NERW 1/6/2014: New York AM Dial Keeps Spinning

In this week’s issue…WABC brings back old favorites – RIP, Bob Grant – Robin Hood grows – Rochester morning show shifts – What’s up with a CT/RI FM shuffle?

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*Welcome to a new year of NERW and fybush.com – and a very important one, at that. As you may have noticed, we’ve freshened up our look this week with a new site design, courtesy of Lance Venta and our content partner at RadioInsight.com. We’re proud to be a part of what’s becoming broadcasting’s most dynamic web presence, including Lance’s up-to-the-second industry news feed, the fast-growing discussion forums at the RadioInsight Community, our neighbors to the west at Ohio Media Watch and much more to come.

2014 also marks the twentieth anniversary of this column, which traces its history back to the early days of Usenet and a little series of postings that went by “New England Radio Watcher.” Over the years, we’ve migrated from Usenet to e-mail groups to PageMill to our latest WordPress incarnation, and we’re grateful to everyone who’s come along for the ride. We’re just getting started with the celebration!

*And as we get started, we’ve got one busy first week of the new year to write about, especially where the NEW YORK AM dial is concerned – a surprise talent move, the death of a start talker, the launch of a new format and more.

The surprise talent move, of course, was the answer to that last lingering question from one of our Top Stories of 2013 (part of our big Year in Review package, if you missed it over the holidays): with Rush Limbaugh now in place on Clear Channel’s WOR as part of an audacious new talk lineup at 710, what would Cumulus do to replace Limbaugh in the noon-3 PM slot he’d occupied for two decades on WABC (770)?

The new year came and went without an announcement from 2 Penn Plaza, and on New Year’s Day the noon slot on 770 belonged to a “Year in Talk” special while a “best of” Limbaugh show inaugurated his new era on WOR. Cumulus finally made its move with a leak to the New York Times on Thursday morning: iconic WABC hosts Curtis Sliwa and Ron Kuby were coming to WABC, effective immediately, to revive their “Curtis and Kuby” show in the noon-3 slot.

And just when we thought we now had the full WABC daytime lineup – Noam Laden’s “News Hour” at 5, Don Imus at 6, the newly local Geraldo Rivera at 10, Curtis and Kuby at noon, Michael Savage at 3, Mark Levin at 6 – Cumulus added another curveball: Pat Kiernan, the popular morning host on Time Warner Cable’s NY1, joins WABC today to host an hour of news from 5-6 PM, preempting the third hour of Savage.

For a station that’s been almost chained to the satellite receiver in recent years, the new scheduling moves will make WABC live and local for seven hours out of the day, plus the New York-centric Imus in morning drive and John Batchelor later at night. It’s still a far cry from the all-New York talk that marked WABC’s glory days in the format in the 1980s, but it’s a welcome start from a company that’s had a rocky relationship with the format in recent years. And with all that new talent in place, Cumulus also named a program director for WABC. Craig Schwalb is the first person to hold that title in a few years, since the departure of Laurie Cantillo; he comes to New York from Cumulus’ WPRO/WEAN in Providence, where he’d been PD.

Cumulus’ big WABC moves are also also a blow to the station that’s been trying hard to be at least a strong number-three player in the talk format in the last few years. Sliwa’s return to WABC meant his abrupt departure from WNYM (970), the Salem talker where he’s worked since 2010, hosting mornings and then coming back for an afternoon shift alongside former New York governor (and former WOR host) David Paterson.

And for Salem and WNYM, the timing couldn’t possibly have been worse.

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Today was supposed to have been a big day for “970 the Answer.” Newly ensconced in WOR’s former facility at 111 Broadway, Salem just finished spending a lot of money to build out a new studio setup, complete with HD video capability for a planned simulcast of Sliwa’s morning show on WWOR (Channel 9). For Salem, the rapid-fire changes at WABC and WOR ought to have been a big opportunity to showcase the familiar face and voice of Curtis Sliwa in the 7-8 AM slot on Channel 9 – but instead of launching that simulcast today, Salem is scrambling.

Because of Sliwa’s unusual split shift, his abrupt return to WABC (where he’d worked from 1990-1994 and 1996-2007) leaves WNYM in an especially precarious position, even beyond its lack of any discernible ratings: it now has no morning host, no 5-7 PM host (Paterson appears to be off the schedule for the moment as well), and for the moment its website also shows an 11 AM-1 PM gap that had been filled by Dennis Miller.

