NERW 2/10/2014: Scott Shannon’s Sudden Farewell

In this week’s issue… Shannon exits WPLJ – The fallout from Cumulus’ NASH-ional country rollout – WKBW sale imminent? – LPFM grants keep rolling out – CRTC restores New Brunswick FM – Ralph Kiner, RIP

By SCOTT FYBUSH One more quick program note: “Mrs. NERW” is home from the hospital and recuperating nicely. We’re caught up through Friday on subscriptions and on calendar orders from the Fybush.com Store, so if you were waiting for a 2014 Tower Site Calendar, it should hit your mailbox any minute now. Thanks again for your patience and your kind wishes on her recovery!

*Three decades ago, it took an ownership group from Cleveland and a programmer from the Deep South to change the face of NEW YORK City radio for good.

That programmer, Scott Shannon, famously took WHTZ (Z100) from “worst to first” in 1983 before leaving the city for a less successful venture with “Pirate Radio” KQLZ in Los Angeles in 1989. Two years later, Shannon was back in New York as PD and morning man on ABC’s WPLJ (95.5), and there he remained for almost 23 years, right up until the surprise announcement midway through Friday morning’s “Scott and Todd Show”: it was Shannon’s last show, he told listeners, and come Monday co-host Todd Pettengill would have the “Todd Show” all to himself.

But Shannon’s not following other New York morning icons like John R. Gambling and Harry Harrison into retirement. Reading between the lines of his comments on Friday – “No way,” he told the Daily News when asked if he’s hanging up his headphones. “It’s just a change” – there’s every reason to believe the decision to abruptly end Shannon’s run on WPLJ was a Cumulus corporate one, not Shannon’s own.

The move removes one of the last of the big 1980s personalities from New York’s morning airwaves, and so far it raises more questions than it answers about Cumulus’ plans for WPLJ – and for music radio in general – going forward. That’s because while Todd launches his solo “Todd Show” on 95.5 this morning, down the dial on WNSH (94.7), “America’s Morning Show” is going (pardon the phrase) “NASH-ional.” As NERW subscribers were the very first to find out in our Extra on Wednesday morning, the Nashville-based show headed by Blair Garner has been exclusive to WNSH listeners in the months since it launched last year, but as of today it will be heard on 20 “NASH” outlets around the country, including new flips WXTA (97.9 Edinboro PA) in Erie and WZCY (106.7 Hershey) in Harrisburg.

That means more disruption to existing local morning shows: in Harrisburg, for instance, Chachi Angelo and Jenna Clay lose their morning show, with Chachi moving to afternoons and Jenna doing local news and weather inserts during the Garner show. In Erie, Mike Sheffield moves from mornings to afternoons on the former “Country 98,” displacing PD Chuck Stevens. If the listener Facebook comments in Harrisburg are any indication, Cumulus has a struggle ahead of it. Once news broke that “Chachi and Jenna” would give way to Garner, comments like this one started pouring in: “I don’t want to listen to nationally syndicated bs or I’d listen to Dave and Jimmy or the other s***ty one… Don’t even know their name. Because nationally syndicated shows suck they have no personality or care for the community they are playing for.”

Can Cumulus overcome reactions like that and do what no other (secular commercial) broadcaster has managed to do, creating a successful national programming brand with “NASH” while running each local outlet as cheaply as possible? The flips to “NASH” aren’t finished yet (in NERW-land, Cumulus non-NASH country signals include WCTO 96.1 Easton/Allentown, WIOV-FM 105.1 Ephrata/Lancaster/Reading and WQKX 105.1 Salem OH/Youngstown, reaching western Pennsylvania), and Cumulus has been pretty clear about its plans to offer “America’s Morning Show” and other NASH programming to other station groups as well.

Which, in a way, brings us back around to New York City. At WPLJ, Shannon’s influence was already on the wane: back in 2012, Cumulus brought in a new PD, John Foxx, to handle the day-to-day programming tasks while Shannon focused on the morning show and on his other big project, the syndicated True Oldies Channel, which continues for now even after Shannon’s morning drive exit. Foxx’s arrival came in the wake of more Cumulus cost-cutting, including the elimination of Dave Stewart’s overnight shift and Christine Richie’s evening shift. The question, perhaps, isn’t so much why Shannon’s leaving now – but what kept him with Cumulus as long as he did?

There are plenty of appreciations out there of Shannon’s immense impact on New York radio (including this one from Lance Venta at our sister site, RadioInsight), but it seems premature to us to begin remembering Shannon’s career as though it’s over. At 66, Shannon’s still an active part of the radio industry, and even if he never again brings the sort of massive change to the industry that he did at Z100, he’s still got plenty of good radio in him.

Shannon’s exit from WPLJ leaves one more big shoe (or rather cowboy hat) left to fall at Cumulus’ New York cluster: at age 73, Don Imus is the last of the New York radio voices from the 1970s and 1980s still being heard daily in morning drive, just down the hall from WPLJ at sister station WABC (770). While Imus’ show is nominally syndicated (and seen on nationally on TV via Fox Business Network), it’s essentially a local New York offering at a station that just pulled off a pretty big surprise by reuniting its morning team of the 1990s, Curtis Sliwa and Ron Kuby, albeit in the former Rush Limbaugh midday slot. If Cumulus could jettison Shannon so abruptly and with so little ceremony – how safe do you feel this morning if you’re Don Imus?

