NERW 7/7/2014: Opie, No Anthony

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: July 8, 2013

*Local news quietly faded away from NEW JERSEY“s WWOR-TV (Channel 9) last Tuesday night at 10:30, concluding – at least for now – a chapter of regional TV history dating back three decades. It was back in 1983 when RKO”s struggle to keep the license of what was then WOR-TV prompted it to move the station from New York City across the Hudson to Secaucus, N.J., and ever since then, channel 9″s owners have struggled to balance the business reality of serving the greater New York market against the legal pressure to make good on RKO”s long-ago commitment to servicing the Garden State.

That pressure grew considerably back in 2000, when WWOR”s then-owner, Chris-Craft Communications, was sold to Fox Television Stations, putting channel 9 in a duopoly with the unequivocally New York-based WNYW-TV (Channel 5). Under Fox ownership, much of the WWOR operation, including business offices and master control, moved across the Hudson to WNYW”s Upper East Side studios. It”s likely the entire Channel 9 operation would have followed the lead of other Fox/Chris-Craft duopolies such as KTTV/KCOP in Los Angeles and KFTC/KMSP in Minneapolis and combined completely under one roof, but for that 1980s-era promise to retain a New Jersey base for WWOR. New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg stepped in back in 2004 to compel Fox to keep a separate Secaucus-based newsroom for WWOR, using the leverage of WWOR”s license renewal in the 2007 cycle and the ongoing waiver that allowed News Corp. to own both the Fox stations and the New York Post.

In the years since 2004, WWOR”s news commitment had wavered but not disappeared. Its lone newscast moved from an hour at 10 PM to a half-hour at 11 PM in 2009, taking it out of competition with WNYW”s flagship 10 PM show, and while WWOR”s newscast moved back to 10 PM in 2011, it remained mired at a half-hour in length. It wasn”t until last September when WWOR belatedly joined the rest of its New York-market competitors in producing its news in high definition, and even then the Channel 9 news has lingered far back in the ratings, behind WNYW and Tribune”s WPIX.

WWOR, of course, is spinning its decision to drop a locally-produced newscast as a good thing for the Garden State. That”s because the 10 PM slot on channel 9 will be filled, starting tonight, with a new show called “Chasing New Jersey.” The new magazine show, produced in Trenton and hosted by “ringleader” (and former Republican congressional candidate) Bill Spadea, will be outsourced to a company called Fairfax Productions. It”s run by Dennis Bianchi, the VP/general manager of Fox-owned WTXF (Channel 29) in Philadelphia, which will itself also carry “Chasing New Jersey,” albeit buried at 4 AM as the lead-in to WTXF”s early-morning newscast.

*Up in the northwestern corner of the state, WTOC (1360 Newton) is changing hands again. The former WNNJ(AM) was spun off by Clear Channel in 2011 as part of a group of small stations donated to the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, which took it silent and then sold it to Paterson-based Radio Vision Cristiana for $46,000. RVC has been operating the station as a simulcast of its Spanish religious WWRV (1330 New York), but not for much longer: last week, it filed to sell the little station (which runs 2000 watts by day and 320 watts at night) to the Morristown-based Centro Biblico of New Jersey, for $235,000. Centro Biblico will take the station noncommercial, and will continue to run it with a Spanish-language religious format.

*In MASSACHUSETTS, they”re mourning Don Latulippe, the versatile radio man whose career spanned more than six decades, beginning with a childhood appearance on WHDH back in 1937. In the 1940s, Latulippe had his first paying radio job at Quincy”s WJDA, and in the years that followed he established himself with a long run in mornings at WEZE (1260) and then as public affairs director at WROR (98.5) beginning in the late 1970s. Latulippe”s work also included booth announcing at WGBH-TV (Channel 2) and WNAC-TV (Channel 7) and Red Sox production at WPLM in Plymouth.

Latulippe retired in 1995 but continued to do some part-time radio work in the years that followed. He was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2009. Latulippe”s son, Dale, a drummer, was among the victims in Rhode Island”s Station nightclub fire in 2003. Don Latulippe died June 25, at age 82.

*When Cumulus launched its “Nash FM” brand earlier this spring on New York-market WNSH (94.7 Newark NJ), it was a given that the brand would spread to more of Cumulus” country stations around the U.S.

Memorial Day weekend brought a “Nash” relaunch for five Cumulus country outlets in markets as far-flung as Boise, Des Moines, Green Bay and Lexington, Kentucky – and on Wednesday afternoon at 3, another wave of flips brought a second “Nash” outlet to NERW-land.

This time it”s in northeastern PENNSYLVANIA, where Cumulus (and before that, Citadel) has struggled to make WSJR (93.7 Dallas) a contender against long-established, big-signal Entercom country giant WGGY (Froggy 101.3). While Froggy enjoyed big ratings (and a near-weekly cameo bumper-sticker appearance amidst the filing cabinets on “The Office”), Citadel dumped local staff on what was then “JR 93.7″ back in 2010, and in 2012 it flipped the station to “Great Country 93.7,” an earlier attempt at a national country brand.

Now it”s “Nash,” and so far it”s jockless, save for the syndicated “CMT Live” in evening drive.

*At the other end of the Keystone State, July 4 marked the launch of a new incarnation of WZUM. Those calls long graced the AM 1590 signal in Carnegie, which went silent after losing its transmitter site – but now they”re back in place on the former WLFP (1550 Braddock).