Does Salem (or Fox, which owns WWOR) have any grounds for a legal fight against Cumulus or Sliwa over the sudden change of stations? Lawsuits have certainly been filed in radio over far less, and we’ll be watching to see what WNYM’s next move might be. One longshot to keep in mind: WNYM isn’t just in WOR’s old lower Broadway studio; it also has former WOR general manager Jerry Crowley at the helm, back in his old Buckley-era office. Could Crowley make an offer that would bring former WOR morning host John R. Gambling back to his old studio after being cast aside by WOR’s new ownership? We’ll be watching.

More irony? When Sliwa signed on with WNYM back in 2010, he told the Daily News he was thrilled to be getting back to morning drive after losing that slot at WABC to Imus. “When I’ve been doing other shifts, it’s like I died,” Sliwa told News radio columnist David Hinckley. We’re guessing he’s not singing that song now that he’s back at WABC in middays – though we’re also pretty sure Sliwa and sparring partner Kuby would go back to mornings in a heartbeat whenever Imus’ retirement rolls around.

*The biggest irony of all, though, came just half an hour into Sliwa and Kuby’s return to the WABC airwaves on Thursday afternoon: the announcement that one of their illustrious predecessors, Bob Grant, had died New Year’s Eve.

Always controversial, Grant staked out the edge of what was acceptable in talk radio during a long career that started near the dawn of talk radio in New York and ended just a few months ago, when ill health finally made it impossible for him even to do his one weekend hour on WABC.

Born Robert Ciro Gigante in Chicago, Grant ended up working at KNX and KLAC in Los Angeles, where he learned the art of combative talk radio from one of its fathers, Joe Pyne. In 1970, Grant moved east to New York’s WMCA (570), which was pioneering modern talk radio in the city.

“Get off my phone!,” Grant would tell callers with whom he disagreed, and he disagreed a lot, especially with other WMCA hosts such as Alex Bennett who leaned more to the left. But Grant, though often described in shorthand as a “right-wing” host, was far less tied to a single ideology than many of his successors. While he was often critical of homosexuals and of the black community, Grant also took an early pro-choice stance.

Grant worked at WOR later in the 1970s, as well as a stint at WWDB (96.5) in Philadelphia, before returning to WMCA. In 1984, he joined WABC, just two years into its new existence as a talk station, and there he soon moved from nights to afternoon drive and into the top of the ratings. His cry of “Let’s be heard!” pulled WABC from its early incarnation as a middle-of-the-road talker into a new era of more political, sharper-edged talk, and paved the way for later WABC talkers such as Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, both of whom would later cite Grant as an influence on their style.

No stranger to controversy, Grant was fired from WABC in 1996 after making remarks about a plane crash involving Commerce Secretary Ron Brown that appeared to wish him dead; always a survivor, Grant moved to WOR and spent a decade in afternoon drive there, part of it in national syndication over the WOR Radio Network.

In 2008, Grant was back in the headlines when Radio and Records pulled back from plans to give him a lifetime achievement award amidst protests over his views. Another magazine eventually stepped in with its own honor for Grant, and Grant went on to remain active in talk for a few more years, first at night on WABC, then on a webcast and finally in a weekend slot on WABC. That’s where Grant was last heard a few months ago. WABC never officially cancelled his show, or even really acknowledged his absence, but word spread fairly quickly that Grant’s health had failed to the point where he couldn’t do even his one weekly hour.

Bob Grant was 84 when he died December 31. One can argue about whether his influence on the direction of talk radio – and on politics in general – was a good thing or a bad thing. One cannot dispute that he had a huge influence on the direction of talk radio.

*There’s still more news from the New York AM dial on this first week of 2014.

This morning brings the launch of a new format at WWRL (1600), the Access.1-owned station that dropped its lineup of progressive talk hosts in late December. It’s headed in a completely different direction now, away from talk entirely and into a new regional Mexican format as “La Invasora 1600.”