[private]

*Is Buffalo’s third-rated TV station about to be sold? All signs point to an imminent announcement from Granite that WKBW-TV (Channel 7) is on its way to the E.W. Scripps Company, a move that would put the struggling ABC affiliate in the hands of a new owner with deeper pockets and a better ability to compete with the market’s dominant newsrooms at LIN-owned CBS affiliate WIVB (Channel 4) and Gannett’s NBC affiliate, WGRZ (Channel 2).

Granite has owned WKBW since 1995, and in those two decades the station has slipped precipitously from the days when Irv Weinstein and the Eyewitness News team dominated western New York TV. A sale of WKBW has been rumored for years now, but those whispers intensified when Scripps officials toured the station in December. The rumblings became so loud on Friday that Scripps was compelled to issue a release saying it’s “in talks” with Granite about buying two stations.

If WKBW is one of those stations, what’s the other? One obvious answer is CBS affiliate WTVH (Channel 5) in Syracuse, another once-dominant station reduced to also-ran status under Granite. WTVH is just a couple of years away from being cut loose from the shared-services agreement under which it’s operated by NBC affiliate WSTM (Channel 3), now a Sinclair station. Does Scripps want to walk into a situation where it will essentially have to rebuild WTVH from scratch? That’s not the Scripps way – and WTVH’s CBS affiliation doesn’t fit with Scripps’ portfolio of ABC stations. So we’ll throw out another possibility: WMYD (Channel 20) is an outlier in the Granite family, a standalone MyNetwork TV station in a market much larger than anything else Granite now owns, with a newscast anchored out of Granite’s WPTA in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 150 miles away. WMYD would be an easy fit with Scripps’ powerful ABC affiliate in Detroit, WXYZ-TV (Channel 7), and the cash Granite would get from a sale of WKBW and WMYD would go a long way toward keeping Granite’s other remaining stations afloat.

(Monday update: Sure enough, it’s WKBW and WMYD headed to Scripps, with a $110 million price tag.)

While we’re in Buffalo, we note with great sadness the passing of Ben Bass, who was never a star of the radio scene but was always one of those people who kept the stars on the air behind the scenes. Over the years, Ben’s resume included stops at Buffalo State’s WBNY, WGR, WJYE and recently an audio production gig at WNYB-TV. A passionate broadcast historian, Ben, N2YDM, was also very active with several local amateur radio clubs. He’d been sick last week, and a friend checking in on him early last week found him dead in his kitchen. Funeral services will be held this morning in Amherst. Ben was 59 years old.

*Edgewater Broadcasting has been granted a construction permit for a new translator on 100.3 in Buffalo. W262CM will run 250 watts from a cell tower off Bailey Avenue east of downtown, and while it’s listed on paper as a relay of Family Life’s WCOU (88.3 Attica), it’s likely to be sold to someone else along the way.

*The LPFM grants kept rolling out of the FCC last week, and in New York they included several new upstate signals: 92.9 Pulteney, to Keuka Broadcasters, run by longtime Penn Yan broadcaster Don Radigan; and 92.7 Angelica, to Angelica Community Radio.

*We return downstate for a moment to remember Ralph Kiner, who parlayed a Hall of Fame career on the field into a long career as a broadcaster for the New York Mets. Kiner came on board for the Mets’ disastrous first season in 1962, and he was still working a few games last season for current broadcaster SNY. His “Kiner’s Korner” interviews were a staple of Mets broadcasts on WOR-TV (Channel 9) for decades, and he’s being fondly remembered after his death on Thursday at 91. (And, no, the Mets still haven’t confirmed a radio booth lineup for their 2014 campaign on WOR, potentially leaving Josh Lewin without a baseball team this summer.)

*The news from MASSACHUSETTS was heavy on Cape Cod, for some reason: longtime Boston jock Karen Blake is now working at WQRC (99.9 Barnstable), which has been heard calling itself “99.9 the Q” – and her on-and-off radio partner Ralphie Marino just got hired as the new morning man down the hall at country WKPE (103.9 South Yarmouth), where he replaces Nick Strassel. Could a new Blake/Marino pairing be in the offing?

One of the Boston area’s newly-granted translators is changing hands. California-based Living Proof Inc. won the CP for W271CG (102.1 Quincy), but it’s donating the permit to another Christian broadcaster, Fitchburg-based Horizon Christian Fellowship, which will use the translator to relay WYDI (90.5 Derry NH).

Three more Bay State broadcasters have shiny new low-power FM permits this week, two of them governmental and one Catholic: 96.5 Lynn (Lynn School Committee), 97.9 Webster (Sacred Heart Parish Webster Educational Radio Association), and 105.5 Nantucket (Nantucket Police Department).

