NERW 1/20/2014: FCC Releases First LPFM Permits

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: January 21, 2013

Cumulus” “Wheel of Formats” ended right on schedule, with a New York -focused audio montage including Frank Sinatra”s “New York, New York” and Billy Joel”s “New York State of Mind” – and moments ago, that launched into the city”s first full-signal country format in more than a decade and a half.“The World”s Biggest Country Station, New York”s new Nash FM” is, as expected, the market #1 outpost for what Cumulus expects to make into a national lifestyle brand. (“Country for Life” is the tagline on the fairly skimpy site that went live just as the station was launching.)

There”s no sign – yet, at least – of live air talent or even much of a New York-based staff to the station, which we”re expecting to be programmed on more of a national level, likely with a lot of input from Cumulus in Nashville and Dallas. And in a way, that shows how it was only Cumulus that had the ability to pull off a successful country station in New York City in 2013. The company”s existing New York cluster of WABC (770) and especially WPLJ (95.5) already has a sales force that”s heavily focused on the suburbs, which is where 94.7 will draw the bulk of its audience, too. And Cumulus” strong national sales focus should also help overcome a lot of the perceived “New York agency bias” that has kept country off the dial in New York City since WYNY (103.5) flipped to WKTU 17 years ago this month.

Much more on Nash FM in the days and weeks to come…

*Upstate, Cranesville Block Company just might be the luckiest broadcaster in the region. After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a four-tower 10,000-watt directional array for its new WKAJ (1120 St. Johnsville), Cranesville was on the verge of losing its entire investment when the FCC refused to grant the station a license to cover its construction permit.

The WKAJ site, June 2012

That, as NERW readers know, was in large part Cranesville’s own fault, since it didn’t complete that construction before the December 2011 expiration date on the CP, and didn’t contact the FCC for an extension until after the towers finally went up in early 2012.

The FCC acknowledges that it”s “deeply concerned about [Cranesville]’s disregard of the Commission’s requirements for seeking additional time, its failure to provide complete information initially, and its unauthorized construction after permit expiration,” and it admonishes Cranesville for all that – but it also recognizes (no doubt aided by the intervention of U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer) that there were some pretty serious factors keeping WKAJ from being built on time.

As we reported back in October, Cranesville made the case to the FCC that the aftereffects of two big storms that hit the region made it impossible for construction crews to get to St. Johnsville for several months, and even if they had been able to access the site, Cranesville itself was unable to pay much attention to WKAJ because it was focused on its own core business of supplying concrete and concrete blocks to assist in all the other road and building repairs in the region.

Taking pains to emphasize that this ruling isn’t intended to set any precedent for other permittees, the FCC has now extended the WKAJ construction permit to the end of 2012 and reinstated the station’s callsign, leaving just one more step (the actual license to cover) yet to take place before the long-delayed signal can finally hit the air in the Mohawk Valley.

In other similar cases, the FCC has imposed some hefty fines after the fact on broadcasters who’ve engaged in unauthorized construction after CP expiration, but the Commission’s careful use of the term “admonish” suggests that Cranesville won’t even face any monetary penalties.

*When WDST (100.1 Woodstock) announced at the start of 2013 that it was adding longtime Albany morning man Bob “Wolf” Wohlfeld to its lineup, the move felt a little strange to us – as a laid-back AAA outlet, “Radio Woodstock” didn”t seem like a good fit for the more high-energy sort of “Waking Up with the Wolf” show Wohlfeld had done at WPYX in Albany and at WPDH in Poughkeepsie before that. Turns out we weren”t the only ones thinking that way: on Friday morning, Wohlfeld was abruptly gone from WDST and former morning man Greg Gattine was back in place.

“My style of humor and the things I do best were not going to work with what WDST is known for,” said Wohlfeld on his Facebook page. “It was a very friendly parting and I hope to work with Gary on some other projects in the future.”