That makes WWRL the latest station to try to pull ratings from a small but growing piece of the Spanish-speaking audience: while most New York Hispanics still trace their heritage (and taste in radio) to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, there’s been a surge of Mexican immigration as well. In recent years, other signals including WQBU (92.7) and the former WLXE (1380) have tried regional Mexican music with middling results, Can Access.1, which has some experience with the format in its Texas markets, get ratings in New York with a unique format on WWRL’s iffy signal? Stay tuned…

*Away from the city, the other big story at year’s end was playing out a hundred miles up the Hudson River in Kingston. In our last issue of 2013, we told you about Pamal’s plans to silence WGHQ (920 Kingston) after 53 years on the air. But in the days between Christmas and New Year’s Day, the 5000-watt station was saved from silence by a local broadcaster whose slogan is about to become a misnomer.

Marshall Miles’ Tri-State Public Broadcasting has long boasted that it’s the “smallest NPR station in the nation,” but it’s growing to the point where that may not be true much longer. Known on-air as “Robin Hood Radio,” the service began on WHDD (1020 Sharon CT) and has expanded to include WHDD-FM (91.9 Sharon CT), WBSL (91.7 Sheffield MA) and WLHV (88.1 Annandale-on-Hudson NY). And now it’s also heard on WGHQ, thanks to some very speedy negotiations between Miles and Pamal that resulted in the impending donation of the station to Tri-State.

While the paperwork for the donation makes its way through the FCC, Tri-State assumed operation of the station at the start of 2014 under an LMA. Instead of Pamal’s simulcast of “Hudson Valley Talk Radio” (WBNR 1260 Beacon/WLNA 1420 Peekskill), Tri-State is simulcasting Robin Hood Radio on 920 – except during the two hours on weekday mornings from 7-9 when WGHQ continues to break away to carry the local “Kingston Community Radio.”

With its broadcast home assured, KCR is acquiring the current WGHQ studios from Pamal, which means Pamal’s WBPM (92.9 Saugerties) will move elsewhere. And Miles notes that the preservation of KCR brings things full-circle: KCR’s Walt Maxwell was an early mentor of Miles’ in Hudson Valley radio.

*Another nearly-dead station nearby was also saved from going dark just before year’s end. WNYX (88.1 Montgomery) had been off the air for much of the last two years. Founder John Katonah died in early 2012, and now his widow Mary Katonah has sold WNYX and two translators to prolific broadcaster Bud Williamson. Under a new nonprofit, Hudson Valley Public Radio, he’s paying $30,000 for WNYX itself, and his Digital Radio Broadcasting is paying another $10,000 for W292CM (106.3 Poughkeepsie), which relays WNYX, and for W229BH (93.7 Newburgh), which relays WJGK (103.1 Newburgh). WNYX and W292CM were reported back on the air just after Christmas with an 80s format.

More translator news from the region: Bold Gold is applying to move W235AW (94.9), its translator of WDNB (102.1 Jeffersonville), from Rock Hill westward on Route 17 into more populous Monticello, where it would run a full 250 watts, a big increase from its present 24 watts.

And Ted Schober has dramatically modified his application for a new 105.5 translator in hopes of getting a construction permit issued quickly. When the application was filed back in 2003 (and revived last year), it called for a transmitter location near Alpine, NEW JERSEY – but that drew swift and sharp opposition from reliable translator foe Greater Media, which rallied north Jersey listeners to WDHA (105.5 Dover) in hopes of blocking the new co-channel signal from signing on. So Schober has modified his construction permit application to call for the use of 105.7, and he’s moved it 30 miles or so to the north into Rockland County, New York, dropped power from 250 to 90 watts, and is now proposing to operate from one of the towers of WRKL (910 New City). Will that be enough to overcome WDHA’s objections – and will it draw a new set of concerns from its new first-adjacent neighbor, New York’s WQXR (105.9)?

*Out on Long Island’s East End, the legendary oldies station WLNG (92.1 Sag Harbor) is in the process of changing ownership. While many WLNG listeners probably believed longtime station manager Paul Sidney owned the place – he’d been there long enough, after all, before his death in 2009 – the station actually belongs to the “Main Street Broadcasting Company,” and for decades it was closely held by a small group of shareholders led by Robert O. King. (Two other well-known WLNG personalities, Rusty Potz and Gary Sapiane, also own a small number of shares in the company.)

