NERW 10/20/2014: First Signals from 1 World Trade Center

In this week’s issue… First signal to light up from World Trade Center – Conrad Garage restoration kicks off – More Pfuntner sales in upstate NY – LPFM CPs flow from FCC – Veteran GM’s new NEPA gig

Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada

Thirteen years after the 9/11 attacks silenced the nine TV stations and four FM stations that broadcast from One World Trade Center, the first new signal is about to hit the airwaves from the new skyscraper that rises just a few hundred feet north of the old site. But even as WABC-TV (Channel 7) applies for special temporary authority to put an experimental signal on the air from the new building, it’s not at all clear that it – or any of the other stations that once called the Twin Towers home – will make a permanent return to lower Manhattan.

As WABC’s application explains, the 5 kW signal on RF channel 12 would be used only for testing purposes; specifically, “to test the propagation and reception characteristics of VHF TV channels to be compared with the characteristics of the existing VHF transmission facilities located at the Empire State Building.” There are three stations operating on high-VHF from Empire since the DTV transition; in addition to WABC’s main signal on 7, WPIX and WNET returned to their former VHF channels, 11 and 13, in 2009. All three are now looking intently at the merits of Empire versus the new 1 World Trade Center, and they have a plan (with the help of the Metropolitan Television Alliance umbrella trade group) to get some hard data to help make that decision.

The tests won’t be conducted with a full non-directional signal from the 1WTC mast – on channel 12, that would cause unacceptable interference to co-channel WHYY in the Philadelphia market, and potentially to Albany’s WNYT, which also uses RF 12 – but will instead operate with a single panel that will be shifted in different directions to test the signal across various arcs of New York City and its northern and eastern suburbs. (The use of channel 12 also required permission from ion’s low-power station WPXU-LD, which is licensed to use channel 12 from the top of the Bloomberg tower on Lexington Avenue, and which will yield the channel for testing.)

So what does it all mean, and what can we expect in the longer term for broadcasting from the World Trade Center in a time when over-the-air TV is caught between the rise of the cord-cutters and the potential riches to be had from abandoning OTA and yielding spectrum to the upcoming incentive auction?

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Let’s stipulate that a generation ago, these decisions would have been obvious: when stations still lived and died on the reach of their over-the-air signals, New York’s broadcasters would have been rushing back to the 1700-foot mast of 1WTC as soon as it was ready in order to take advantage of the extra height it provides over the Empire mast, which tops out at 1454 feet. Even in the wake of the improvements that have been made at Empire since TV stations had to make their post-9/11 return there, that midtown site is still less than optimal in many ways. Two master antennas mounted below the top of the mast there carry most of the big stations in town: a high-VHF antenna is shared by WABC-TV, WPIX and WNET, while a UHF master antenna is home to WNBC (4/RF 28), WCBS-TV (2/RF 33), WWOR (9/RF 38) and WNYW (5/RF 44).

Once the unchallenged champion for height in Manhattan, Empire now has competition in the form of several slender residential towers that are beginning to dot the midtown skyline at greater heights, raising the possibility for undesirable signal reflections and blockages of what was once a clean line of site from Empire to most of the metro area.

Even so, for half a decade now, those Empire signals have qualified as “good enough.” As cable and satellite penetration kept growing, the assumption in much of the television industry was that the importance of over-the-air television would continue to decline. But that’s now being challenged by a growing number of viewers rejecting the rapid rise in cable bills and the “all or nothing” nature of bundled cable packages and turning instead to some combination of streaming services (including, perhaps, the new paid-subscription streaming model CBS is testing) and over-the-air broadcasting. It matters, once again, that a TV station can deliver a reliable signal to an antenna – and in most of Manhattan and Brooklyn, that has to be an indoor antenna.