*Way up north, Stephens Media is scrambling to get two of its stations back on the air after a lightning strike early Sunday started a fire that destroyed the transmitter building shared by WYSX (96.7 Morristown) and WPAC (98.7 Ogdensburg). The fire also knocked off sister station WNCQ (102.9 Canton), which had an STL link running through the WYSX/WPAC tower. WNCQ was able to get back on the air with a computer running automation from its transmitter site south of Canton, but WYSX and WPAC are reduced to streaming-only services for now as Stephens works to get temporary transmitters in place to restore signals from their shared site.

*In MASSACHUSETTS, the upset win by the Baltimore Ravens last night not only ended the New England Patriots” season, but also the broadcast career of one of the greatest sports voices New England has ever known. Former WBZ (1030) sports director Gil Santos was already honored lavishly for his 36 years as the Pats” play-by-play announcer at the team”s last regular-season game, where he was inducted into the team”s Hall of Fame alongside his longtime broadcast partner Gino Cappelletti. Like most of New England, Santos was hoping his retirement at the end of the Patriots season would come with a Super Bowl win in New Orleans, but it wasn”t to be: the team”s loss Sunday night marked his 745th and last game behind the microphone. Santos has suffered serious health problems in recent years, and we wish him all the best in his retirement.

Five Years Ago: January 19, 2009

We’re still not sure how much stock to put in the widely-circulating rumors about big cuts coming to Clear Channel this week, especially after the message-board echo chamber has had its way with them, but there’s at least one sign of the company’s downsizing: in addition to her duties as PD of NEW YORK’s Z100 (WHTZ 100.3 Newark NJ), Sharon Dastur added the PD title last week at Clear Channel sister station WKQI (95.5) in Detroit.

Yes, that means a full-market top 40 station in a top-ten market will have a PD who’s in town only a day or two each month. No, we’re not sure this is a sign, as some have speculated, that the company is planning to massively nationalize its programming. (We’re quite certain, for one thing, that the satellite receivers that have been installed at CC transmitter sites nationwide are not, as a prominent blogger has been suggesting, designed to eliminate local studios – they are, rather, part of the company’s emergency response plan that was put in place after Hurricane Katrina wiped out its New Orleans studios, forcing its New Orleans stations to be fed via satellite from Baton Rouge.)

But no, this certainly isn’t a good thing for anyone hoping for a sign that radio’s biggest owners (as opposed to the small-market guys, who are faring pretty well, considering) have any real sense of how to renew their focus on quality content, rather than simply continuing to cut costs until there’s nothing left that anyone would want to listen to.

The big news from the talk radio scene in eastern MASSACHUSETTS last week was what didn’t happen: despite rumors that suggested WTKK (96.9 Boston) middayers Jim Braude and Margery Eagan might decamp for mornings at rival WRKO (680), they’re instead staying put at the Greater Media FM talker, which signed them to a “long term agreement” keeping them in place on WTKK.
There was no movement, either, at WBZ (1030), where the Globe reported that fired weekend talk host Lovell Dyett met with station management Thursday to talk about the possibility of a return to the air amidst heavy community pressure for his reinstatement. When asked whether the latest round of cuts at WBZ was the last, GM Ted Jordan told the paper, “I can’t imagine there would be more.”

The new PD and morning man at Northeast Broadcasting’s WXRV (92.5 Andover) is a familiar voice in the market: he’s Beau Raines, who programmed WROR (105.7) from 1999-2002 and WZLX (100.7) from 2002-2005. Raines had most recently been in Denver, where he was programming Entercom’s KQMT (99.5) until budget cuts claimed that job last fall.

Saga is adding to its cluster in Manchester, NEW HAMPSHIRE with a new top-40 station, “Hot Hits New Hampshire.” Like its new outlets in Keene (as well as Ithaca, N.Y. and Asheville, N.C.), this one’s a translator – two of them, actually – relaying the HD2 of a bigger Saga FM, in this case WZID (95.7 Manchester). In Manchester, “Hot Hits” is on W231BR (94.1), which had been relaying Saga’s WMLL (96.5), while in Concord it’s on W276BJ (103.1).