In 2011, King transferred his majority interest in the company into a family trust, and with King’s death recently, the trustees of that trust have shifted. That’s the not-very-exciting back story to the paperwork WLNG filed with the FCC just before the end of 2012 – but that paperwork also notes that WLNG is preparing to file another application “in order for the Commission to pass on the qualifications of new permanent owners.” So…stay tuned (and enjoy all the jingles and reverb while you wait!)

*Here in Rochester, the holidays brought a morning drive shakeup to the FM dial. It’s been five years since Brother Wease made his high-profile departure from his longtime home on WCMF (96.5), eventually moving across town (and back to his old studio location) to Clear Channel’s 95.1, then WFXF and now “Brew” WQBW. With little warning or preparation, WCMF put together a new morning show called “The Break Room,” anchored by Bill “Moranimal” Moran with several of Wease’s former sidekicks, including Tommy Mule and Sally Carpenter.

And a funny thing happened: at a fraction of the money Wease had sought from WCMF (and eventually got from Clear Channel), Entercom ended up with a pretty successful replacement morning show. Carpenter moved on, but Moran and Mule and more recently Dan Borrello found a younger, heavily male audience for their show. Then Moran’s contract came up for renewal – and just as it did five years ago with Wease, Entercom was unable to come to terms on money. In a news release two days before Christmas, Entercom tersely announced that Moran had left WCMF to “pursue other opportunities.”

Like Wease, those other opportunities are 17 stories up and a few blocks away, on the other end of downtown Rochester at Clear Channel, where Moran starts today as morning host on WDVI (100.5 the Drive), alongside Julie DePasquale. The modern AC station hasn’t been known for personality in the morning; in recent years, it’s used J.P. Hastings as the host of a music-driven morning show, but it’s now moving Hastings down the hall to news-talk WHAM (1180) to host the 5 PM news hour as it brings Moran aboard for what promises to be a more active morning drive on “the Drive.” (That, in turn, allows former news hour host Joe Lomonaco to focus on his primary gig as creative services director for the cluster, though he’ll continue to fill in on WHAM from time to time.)

On the TV dial, the eight-year shared-services agreement between Nexstar CBS affiliate WROC-TV (Channel 8) and Sinclair Fox affiliate WUHF (Channel 31) came to an end at the end of December. WROC originated its last “Fox News First at Ten” on December 30, and during the 11 PM hour on December 31 it handed control of WUHF back to Sinclair itself, which is now operating the station in tandem with ABC affiliate WHAM-TV (Channel 13), owned by Sinclair “sidecar” Deerfield Media. WHAM-TV began producing WUHF’s newscasts on January 1, including a two-hour “Good Day Rochester” that runs from 7-9 AM (continuing WHAM-TV’s morning news) and an hourlong 10 PM newscast.

Those newscasts replace previous WHAM-TV offerings that had run on WHAM’s CW subchannel. And despite reassurances from Sinclair executives in a December cover story in Rochester’s alt-weekly, City, the shift does in fact mean a decrease in news diversity on the air, at least at 10. Instead of a choice between WROC’s news (via WUHF) or WHAM-TV’s news (via CW on 13.2), there’s now just one 10 PM offering in Rochester, as opposed to two each in the smaller markets of Syracuse, Binghamton and even Utica.

(At WROC, meanwhile, a schedule change starting this past weekend has moved the main weekday anchor team of Maureen McGuire, Kevin Doran, Scott Hetsko on weather and John Kucko on sports to a Sunday-Thursday schedule, with the weekend team now doing the Friday and Saturday shows. And congratulations to Kucko on signing a new deal to stay with WROC, where he’s already the longest-serving on-air personality in the history of the station!)

No TV station in the region has struggled as badly to keep an over-the-air signal operating as Syracuse’s CBS affiliate, WTVH (Channel 5). The Granite-owned station (operated under a shared-services agreement by Sinclair’s NBC affiliate, WSTM) has been notorious in recent years for extended failures of its transmitter, which operates on RF 47, and Granite has never invested in a backup to keep WTVH on the air during those outages. This time around, WTVH went off the air New Year’s Eve and doesn’t expect to be back on until sometime this week. CBS programming is still making it to cable systems in the region, and OTA viewers were able to see the NFL playoffs and other WTVH programming over a temporary simulcast on WSTM’s 3.3 subchannel.