*There’s one new LPFM grant in Connecticut: 100.1 Willimantic, to Calvary Fellowship of Willimantic.

*It was never the highest profile show in town, but the Sunday morning “Big Deal” show on WPOR (101.9 Portland) was a market institution for more than four decades. Host Ray Terry had been on board for an amazing 42 years when he retired in late November, and while the news didn’t make much of a splash when the show ended, it’s still worth noting that kind of longevity! (WPOR is now running the syndicated American Country Countdown from 6-10 on Sunday mornings.)

One new LPFM grant in the Pine Tree State: 98.1 Skowhegan, to the Wesserunsett Arts Council.

*Lots of Radio People on the Move in PENNSYLVANIA, and we’ll move from west to east to get them all in: In Pittsburgh, Clear Channel rocker WXDX (105.9 the X) goes to a more music-intensive morning approach beginning today, as Abby Krizner moves from nights to mornings to replace Tim Benz. He’s staying with the cluster in a new role as sports director, including a noon-3 PM shift on “970 ESPN” (WBGG), co-hosting with Stan Savran from noon until 2 and then solo from 2-3 PM. Benz will also contribute sports segments to the other stations in the cluster; his WXDX co-host, Bob McLaughlin, becomes executive producer of Mark Madden’s afternoon show. Down the road in Uniontown, Phil Kirzyc is the new morning co-host at Keymarket’s WPKL-FM (99.3); his career includes work on the Steelers’ radio network.

Across the state in Philadelphia, Rick Vaughn returns from Atlanta (where he programmed Clear Channel’s WWPW and WRDA) to become PD of Beasley’s WRDW (Wired 96.5). It’s a straight-up trade for Dan Hunt, who just exited WRDW to take over the helm at the Atlanta stations. Vaughn’s previous stint in Philadelphia was as PD of Clear Channel’s WIOQ, from 2006 until 2008, and there’s a new hire over at Q102, too: former morning crew members Rat Boy and Staypuff, who’d been doing nights at WFLZ in Tampa, come back to Q102 on Friday to do afternoons as “Jeff and Josh.”

*In Altoona, Nancy Lane is out at the Forever Broadcasting cluster, where she was known as “Daisy” or “Lexi,” depending on whether she was on WFGI (95.5) or WRKW (99.1). Lane tells WTAJ-TV that she was fired not for anything she did (or didn’t do) on the air, but rather because of what her soon-to-be-ex-husband has been up to. Lane says she left George Lane a few momths ago after years of abuse that culminated when their house burned down, allegedly at George Lane’s hand. Since then, she says, Lane has terrorized her at the station, sending threats and hiring someone to slash tires of cars in the station’s parking lot. “If this story can help make another employer understand what it’s like for someone in an abusive situation – and not fire them because over it, then it’s worth it,” Nancy Lane told WTAJ. Forever’s not commenting on the story.

Co-owned religious stations WDAC (94.5 Lancaster) and WBYN-FM (107.5 Boyertown) overlap around Reading, and they’ve swapped their primary signals on two translators there. WBYN’s English-language programming has moved to W279CB (103.7), while the Spanish evangelical programming that airs on WDAC’s HD3 has moved to the more powerful signal of W300BZ (107.9) to better serve Reading’s sizable Hispanic community.

*One new LPFM grant in Pennsylvania: 105.7 Marlborough (Montgomery County); over the line in NEW JERSEY, 101.1 Cape May Court House has been granted to South Jersey Christian Academy.

Garden State broadcast engineer Ted Schober has once again modified his translator proposal that originally called for the use of 105.5 in Alpine. As we’d suspect, his proposed shift to 105.7 from a new site in Rockland County across the New York line drew an objection from New York’s adjacent-channel WQXR (105.9), and it turns out there were some procedural issues that made that move impossible, anyway. So Schober has now revised his application once again to return to 105.5, this time with 23.5 watts from a site near Elmsford on the Westchester side of the Hudson. From there, Schober tells the FCC, the translator won’t cause any interference to WDHA (105.5 Dover NJ), the station that had originally complained of potential interference from the Alpine site.

*There’s a new radio station officially on the air just north of CANADA‘s biggest city. CFMS (105.9 Markham) made its official debut as “105.9 the Region” on Wednesday morning at 6, offering a full-service format aimed at the million or so potential listeners in York Region. In addition to English-language traffic and news during drive times, CFMS runs ethnic programming in evening hours in several South Asian languages to meet its conditions of license as a multiethnic station. (The Toronto Star apparently didn’t quite get that detail, writing that the station is carrying those shows “to meet the needs of its culturally diverse audience.”)

In Saint John, New Brunswick, the CRTC has approved James Houssen’s proposed purchase of CJRP (103.5) and its relay CJRP-FM-1 (95.1 Rothesay) from Pritchard Broadcasting. The station has been silent since last April, but Houssen pledged to the FCC that he’d have it back on the air within days of winning approval of the C$5,000 transfer, which includes a change in the conditions of license. Instead of being required to broadcast mostly spoken-word programming (a holdover from an earlier all-comedy format), the new CJRP will be a Christian country station.

[/private]