In CONNECTICUT, CBS Radio’s WTIC (1080 Hartford) has apparently concluded that it can’t win a fight with the FCC to retain the unusual condition on its license that allowed it to operate with its daytime non-directional facilities until sunset in Dallas, where co-owned KRLD shares the frequency. WTIC’s grandfathered extended daytime operation was challenged by WOAP, another 1080 signal in Michigan, which won a signal upgrade by persuading the FCC that the post-sunset operation in Connecticut should receive only groundwave, not skywave, protection.

To prevent further incursion on its signal during the period before Dallas sunset (which falls anywhere from 45 to 75 minutes after Hartford sunset, depending on the time of year), WTIC has applied to the FCC for a license modification that will eliminate the special post-sunset conditions, instead switching the Hartford signal to nighttime directional operation (and the class A skywave protection that goes with it) at Hartford sunset.

There’s a new station on the air in south central PENNSYLVANIA, where Harrisburg public broadcaster WITF flipped the switch to put WYPM (93.3 Chambersburg) on the air at 10 AM on Jan. 9. The new signal is the relocated former WROG (102.9 Cumberland MD), which former owner Bob Stevens moved out of the way of an upgrade to his WANB-FM (103.1) in the Pittsburgh area, then sold to WITF for $875,000. It’s carrying an NPR news and talk lineup, with the same schedule that had been heard on the “Engage” HD2 service on WITF’s main FM signal in Harrisburg.
About 15 miles west of Chambersburg, a fire Wednesday night gutted the transmitter building of

WJAL-TV, the independent station licensed to Hagerstown, Maryland that serves viewers on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. That, we suspect, means the permanent end of WJAL’s analog signal on channel 68; as for WJAL-DT, which was to move from 16 to 39 after February, it too remains off the air, but WJAL is reportedly working on ways to use other stations’ DTV subchannels to restore a signal to the air.

Ten Years Ago: January 19, 2004

It was a slow news week here at NERW Central, and it seems to have been a slow news week overall in MASSACHUSETTS, too – at least judging by the amount of attention devoted to the “revelation” that WBZ (1030 Boston)’s veteran morning news anchor does his broadcasting from his vacation home in Florida several weeks a year.

By way of disclaimer, it’s no secret at all that your editor’s resume includes a stint (1992-97) at WBZ, much of that time as Gary LaPierre’s morning news writer – but LaPierre’s Florida remotes were hardly a secret to anyone in the Boston broadcasting community. To the Boston Globe, though (and longtime readers of this column know just what we think of that paper’s coverage of the broadcast scene), the discovery that some of LaPierre’s broadcasts were coming from St. Augustine was worthy of a long story, complete with quotes from the “journalism ethics experts” whose numbers must still have been in the Globe Rolodex from the days of Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle.

LaPierre, who’s now 61 and coming up on 40 years of doing news at WBZ, has been talking about retiring for years. In his last contract negotiation, he asked the station to let him work from Florida for half of each winter month and for a couple of weeks in the summer, and the station was happy to let him do so in exchange for his willingness to stay with the top-rated broadcast. Though WBZ never explicitly told listeners that LaPierre wasn’t in the station’s Allston studios , LaPierre also never claimed to be in Boston when he wasn’t (and never denied he was working from Florida when anyone asked.)

Up in NEW HAMPSHIRE, the ever-growing Nassau Broadcasting is adding yet another set of stations to its nascent New England cluster, as it picks up oldies WNNH (99.1 Henniker), oldies WLKZ (104.9 Wolfeboro) and hot AC WHOB (106.3 Nashua) from Tele-Media, which bows out of New England with the sale. No purchase price has been announced yet; the Tele-Media stations join the clusters Nassau is buying in Maine from Mariner and the WMTW Broadcast Group.

