

*It’s long since been given up for dead, but the FCC has finally deleted the last traces of an old application from the God Radio Group for 1040 in West Simsbury from its database.

In Bridgeport, WDJZ (1530) is being transferred from Maria Miller to her estate. It appears that Miller, the widow of former station owner Otto Miller, died sometime early in 2013. Otto Miller had died in 2007, leaving WDJZ to Maria along with WJDA (1300 Quincy) and WESX (1230 Saugus) in Massachusetts.

*Larry Lujack didn’t last very long as a DJ in MASSACHUSETTS – but Boston’s loss was Chicago’s gain. The man who’d become Chicago’s “Superjock” spent a few months in late 1966 working for the notorious Richmond brothers at WMEX (1510), where he was renamed “Johnny Lujack” to avoid confusion with the two Larrys already on the air in town – and where he bristled at Mac Richmond’s attempts to rein in his sarcastic personality and mold him into a DJ who’d fit WMEX’s restrictive format.

In his autobiography “Superjock,” Lujack recounted the story of how he complied with Richmond’s demand that he record a tracked weekend show to run after his last live shift at WMEX – and how he tracked that show full of station IDs for archrival WBZ. By the time it aired, Lujack was already on his way to Chicago, where he spent a few months at WCFL (1000) before settling in for a long and fantastically successful run on the legendary WLS (890), where features such as “Animal Stories” became staples of a format that influenced jocks around the country throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s.

Lujack left WLS in 1987 and eventually retired to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he died Wednesday (Dec. 18) after a battle with esophageal cancer that he’d been keeping private. He was 73.

*A call change on Cape Cod: when Alex Langer takes over WBUR (1240 West Yarmouth) from Boston University next year, the station will become WBAS.

*The FCC’s initial batch of MX’d LPFM applications reeled in a big chunk of the Bay State’s applicants. Ten of them are fighting it out for 94.9 in and around Boston, in a group that includes proposals ranging from Lynn to Woburn to Dorchester. Among them is “Boston Hispanic Community Radio,” one of more than 200 applicants flagged as potentially phony by the ever-vigilant Michi Eyre Bradley at RECNet.com. Her research found that many of those “Hispanic Community Radio” groups share a common phone number in Texas and all appear to trace back to a single applicant there; she’s created a page to track all those applications and she’s petitioned the FCC to dismiss them.

Four 102.9s ranging from Lasell College in Auburndale down to Rahab, Inc. in Brockton are part of an MX group that also includes the City of Boston’s application in Dorchester.

On the NEW HAMPSHIRE state line, a 97.9 application in Lawrence is MX’d with three 97.9 and 98.1s in Nashua and Pelham (but the WHAV application for 98.1 in Haverhill appears to be just far enough away not to be part of that MX group), while Zeitgeist Gallery’s 94.9 application in Lowell and the Town of Acton’s application for 94.9 are part of a big 94.9/95.1 group that also includes five applicants in Londonderry, Manchester, Candia and Pelham. A pair of 105.1 applications in Manchester and two 103.1s in Littleton also made the MX list.

Other MX groups include three 96.3s in Newburyport and Ipswich, three 96.5s in Brockton and Easton, two 105.5s on Martha’s Vineyard, two 102.9s in Worcester, three 102.5s and two 98.7s around Springfield (in addition to the 101.7 cluster mentioned earlier), two 97.7 and 97.9 applications in Westhampton and Williamsburg, a 103.1/103.3 pair in Goshen and Worthington and an ungrantable pair of 88.1s in Fall River. On the state line with VERMONT, the 106.7 application from Northfield Mount Hermon School (resurrecting WNMH, the old 91.5 signal it surrendered a few years back) is MX’d with a 106.7 application in West Brattleboro.

Bay State LPFM singletons accepted for filing last week include 96.5 Lynn (Lynn School Committee), 96.5 Framingham (St. Stephen Parish), 103.5 Yarmouth (Cape Cod Catholic Radio) and 99.7 Norwich Hill (Hilltown Community Church), west of Northampton up in the hills.

On the translator front, Clear Channel has been granted a construction permit for W249CU (97.7) in “Westchester,” which is really atop one of the WTAG (580 Worcester) towers in Shrewsbury. The new 100-watt signal is on the books as a relay of WSRS (96.1). In Pittsfield, Northeast Gospel Network was granted a CP for W247CB (97.3), rebroadcasting its WNGN (91.9 Argyle).

*Returning to the Granite State, WTTT (98.7 Stratford) was only on the air very briefly in March and April 2011. The station went silent after competitor Barry Lunderville (White Mountain Broadcasting) challenged its license grant, arguing that the class A signal didn’t reach all of Stratford. In the months that followed, WTTT owner Silver Fish Broadcasting applied to move to a higher site with better coverage – and in the meantime, the owner of its existing tower site went into foreclosure, forcing Silver Fish to remove the 98.7 transmitter.