But while OTA broadcasting is suddenly important, so is the possible payoff from putting channels into the upcoming spectrum auction. There’s no reason to expect WABC-TV or WCBS-TV or WNYW to give up their immensely valuable channels – but every reason to think that Fox might yield up WWOR’s spectrum and allow “channel 9” to survive as a WNYW subchannel, for instance. The outcome of the auction will determine how many over-the-air stations survive in New York, and thus how much demand still exists for the scarce real estate up at the top of New York’s broadcast skyscrapers.

Which in turn brings us to the other bottom line here: this is also a real estate decision. Just two landlords control all of that prime vertical space. The Durst Organization manages both the 1 World Trade Center spire, which has no announced tenants yet, and the 4 Times Square tower that has become a prime alternative to Empire for midtown broadcasters. Durst has been working hard to lure broadcasters away from their current contracts at Empire, and if it can use the results of the channel 12 test to demonstrate that TV stations will have comparable (or even improved) coverage from the 1WTC site, the real decision about where to put the next generation of DTV transmitters in the city will likely be as much a question of who offers the better deal on rent as anything else.

(As for FM, we’ve been pointing out for a while now that the center of gravity is likely to remain in midtown, since many of the FMs on Empire have spacing issues that would prevent them from moving to the Trade Center at full power. Only a handful of stations, most notably WPAT-FM on 93.1, are short-spaced at Empire and would benefit from a move back downtown.)

*The other big news from the city hasn’t actually happened yet. There are few broadcast trade journalists as consistently reliable as Tom Taylor, so when he reported last week that Disney had reached a $12 million deal to sell WQEW (1560 New York) to Family Stations, the news quickly spread to the newspapers and the message boards.

It’s a deal that makes perfect sense: Family has been seeking to return to the New York radio dial ever since it sold the former WFME (94.7 Newark) to Cumulus two years ago, and the things that make WQEW less desirable to mainstream broadcasters these days (a huge nighttime skywave signal offset by spotty coverage within the market, not to mention its position way up at the top of the AM dial) aren’t deal-breakers to Family, which is more interested in broad reach than in Nielsen Audio ratings. And even given how much money Family spent (and how much debt it incurred) promoting the end of the world in 2011, it’s likely that there’s enough left from the $40 million sale of 94.7 to pay for the 1560 signal.

The only hitch, so far, is that the deal doesn’t appear to be completed. The broker selling the Disney stations tells the trades that there’s nothing to announce yet. But if Tom says it’s going to happen, it’s probably going to happen – so watch this space for further updates.

*Univision Radio appears to be on the verge of a format change on one of its New York-market FMs: WQBU (92.7 Garden City) has been running the national “Univision America” talk network, but it’s reportedly poised to return to regional Mexican as “92.7 Nueva York.”

*Those of you who closely peruse the FCC Daily Digest every day (and yes, there are a bunch of you among our loyal readership) may have noticed an oddity on Tuesday: W232AL (94.3), the translator Cumulus just moved from Rockland County across the river to Westchester as the new “WFAS-FM,” applying to move back to Rockland with just 3 watts. What’s that about? Apparently nothing more than a placeholder to protect the western fringe of the current Westchester 94.3 signal from any potential incursion; there’s every reason to believe the 94.3 signal is staying put on the old WFAS-FM (103.9) tower in Greenburgh, especially now that there’s once again a local airstaff on 94.3. Mary DeSilva started last week in mornings, followed by the syndicated John Tesh middays and then “The Hartman” in afternoons.

*Upstate, another piece of what was once Robert Pfuntner’s broadcast empire stretching across a big chunk of the southern tier has been sold. WZKZ (101.9 Alfred) has been a standalone country station serving a mostly rural area around Wellsville and Hornell, west of the Elmira-Corning market where Pfuntner’s cluster is in the midst of a sale to tower owner Gordy Ichikawa and east of the Olean-Salamanca area, where Pfuntner’s stations were recently sold to another regional broadcaster, Sound Communications.