From Concord, Harry Kozlowski checks in with an update on the construction of WCNH-LP (94.7), the new classical music station that’s getting ready to sign on up there. Harry sent along this picture of the 2-bay Shively antenna that the folks from Prescott Tower in Vermont rigged up over the weekend at the station’s site on Little Pond Road; he says transmitter tests will get underway as early as the middle of this week, with the formal sign-on coming in February.

Speaking of power increases, WYSL (1040 Avon) has a big one in the works. Before the FCC put a freeze on applications for “minor” AM facility changes last week (in preparation for a rare window for “major” changes next week), WYSL owner Bob Savage slid in an application to take the news-talk station from 2500 watts during the day to 20,000 watts daytime and 13,200 watts during critical hours. (WYSL would still be just 500 watts at night.) All that, and no changes to WYSL’s four-tower directional array – it’s a long way from the 500-watt daytimer that WYSL was when it signed on for the first time 17 years ago this month. (We have fond editorial memories of visiting Bob at the station even before its official debut…)

In southern NEW JERSEY, WSNJ (1240 Bridgeton) is getting a new owner. Quinn Broadcasting, which already owns WMVB (1440) in nearby Millville, will pay Ed Bold’s estate $550,000 for the AM station and the studio-transmitter facility that’s long been home to 1240 and its sister station, WSNJ-FM (107.7). And while the FM station will have a completely new sound in a few months when its sale to Ed Seeger’s American Media Services closes (and it’s then moved to 107.9 in Pennsauken and spun to Radio One to serve Philadelphia), Quinn’s owner, Millville mayor Jim Quinn, says the AM facility will keep the hyper-local programming that’s long distinguished WSNJ. Quinn says some WSNJ programming will be simulcast on WMVB, and he plans to add a Webcast as well.

Forever Broadcasting finished reworking its station lineup in Altoona, PENNSYLVANIA early last week, returning a well-known set of calls to the airwaves in the process. After several days of stunting on what had been classic hits “Majic” WMAJ-FM (104.9 Hollidaysburg), the station relaunched as “Rocky 104.9,” playing some newer rock along with the old, and applying for new calls WRKY – the same calls that spent many years on co-owned 103.5 over in Steubenville, Ohio, before it became “Froggy” WOGH.

Fifteen Years Ago: January 15, 1999

Fresh from a morning of doing live shots in the snow (“It’s still snowing out here…drive carefully!”), we turn our attention to the radio dial and find there’s not much going on out there. Here’s what passes for this week’s highlights:

No more local programming at the adult-standards outlet in Springfield, MASSACHUSETTS. As of the first of the year, WMAS (1450) has switched from ABC/SMN’s “Stardust” to Jones’ “Music of Your Life” satellite service. In the process, WMAS also dismissed morning guy George Murphy, whose show was the last vestige of local radio on the AM side at WMAS.

A few new pirates on the air in the Hub: We’re hearing reports of foreign-language stations on 102.1 and 102.9…more details to come.

A RHODE ISLAND morning team was suspended for a day after a too-successful hoax Thursday morning. WWBB (101.5 Providence) morning team Daria Bruno and Tiffany Hill told listeners that the state’s “Department of Outdated Decorations” would begin imposing $25 fines on anyone who didn’t remove their Christmas decorations by noon. Gullible listeners hauled out the ladders and began pulling down their lights; some apparently stayed home from work to get the job done, according to newspaper reports. “B101” program director Al Brock went on the air to apologize mid-morning. NERW notes that this stunt, at least, didn’t bring the Secret Service calling — unlike two stations down South whose morning jocks claimed they had scanned and printed phony $1 bills and were using them in the station vending machines.