On April 7, 2012, the FCC says the WTTT license was cancelled after a full year of silence, but in May 2012 Silver Fish filed a request to reinstate the license, saying the petition from White Mountain remained unresolved. But the FCC ruled last week that the WTTT construction permit couldn’t be “tolled,” because it had already been licensed; the FCC says Silver Fish made a business decision to go dark for financial reasons, noting that “(t)here is no requirement for a licensed station to cease operations when facing a challenge concerning community coverage requirements, and WTTT’s silence on that basis was entirely avoidable.” And so WTTT has been deleted for good, leaving 98.7 to appear in a future FCC auction for a new licensee.

New Hampshire Public Radio has a new translator CP: W243DE (96.5 Holderness) will bring 250 watts of NHPR signal to the Lakes Region, augmenting the existing WEVO (89.1 Concord) reception there.

*In VERMONT, four LPFM applicants in Burlington found themselves in an MX group. They’re all seeking 99.3, and three of the applicants represent community TV channels, while the fourth is St. Francis Xavier Parish.

In Montpelier, Ken Squier’s Radio Vermont has been granted a CP for a 250-watt translator of its award-winning WDEV. W252CU (98.3 Montpelier) will relay WDEV-FM (96.1 Warren), which in turn simulcasts WDEV (550 Waterbury).

*In MAINE, the FCC tossed back Pen Bay Island Community Group’s application for a new LPFM on 91.1 on Vinalhaven Island. The proposed frequency was too close to MPBN’s WMEH (90.9 Bangor), and Pen Bay has now modified its application to instead request 91.5, appealing the FCC’s initial dismissal.

As we’d expected, the applications for LPFMs on 104.1 in southern Maine ended up in an MX group: four applicants are in that group, including the Fifties Preservation Society, Regional School Unit 21 in Kennebunk, Springvale Council Knights of Columbus and the Society of Franciscan Fathers in Wells.

An existing Portland-area LPFM, WJZP-LP (105.1), has had its application for a frequency change accepted for filing. WJZP hopes to move to 107.9, trading a power decrease (53 watts down to 15 watts) for a height increase.

Dick Gleason’s Mountain Valley Broadcasting is buying a translator CP in Lewiston. W288CW (105.5) was one of the zillions of translators around the country secured by Edgewater Broadcasting in the “Great Translator Invasion” a decade ago, and Edgewater will get $35,000 for the license. W288CW will relay Gleason’s WEZR (1240 Lewiston) once it gets on the air.

*Jacques Proulx was a morning radio fixture in CANADA‘s biggest Francophone market for two decades, holding down the morning slot on top-rated CKAC (730) from 1968 until 1987. Proulx remained with CKAC until his retirement in 2000, and had been fighting cancer in recent years. He died December 13, at age 78.

In the anglophone world, Geoff Stirling was at the center of broadcasting in Newfoundland for decades. He put the island’s first post-Confederation radio station, CJON (now CJYQ 930 St. John’s), on the air in 1950 and went on to pioneer FM at his “OZ-FM” network and to control commercial TV broadcasting in the province at his NTV network. NTV broadcast 24 hours a day in an era when most TV stations signed off at night and didn’t return to the air until late morning, and it was in the forefront of innovations such as music videos on TV and late-night political talk. In recent years, as so much local Canadian broadcasting came under the thumb of giant conglomerate ownership, NTV and OZ-FM remained fiercely independent and distinctively Newfoundland-owned.

Stirling died Saturday night at age 92.

In Nova Scotia, the CRTC has rejected an application for a power increase by City Church Halifax’s CIRP (94.7 Spryfield). “Life 94.7” wanted a boost from 50 watts to 454 watts and a move up the dial to 97.5, but the CRTC says the station didn’t make an economic case for the move to a full-power signal, especially on one of the last frequencies potentially available for a higher-powered station in the Halifax market.

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AND SPEAKING OF 2014…

This is the last regular NERW column for 2013. We’ll be updating breaking news throughout the holidays on our Facebook page and our Twitter feed, and we’ll be talking about breaking news over at the RadioInsight Community, the new place where radio talks about radio. We’ll also have a new Tower Site of the Week column this Friday and next Friday, right here on fybush.com!

We’ll be back with a full NERW column on Monday, January 6, 2014.

In the meantime, we’re getting rolling with NERW’s big 2013 Year in Review package. It begins here on fybush.com tomorrow, December 24, and will appear in installments through New Year’s Day.

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