(NERW readers will recall that Sound was involved in an earlier attempted sale of the Pfuntner Elmira cluster, but backed out after questions were raised about Sound’s ties to another local broadcaster. Vision Communications, which owns two local TV stations, is financed by the husband of Sound backer Bettina Finn and operated by the husband of Sound GM Paige Christian.)

Now Sound is buying WZKZ, too, adding it to existing clusters in Elmira-Corning (talk WENY/WENI, AC WENY-FM/WENI-FM, oldies WGMM), Olean-Salamanca (the ex-Pfuntner stations, standards WOEN/WEHH, rock WQRS and AC WMXO) and Hornell (country WKPQ).

No sale price was announced for the deal, brokered by Dick Foreman. Once it and the Elnira sale both close, and once Foreman has found a buyer for WVIN (98.3)/WABH (1380) in Bath, now in foreclosure, Pfuntner will be left with just one remaining station, WQRW (93.5) in Wellsville.

Meanwhile, Paige Christian and Sound made another acquisition last week: they’re buying translator W294BU (106.7 Hornell) and construction permit W296CR (107.1 Hornell) from Bilbat Radio for $1000, closing the books on another once-prominent local broadcaster. The Bilbat group was once Hornell’s biggest broadcaster before financial problems closed down WHHO (1320) and forced the sale of WKPQ (105.3) to Sound.

*While we’re out along the I-86 corridor, we note a format change in Olean: Colonial Media and Entertainment’s W230BO (93.9) has dropped CBS Sports Radio for classic country as “The Brand.” It’s part of a cluster that includes talker WVTT (96.7 Portville), country “Bob” WBYB (103.9 Eldred PA) and classic rock “Mountain” WXMT (106.3 Smethport PA).

In Ithaca, Bristlecone Broadcasting has withdrawn a request to move translator W16AX to digital on channel 22. Instead, we hear the relay of Syracuse Fox affiliate WSYT (Channel 68/RF 19) will flash-cut from analog to digital on its existing channel 16 position at lower power.

*The news from the FCC on a holiday-shortened week included a bunch of new low-power FM construction permits from around the region. In upstate New York, that includes shiny new FMs for the Manlius Pebble Hill School (92.5 Dewitt) in the Syracuse market and for the Ibero-American Action League (97.1) and Rochester Community Television (100.9) here in Rochester.

*For many years, “Stan David” was the overnight voice supplying “Music While the City Sleeps” on WNYC-FM (93.9) in New York – 37 years, in all, from the 1960s into the 1990s, according to WNYC archivist Andy Lanset, who passes along the news that David (real name Stanley Distenfeld) died recently. Services for Distenfeld were held Wednesday in New York City.

*We’ve been remiss in sharing the VERMONT Association of Broadcasters’ award lineup for their upcoming annual banquet: the group’s three Hall of Fame inductees for 2014 are newsmen Tim Anderson of Brattleboro’s WTSA (and before that, WKVT from 1973-1997) and Jack LaDuke, longtime Adirondack bureau chief for WCAX-TV (Channel 3) and now contributor to WCFE (Channel 57) in Plattsburgh, along with Hall Communications (WBTZ/WIZN) sales manager Candis Leopold. Roger Hess, general manager at WVNY/WFFF-TV in Plattsburgh, will be named Broadcaster of the Year; WCAX chief photographer Jim Oliver will get the first-ever Teffner-Snyder Award for service behind the scenes (named for the engineers Dennis Snyder of WJOY and the late Ted Teffner of WCAX); and VAB Distinguished Service Awards will go to WCAX’s Judy Simpson and Thom Richards, recently retired from a long run at WOKO in Burlington. The awards will be handed out at the banquet December 6 at the Burlington Hilton.

There’s one new LPFM in Vermont this week: St. Francis Xavier Paris Charitable Trust gets the CP for 105.5 in Burlington.

*Three new LPFMs have CPs in NEW HAMPSHIRE: in Manchester, 95.3 goes to Manchester Public Television Service, while 101.7 goes to the St. Joseph Catholic Family Center. In nearby Bedford, 105.1 goes to the Town of Bedford.