A veteran CONNECTICUT newscaster is calling it quits in April. Ten years to the day after launching the 10 PM newscast at WTIC-TV (Channel 61) in Hartford, Pat Sheehan will sign off on April 10. Sheehan already had 24 years in the business when he joined the “News at Ten” in 1989, with stints at WFSB, WTNH, WHCT, CPTV, and at several Nutmeg State radio stations. He’ll continue his day job as a broker at A.G. Edwards in Hartford, and he’s not ruling out a return to the airwaves sometime soon. Speaking of WHCT (Channel 18), it has switched from the Shop at Home network to ValueVision, which we’re sure will help the station better serve the ol’ “public interest, convenience, and necessity”…

An upstate NEW YORK cluster could be broken up soon. The FCC wants to take a closer look at the Binghamton stations being sold by Wicks to Citadel. The cluster of news-talk WNBF (1290), standards WKOP (1360), country WHWK (98.1), rock WAAL (99.1), and oldies WYOS (104.1 Chenango Bridge) pulls in 63% of the market’s ad revenue, according to BIA, which is far above the informal 40% standard the FCC and Justice Department seem to be using. Don’t look to the market’s other big owner, Majac, to be able to pick up anything spun off from this deal — its cluster of sports WENE (1430 Endicott), rock WKGB (92.5 Susquehanna PA), AC WMXW (103.3 Vestal), and CHR WMRV (105.7 Endicott) is already bringing home just about all the rest of the market’s radio dollars.

Twenty Years Ago: January 14, 1994

I’m normally based in Boston, I know…but sometimes I make the trek along the Mass Pike and the NY State Thruway (I-90) to my ancestral home of Rochester NY. Here’s what I encountered along the drive last weekend:

WEBSTER MA: Look for WXXW-FM, a class A on 98.9, to take the airwaves soon. The format will be adult contemporary via satellite, and the station will serve the Worcester market (which already has local soft rockers WXLO 104.5 and WSRS 96.1, plus Boston’s WMJX, WSSH, and WBMX). The transmitter is in place, and the single FM bay goes up within the next week on the AM stick of sister WGFP-940.

WXXW is listed on the Don and Mike list; they’re not confirming that that’s true, though.

SOUTHBRIDGE MA: WESO-970 and WQVR-100.1 are moving from their cramped studios on Hamilton Street to a more spacious location nearby in the next couple of weeks.

SPRINGFIELD MA: WSPR-1270 is back on air after two years dark, with a Spanish format. Class D WNEK is no longer on 97.5, but is not yet on air on its new freq of 99.7.

ALBANY NY: WROW-FM 95.5 is no more. WROW and sister WROW-590 have finally been sold to Albany Broadcasting Co., owners of crosstown WPTR-1540 and WFLY-92.3. At the dawn of the new year, WROW-FM became WYJB-”B 95.5″. Format is essentially unchanged; soft rock. WROW-590 is now simulcasting all-news (mostly CNN HN) WPTR. Expect the all-news format to move to 590 this month, with WPTR to take on a new talk format. WROW/WYJB will likely be shoehorned into PTR/WFLY’s cramped studios behind Rt. 5 between Albany and Schenectady. That means an end to 4 decades of WROW sharing space with WTEN-TV 10. TEN began as WROW-TV 41 in the early ’50s. The station became WCDB-TV 41, co-owned with WCDA-29 Hagaman NY and WCDC-19 North Adams MA. In 1959, Cap Cities won a VHF allocation (against the wishes of WHEC-10 Rochester and WJAR-10 Providence) on channel 10. WCDA-29 left the air. WCDB-41 became WTEN-10. Cap Cities sold the stations in the 80s.

SCHENECTADY NY: Stopped in to visit WGY. The station is in very funky, old-fashioned studios built by GE to house the GY stations and WRGB-TV. The walls are lined with historic photos. Although the radio and TV have been separately owned since 1982, they still share the building…no locked doors, and the WGY-FM studio has a window that looks down into the TV news studio! WRGB-TV has 3 enormous studios…the Golden Age of TV lives! Videos on request…