New owners “AM Guys LLC” have replaced the former business-talk format on 1550 with the kind of R&B oldies that have been missing from the market for a few years now – and that happens to be a format the old WZUM ran for a few years in the mid-1960s.

Enter veteran Pittsburgh “AM guy” Clarke Ingram, who”s consulting the new WZUM…and who just happened to have the old jingle package, now lovingly re-edited to include the new frequency. Clarke”s been supplying music for the new station, too, and he tells NERW he”s excited to be helping to bring back a little life to a forgotten corner of the AM dial.

Five Years Ago: June 29 & July 6, 2009

In upstate NEW YORK, the Utica market’s “River” is changing directions: Mindy Barstein’s WXUR (92.7 Herkimer) is segueing from classic rock to active rock, and dropping Don Imus from morning drive in the process. While Imus moves to sister station WNRS (1420 Herkimer), Bill Keeler returns to morning drive on WXUR, with Frank McBride taking over Keeler’s afternoon slot, followed by Justin Cortese at night. (And CNYRadio.com reports that WXUR’s transmitter move to Smith Hill in Utica, giving it a class B1 signal that will make it a full-market player, is due to become a reality as early as mid-July.)

Another Utica-market FM station received some vindication late last week, as FCC investigators reported they could find no sign of excessive RF radiation around the new tower site of EMF Broadcasting’s WOKR (93.5 Remsen) in the town of Floyd, north of Rome. Town officials say they’re still trying to get some answers about what’s causing the mysterious illnesses in several homes near the tower, which residents blamed on WOKR’s April move to the site. Neighbors tell the Utica Observer-Dispatch that they saw workers at the American Tower-owned facility shortly before the FCC’s visit, and they remain suspicious.

While he achieved fame in New York and later California, Ed McMahon never forgot his roots in the Merrimack Valley of MASSACHUSETTS, and so we remember him this week not only for his many years alongside Johnny and Doc, or for his career as a TV pitchman and host, but also for his earliest years in the business at Lowell’s WLLH. McMahon’s voice was heard on WLLH doing station IDs in the 1980s, and he returned to Lowell in 1994 to be honored with a live broadcast on WLLH (alongside then-morning host Paul Sullivan) – and with a park bench at Middlesex Community College, too. McMahon died last Tuesday (June 23) at 86.

Another obituary overshadowed by the week’s big celebrity deaths leads our PENNSYLVANIA news this week: Irv Homer began his talk career by leasing time on WXUR (690/100.3) in Media in the late 1960s, then moved on to WEEZ (1590) in Chester before hitting the big time in 1975 with a slot on WWDB-FM (96.5), where he became a staple of Philadelphia talk radio for a quarter of a century. After WWDB exited the talk format, Homer continued to host a show on suburban WBCB (1490 Levittown-Fairless Hills), where he was still working at the time of his death last week. Homer, 86, suffered a heart attack while speaking at Eastern University Wednesday night. He died shortly afterward at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Ten Years Ago: July 5, 2004

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Fifteen Years Ago: July 2, 1999

We’ll start this week with two station sales in MASSACHUSETTS. The big one is out west in the Berkshires, where Tele-Media is paying $4.65 million to buy Aritaur’s three-station group, news-talk WBEC (1420 Pittsfield), CHR WBEC-FM (105.5 Pittsfield), and religious WZEC (97.5 Hoosick Falls NY, still running the format it had in its pre-Aritaur days as WNGN).The deal expands Tele-Media’s reach eastward from its station group in Albany (WABY, WABY-FM, WKLI/WKBE) over the state line into the Pittsfield market, and leaves NERW wondering — is an Albany-Pittsfield simulcast on the way?

We also have to wonder what will become of the other station owned by Aritaur’s Joseph Gallagher, WBET (1460) in Brockton. Gallagher’s KJI Broadcasting sold WBET’s sister station, WCAV (97.7), to Radio One a few weeks back for a tidy profit.

Meantime, the other station in Brockton, WMSX (1410), is getting a new owner — and it’s a familiar buyer of late. Keating Willcox’s Willow Farm Broadcasting is paying $674,000 to buy WMSX from Donald Sandler, the second deal in a year Sandler’s Metro South Broadcasting has made to sell the station. The first, to Monte Bowen’s Griot Communications, was never consummated.

Willcox has been building quite a ring of stations around Boston, from Beverly around to Nashua and down to Woonsocket and Taunton. Could MetroWest be next?

There’s a change of program directors at Boston talker WRKO (680), as Kevin Straley takes his last elevator ride down to Huntington Avenue after two years in the big seat. Replacing him is veteran Beantown programmer Al Mayers, whose resume includes an earlier stint at WRKO as well as the now-defunct WHDH. Also leaving Entercom/Boston is promotions honcho Frank Murtaugh, who’s off to form his own national media marketing company.

On the TV dial, both viewers of channel 46 out of Norwell probably failed to notice the new calls on the all-infomercial station. It’s dropping the WBPX calls that went with its old Pax affiliation, in favor of WWDP(TV) for owner Devon Paxson. WBPX is being warehoused on an LPTV down in Florida, but we’ll be not one bit surprised to see the calls show up on Boston’s channel 68 one day soon.