*In MAINE, the Fifties Preservation Society now holds a CP for an LPFM on 102.5 in Westbrook.

*It’s mostly about LPFM in MASSACHUSETTS, too, including one on the North Shore, where Iglesia Christiana Torrente de Cedron gets 89.3 in Lynn. In Holyoke, 107.7 goes to the Word of Life Church of God, and out on Martha’s Vineyard, that “M&M Community Development” group that applied for a whole pile of LPFMs in both the 2003 and 2013 windows gets 105.5 in Oak Bluff for its “Oak Bluff Branch.”

On the AM dial, Steve Callahan sends along a picture of the work that’s underway at his WVBF (1530 Middleborough Center) – or rather, at the site that’s soon to become the new home of WVBF. He’s in the process of moving the station to the former site of the now-defunct WPEP (1570 Taunton), and the work includes the construction of a second tower (shown at left) at that longtime nondirectional site. (It turns out WPEP had made plans itself to put up a second tower at the site, once upon a time.)

When the work is all done, WVBF will jump from 2200 watts days (940 watts critical hours) to a full 5000 watts days, with much improved coverage of Taunton.

*Where Are They Now, CONNECTICUT edition: former WDRC-FM (102.9 Hartford) jock Floyd Wright has made the move to the noncommercial end of the dial, where he’s taking over afternoons on WJMJ (88.9 Hartford), the oldies/AC station run by the archdiocese of Hartford. Wright joins other former Big D personalities at WJMJ, including Jerry Kristafer and Dan Lovallo. Wright’s former boss at Buckley Radio, Eric Fahnoe, is also back in radio: the nephew of the late Rick Buckley served as GM of the Buckley Hartford cluster, and he’s now formed his own company, “Dimes Radio” (from his late grandfather’s middle name), which is buying stations in the lovely town of San Luis Obispo, California from Mapleton Broadcasting.

The Nutmeg State also got several LPFM CPs last week: the town of Enfield won a CP on 94.3, Manchester Community College won 103.3 in Manchester, the Society of the Missionaries of the Holy Apostles won 104.5 in Cromwell, and the Huckleberry Hill Musical Society will get to put 107.5 on the air in Collinsville.

A correction on last week’s item about Connoisseur’s move of the WFOX (95.9) city of license from Norwalk to Southport: it shifts the station from the Stamford-Norwalk market to Bridgeport, not to “New Haven,” as we erroneously reported. Either way, here’s one good reason why the shift might matter: while Stamford-Norwalk (if it even continues to exist as a market with no local subscribers) is an embedded slice of the larger New York City market, Bridgeport isn’t. Moving WFOX out of Stamford-Norwalk and thus out of “New York” reduces Connoisseur’s overall holdings in the market to six stations (two AM/four FM), all of them in the Nassau-Suffolk (Long Island) market that’s also embedded in New York. And that in turn gives Connoisseur room to add two more stations – and more critically, one more FM – if it can find more to buy on Long Island.

*Southern NEW JERSEY tends to lead the way each autumn when it comes to all-Christmas radio, and this year is no exception. WEZW (93.1 Wildwood Crest) is always at or near the front of the pack, and this year RadioInsight says it’s once again first in the nation with its seasonal flip from soft AC “Easy 93.1” to all-ho-ho-ho.

Just up the coast in Atlantic City, WAYV (95.1) has found a new “Mike” for its morning show. This time it’s Matt Kelso, former PD at WBBO (98.5) and WWZY (107.1), taking on the “Mike” half of the “Mike and Diane” show.

*An early warning to doctors who count radio historians among their patients: we’ll all be needing some extra blood pressure medication as we head toward November 2, 2020, when the media will light up with the “centennial of radio.” As you’ll hear us tell you over and over again in the next few years, there’s nothing Frank Conrad and Westinghouse did in western PENNSYLVANIA in 1919 and 1920 that wasn’t being done first and maybe even better elsewhere across the radio landscape – except, perhaps, to get publicity for the work they were doing.