UTICA/ROME NY: The duopoly with 1350/102.5 Rome and 1480/93.5 Remsen has shaken out like this: 1350-WRNY and 1480-WADR now simulcast…satellite music of your life most of the day, with few IDs. The top-hour legal did not fire the hour I heard them…yes I have it on tape! In PM drive, they run a really bad talk show. The host never ID’d the station, had zero phone callers in the hour I listened, and did 3-minute live spots for both advertisers. Yawwwnnnn… Meanwhile, the duopoly flopped calls and formats on the former WUUU-102.5 and WKDY-93.5. WUUU’s oldies moved to class A 93.5, WKDY’s country to class B 102.5. Meanwhile, WFRG-1450/96.1 “Frog Country” is now WODZ-AM/FM, “Oldies 96″. The Big Frog has hopped to a new home on 100kw FM 104.3 Utica, historically WKGW, and for the last few months WKFM, “Kix” classic rock (the format and calls formerly heard on 104.7 Fulton-Syracuse).

SYRACUSE: The late WEZG 100.9/WNSS 1200 are back on after a few months of darkness, now as WKRL AM-FM, “K-Rock”. They simulcast WKLL Frankfort-Utica 94.9 and its hard-rock format. The 100.9 signal, a weak class A, holds up going east just to the point where 94.9 gets strong…so a good duopoly. Class A drop-in WTKW 99.5 Bridgeport-Syracuse has dumped satellite country for live classic rock.

Despite plans and a CP to move to 90.9, Baldwinsville High School’s WBXL-FM is still on 90.5, where I heard a surprisingly professional-sounding female jock one afternoon. Must have a good training program there…

ROCHESTER: The big news is the on-air debut in December of WEZO-FM 93.3. This is the CP that belonged to WYSL-1030 in Avon NY, south of Rochester. It was to have been WYNQ, and signed on simulcasting WYSL for one month in Dec. Then owner Bob Savage entered into an LMA-to-buy with Lincoln Group, owners of WHAM/WVOR/WHTK Rochester…and the station became automated EZ, under the historic WEZO calls. WEZO was Rochester’s monster EZ on 101.3 from 1971 until 1987, when the station became WRMM, “Warm”. This move brings the historic EZO calls back to the market, and with the old 101.3 morning host Jerry Warner no less!

The new WEZO has a so-so signal, a class A from Rts. 5/20 and Oaks Opening Road in West Bloomfield, about 15 miles S of Rochester. It’s OK south of the city, less so in the northern ‘burbs.

Oh yeah…historically this is revenge. See, the original WEZO made its mark by stealing the entire WVOR 100.5 audience. WVOR was the original EZ listening station…but in July 1971, it was knocked off the air by a fire. While VOR stayed off for weeks, country WNYR-FM 101.3 quietly changed format to EZ and calls to WEZO, and took over the EZ franchise in town. When VOR came back on the air, its audience had already defected! And who’s behind the new WEZO 93.3? The Lincoln Group, owners of WHAM and… WVOR! I wonder if anyone there gets the irony of it all?

Meanwhile WIRQ, the first noncomm FM in Monroe County (circa 1959), plugs along with its 30 watts on 94.3, its third frequency (original was 90.9, then 93.3, then the move to 94.3 when the WYNQ/WEZO CP was issued). Now they have to move again…and this time may have to go dark. A new CP has been issued for Brighton on 94.1 (can you say OVERBUILT MARKET? knew you could…), and now there may be nowhere to go for poor WIRQ. I’m rooting for them to bump W238AR off its 95.5 channel in Rochester. W238AR is a translator designed to help rimshotter WRQI-95.1 “Rock-It 95″ S. Bristol get into Rochester…but translators CAN be bumped by class D noncomms…so stay tuned!

On the AM side, the former WPXY-AM 1280 is now “Hot Talk 1280″, WHTK…being sold by Pyramid to Lincoln Group (WHAM/WVOR/WEZO). The format includes Imus in the Morning, Liddy, Gene Burns, Don and Mike, and Dr. Joy Browne. And that’s the buzz from my old hometown.

One New England note: WKBR-1250 in Manchester NH is coming back on the air. It’s been testing with dead carrier on both day and night pattern…look for it!