Up north, there’s word that WYZY (106.3 Saranac Lake), which has been on and off the air itself, has flipped to a simulcast (for now, at least) of sister station WNBZ (1240), with a standards/full-service format.

And a station sale at year’s end found Randy Michaels’ RadioActive LLC reclaiming silent WPLB (100.7 Plattsburgh West). Back in 2009, RadioActive sold the construction permit for the station (then licensed to Minerva as WXMR) to Westport Radio Partners for $100,000. Westport put down $10,000 in cash and signed a note for $90,000; RadioActive is now taking the license back for the remaining amount due on that note. WPLB rejoins two other RadioActive signals rimshotting Burlington, VERMONT: WZXP (97.9 Au Sable) and WNMR (107.1 Dannemora).

(And the WPLB transfer was hardly Michaels’ biggest radio deal over the holidays: the western New York native and former Clear Channel honcho exited big-market ownership, at least for now, with the sale of his last two Merlin Media signals, WLUP and WIQI in Chicago, to Cumulus.)

*What’s John Fuller up to along the CONNECTICUT/RHODE ISLAND line? In late December, he swapped callsigns between WWRX (107.7 Ledyard CT) and his newly-repurchased WSKP (1180 Hope Valley RI), and now he’s filed to move the 107.7 facility to yet another new community of license.

Some background here: that 107.7 signal started out as a class A facility licensed to Pawcatuck, right on the state line, but “moved” to Ledyard (with no change of transmitter site) to allow for an upgrade of co-owned WBMW (106.5), which shifted from a Ledyard-licensed class A to a Pawcatuck-licensed class B1. Now Fuller wants to “move” 107.7 again, this time to Bradford, Rhode Island, again with no change in transmitter site.

The change would remove the only licensed full-power broadcast service to Ledyard, which would seem to run afoul of the FCC’s traditional rules, but Fuller’s Red Wolf Broadcasting tells the FCC it would actually further the Commission’s new rural service goals by moving the allocation from the New London urbanized area to Bradford, which is part of no urbanized area. (Bradford is also the community of license of a noncommercial religious station, WXEV 91.1.)

*The big Cumulus shuffle at New York’s WABC had some fallout 180 miles up the road in Providence, where Craig Schwalb was plucked from the PD chair at WPRO (630)/WEAN (99.7) and sister talker WPRV (790) to program WABC – and in return, Cumulus sent Tony Mascaro back to Providence to replace Schwalb. Mascaro worked at WPRO-FM (92.3) from the mid-80s until 1997, when he moved to WABC’s sister station WPLJ (95.5). He’d been operations manager at WABC since 2012, and he’ll face an immediate challenge in his new gig at WPRO: one of the station’s star talk hosts, John DePetro, is still off the air after a campaign led by several Rhode Island unions to oust him over some controversial comments he made last year about a political rally.

*As busy as the holiday weeks were in New York, they were quiet ones in most of the rest of New England. In MASSACHUSETTS, Matt Phipps has been promoted to program director at WXRV (92.5 Andover) after not quite two years at “The River.” Phipps will remain music director and afternoon jock there as well.

At Entercom, Kirk Minihane has signed a new long-term deal to stay in place as sidekick to WEEI-FM (93.7) morning team John Dennis and Gerry Callahan. It’s a sign that despite some of the silly rumors being floated late in 2013, Entercom remains committed to the sports format on WEEI – and that we’ll continue to have plenty to write about as the sports battle between WEEI and “Sports Hub” WBZ-FM (98.5) rages on.

In Webster, WGFP (940) hasn’t had a tower for a few years now; it’s been limping along on a temporary longwire antenna while its former tower site is used as a testbed for the experimental “cross-field antenna,” one of several as-yet-unproven designs claiming to replicate the coverage of a typical vertical tower at a much lower height and cost.

Now WGFP wants to trade the longwire for a different temporary antenna: it’s asking the FCC for a new special temporary authorization to use a 14.8-meter monopole element of the cross-field antenna with 1000 watts by day and 4 watts at night while testing of the CFA continues. (Those tests are authorized under a separate experimental permit, currently on 1630 kHz as WX3CFA.)