Having said that, there’s no question that Conrad and the station he built, KDKA, were pioneers. And there’s no question at all that it was appalling that the Pittsburgh suburb of Wilkinsburg – a community whose entire municipal seal is all about being “the birthplace of radio,” for crying out loud – allowed Conrad’s home and garage to be torn down a decade ago, replaced by a Wendy’s. And so it was good news indeed that there’s finally action again toward rebuilding the garage, which has been a pile of bricks in storage for years now while Rick Harris’ National Museum of Broadcasting tries to find it a new home.

At an event last week, Conrad’s grandsons Jamie and David and veteran Pittsburgh DJ Jack Bogut joined Harris to unveil the historical marker that had been at the Penn Avenue site of the Conrad home. Harris says the new goal is to get the garage rebuilt at a new site by October 2019, the 100th anniversary of Conrad’s first broadcasts (under the calls 8XK), and to open a proper museum within it to honor Conrad’s role in early broadcasting.

*In Scranton, Steve Borneman is the new general manager at the Times Shamrock cluster (“Rock 107” WEZX, “Fuzz” WFUZ 92.1 and ESPN outlets WEJL/WBAX). Borneman was most recently Clear Channel’s leader at WOR (710) in New York, but he’s best known for his decades at WABC/WPLJ, where he worked under ABC Radio honcho Mitch Dolan, who’s now chief operating officer of the Times Shamrock stations.

Across town, it looks like another extended silence for WARM (590). The onetime giant of the Scranton market has been limping along for years now in an FM world, and since mid-September it’s been off the air completely. Keep in mind that owner Cumulus has more stations than anyone in America, and a staff full of very competent and talented engineers, too, as we offer you their verbatim explanation for the silence (all-caps, because that’s how the FCC CDBS system works):

“UNFORTUNATELY, THE ENGINEERS HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO DETERMINE PRECISELY WHY THE TRANSMITTER FAILED. AS MENTIONED IN ITS NOTIFICATION OF SUSPENSION OF OPERATIONS, THE TRANSMITTER IS QUITE OLD, SO, ONCE THE PROBLEM IS IDENTIFIED, IT MAY TAKE THE ENGINEERS SOME TIME TO OBTAIN THE PARTS NECESSARY TO REPAIR IT PROPERLY. ”

*One of the smallest “full-power” signals in the nation is about to get a translator. WPEB (88.1) serves part of west Philadelphia with just one watt – and so it will be a big upgrade when it gets on the seven watts of W236CL (95.1 Millbourne PA), which WPEB owner Scribe Video Center is buying from Denise Choi for a dollar. The new translator will broadcast from 48th and Baltimore, just across the street from WPEB’s own one mighty watt.

A correction to our Hockey on the Radio lineup last week: the Hershey Bears are in fact continuing on the same network that carried their games last year, based at WQIC (100.1 Lebanon) and also including WTKT (1460 Harrisburg) and WOYK (1350 York). WLPA (1490 Lancaster) appears to have dropped from the network this year.

There are two new LPFM CPs at opposite ends of the Keystone State: Grace of Calvary Baptist Church gets 107.9 in Erie, while Montgomery County gets 92.1 in Horsham.

*It was a holiday week in CANADA, too (happy belated Thanksgiving!), but there’s still a bit of news to report: in Montreal, Evanov has begun testing its new CHRF (980), which they hope to have on the air before the year is out as “Radio Fierte,” serving the gay and lesbian community in French.

In Leamington, Ontario, the CBC says it couldn’t get the transmitter site it wanted for its new Radio One signal on 88.7, so instead of 8180 watts max DA/2060 watts average ERP/78.9 meters, CBCL-1 will operate from a downtown rooftop with just 1320 watts/3.5 meters, non-directional.

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