There’s a new voice on the morning show at WFHN (107.1 Fairhaven): Loren Petisce has joined the Townsquare top-40 station, moving over from Hall’s Providence-market country station, WCTK (98.1 New Bedford), where she was doing middays until just before Christmas.

*In MAINE, two big translator proponents are trading a signal. Radio Assist Ministry secured the construction permit for W288CU (105.5 Portland), but it’s handing the CP over to another Southern religious chain, Bible Broadcasting Network, in exchange for a long-term tower lease at a site in South Carolina. While it’s on the books as a relay of Saga’s WMGX (93.1 Portland), we’d expect that BBN will use the translator to rebroadcast its WYFP (91.9 Harpswell).

*It was a quiet holiday in PENNSYLVANIA, too, save for a station sale near Pittsburgh. That’s where Frank Iorio, Jr.’s Iorio Broadcasting is selling the simulcast pair of WBVP (1230 Beaver Falls)/WMBA (1460 Ambridge) to a new company, Sound Ideas Media, headed by Mark and Cynthia Peterson. They’re paying $750,000 for the two signals, which serve the Beaver County region north and west of Pittsburgh.

PBRTV.com picked up on another change at CBS Radio’s KDKA (1020 Pittsburgh): the station was probably the last big-market outlet still doing a weekend “Tradio” swap-shop show, but that appears to be history now with the exit of host Rick Bergman. He’d been with the station since 1987.

Where are they now? Former Pittsburgh TV news director Bob Longo, who had long runs at WTAE-TV (Channel 4) and before that at WKBW-TV, WBNG, WHAM radio and WHEC-TV in upstate New York, has changed stations in Florida. After five years at WESH (Channel 2) in Orlando and 15 years with Hearst, Longo starts the new year in a new gig as news director of Cox’s CBS/Fox pair in Jacksonville, WTEV (Channel 47)/WAWS (Channel 30).

In the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton market, Kenny Wall is leaving the PD chair at WBSX (97.9) next week; AllAccess reports he’s heading home to Arkansas to deal with some family issues, and Cumulus is looking for a replacement.

Down the Pike in Philadelphia, Stan Priest is out as PD of Clear Channel’s WIOQ (102.1) and digital PD for the cluster, also with no replacement named. And he’s not the only exit from Q102: we hear afternoon jock Maxwell is headed to New York to join the cast of Elvis Duran’s syndicated morning show, which is also heard on WIOQ.

We’d been hearing about technical problems at WHYL (960 Carlisle) since the station went into bankruptcy last year, and now the station, which had been running on automation, has apparently gone silent on or about New Year’s Day.

A call change on the Philadelphia LPTV dial: the former WWJT-LD is now WEFG-LD. The station operates on RF channel 48, using virtual channel 7, and has been running only an ID slate and color bars in recent years.

*The sensible folks up in CANADA shut down the CRTC (and Industry Canada as well, I think) for the two weeks we were off here at NERW, so there’s not much news from north of the border to report at all – save for the latest return to action of a venerable Montreal personality.

Ted Bird’s most recent on-air slot was mornings at CKGM (TSN Radio 690), but he lost that gig in September. As of this morning, he’s back on the air at a community station, Kahnawahke’s “KIC Country 89.9” (CKKI), paired with Java Jacobs. The two have done community radio in the mornings before: from 2010 until Bird was hired at TSN in 2012, they were on CKRK (103.7) in Kahnawahke, on the south shore.

(We’re reminded also that our obituary of Newfoundland broadcasting pioneer Geoff Stirling in the Dec. 23 issue left out another of his important accomplishments: the indispensable Steve Faguy fills in the story of how Stirling owned CKGM and founded CHOM 97.7, and even shares a legend of how CHOM got its callsign.)

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It’s become a legendary part of the broadcast landscape, found on the finest transmitter-site walls and in engineering offices from coast to coast and around the world.

The 2014 Tower Site Calendar is ready to send for YOU (or someone else), spiral bound, shrink wrapped and best of all, with a convenient hole for hanging!

This year’s pinups include the iconic towers of Catalina Island, a combiner system in St. Louis, the twin towers of KNRS in Salt Lake City, a historic rooftop site in Jamestown, New York and many more!

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