NERW 4/27/15: TV Sale in Northern Maine

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, fifteen and – where available – twenty 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: April 28, 2014

There are few broadcasters we’ve been writing about in this space for as long as Brian Dodge.

Way back in the earliest days of this column, one of our first special reports covered an extensive complaint filed against Dodge by competitor Carter Broadcasting. In the years since, we’ve reported on Dodge’s brushes with FCC regulations and with the law in general as he’s bounced around (and briefly out of) New England and vicinity.

Those adventures over the years included a long stint running WWNH (1340 Madbury), the Seacoast religious station that never actually received a license, operating for more than 20 years under a construction permit or no authorization at all. More recently, Dodge ended up in the Hudson Valley, running what’s left of WCKL (560 Catskill), apparently from a site other than the licensed one, where landlord Clear Channel evicted the station from its original directional array. (There’s also an unlicensed FM translator that’s popped on and off the air in recent years.) And more recently still, Dodge was part of a never-consummated deal to buy silent WPNI (1430 Amherst) from Pamal Broadcasting.

Last week, we noted that Dodge was getting into the low-power FM game. This week, we can tell you that he’s not only in the LPFM game, but (as is so typical of Dodge) once again apparently seeking to bend, if not outright twist, the one-to-a-customer rule that’s supposed to be one of the principles of the LPFM service.

Will someone challenge Dodge’s latest LPFM grants this time around? And will this be the time it sticks? As always, we’ll be watching closely to see what, if anything, actually happens.

*Full-time Catholic radio is coming to NEW YORK City. The format has been one of the rare spots of intense growth in the industry in the last decade or so, with a handful of Catholic broadcasters among the few groups still spending heavily on new station acquisitions. Wisconsin-based Starboard Media Foundation has been one of the biggest, putting “Relevant Radio” outlets on the air everywhere from Minneapolis to Chicago to Providence (WSJW 550 Pawtucket) – and now it’s spending $10.1 million to buy a signal that wasn’t even openly for sale.

WNSW (1430 Newark NJ) has been part of Arthur Liu’s Multicultural cluster since 1998, when he acquired then-WNJR along with several other Douglas Broadcasting stations. Liu moved 1430 closer to New York City, diplexing it with WPAT (930 Paterson) and boosting daytime power from 5 kW to 10 kW. Most recently, WNSW has been leased to Spanish-language religious operator Radio Cantico Nuevo, but it will go full-time Catholic when the sale to Starboard closes.

*We salute one of northeast PENNSYLVANIA‘s longest-serving radio veterans on his retirement. Bud Brown signed off WILK (980/103.1) in Wilkes-Barre on Wednesday. Long before he was a talk host at WILK, Brown did news there – and before that, at crosstown WBRE (1340) and WKRZ (98.5), as well as in his native New Jersey even before that. Brown is on his way west to Arizona to enjoy a well-deserved retirement at the end of a radio career that started way back in 1969.

Five Years Ago: April 26, 2010

After four decades of state support, the NEW JERSEY Network is on the verge of being cut loose. While the public radio and TV system has survived plenty of previous budget crises in the Garden State, New Jersey’s new governor made it clear when he took office that he intended to end a state subsidy that currently provides a significant portion of the network’s $28 million budget. (The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that New Jersey currently provides a $4 million cash subsidy to NJN, along with $2.4 million in employee benefits and $4.5 million in other resources including the use of state facilities and parking.)

While NJN is hardly the first public broadcaster to lose its government subsidies, the time frame specified by Governor Chris Christie doesn’t give the network much time to find new sources of support. Christie wants NJN to operate without state help as early as January 1, 2011, and he wants to begin the transformation by cutting NJN’s $4 million appropriation in half for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. NJN’s interim executive director, Howard Blumenthal, appeared before the state senate’s budget committee last week to report that planning is underway for the transition, but that some questions remain unanswered – and NERW wonders whether NJN’s radio network, a very low-profile cousin to its much better-established TV network, will survive the transition. Might the network of nine stations, with somewhat less than full-state coverage and relatively little local programming, end up being sold to fund the TV network’s survival?

If WCBS-FM (101.1 New York) morning man Dan Taylor sounds a little jet-lagged today, he has a good excuse: it’s his first day back on Eastern Time after an unplanned week of shows from London. Taylor was in England for pilot training when that volcano erupted in Iceland, and his scheduled April 18 flight home ended up being delayed for a full week. The show went on from a studio at CBS News in London; meanwhile, BBC Radio 1’s Chris Moyles was doing his morning show from Sirius XM in New York after being stuck Stateside when air travel was shut down. Taylor probably got the better end of the deal, starting his show at 11 AM London time while Moyles had to be on the air at 1:30 AM in New York.

There’s a new signal being tested on the air in CANADA’s capital city. Astral’s CJOT (99.7 Ottawa) signed on last week with the same adult contemporary music it’s expected to be playing when it launches officially soon. There’s even a temporary website at ottawa997.com, which may or may not be the permanent home when CJOT signs on for real. CJOT’s debut has pushed tourist information station CIIO off the air at 99.7; its English-language service has now moved to 101.9, which had been the French-language signal – but even that’s temporary, since 101.9 will soon be occupied as well, by new blues-rock station CIDG (DAWG-FM).

Ten Years Ago: April 25, 2005

The RHODE ISLAND television reporter who spent four months under house arrest after refusing to give up the source of a controversial videotape was hailed as a journalistic hero last week in Las Vegas. WJAR (Channel 10)’s Jim Taricani was a last-minute addition to the roster of speakers at the Radio-Television News Directors Association and National Association of Broadcasters’ conventions, and he used the opportunity to call for the adoption of a federal “shield law” to protect journalists’ sources. Had such a law been in place, it would have kept Taricani from being convicted of contempt of court after he defied a Rhode Island judge’s order to reveal the source of the tape that exposed a corruption ring in Providence’s city government. Taricani was fined $85,000 and sentenced to six months in prison, which was reduced to four months of home confinement because of Taricani’s health issues (he underwent a heart transplant a few years back.)

RTNDA invited Taricani and WJAR news director Betty-Jo Cugini to Las Vegas as soon as he was released, and Taricani said he was delighted to accept. “It’s great to be here – it’s great to be anywhere outside home,” he told the news managers as he spoke at their opening breakfast Monday. Taricani and Cugini said NBC management could not have been more supportive during the trial and the confinement that followed, including paying Taricani’s fine and legal expenses. Taricani is expected to be back at work at WJAR this week.

Oldies have returned to Manchester, NEW HAMPSHIRE with a format flip at WKBR (1250 Manchester); it had been carrying talk and ESPN sports, but now it’s “Oldies 1250,” taking up the format abandoned a few months ago when WQLL (96.5 Bedford) went to classic rock as “the Mall,” WMLL. Woody Woodland’s morning show remains in place on WKBR.

Just south of Rochester, there’s good news for Bob Savage’s WYSL (1040 Avon); he got word from the FCC last week that he’s been approved to take WYSL from 2500 watts to 20,000 watts by day. WYSL will drop to 13,200 watts during critical hours and remain at 500 watts after dark from its current four-tower array; the new signal’s expected to be on the air within a few months.

A landmark tower in western PENNSYLVANIA is no more. Engineers at WPIC (790 Sharon) nicknamed the station’s 550-foot Truscon tower “Old Shakey” as it entered its old age, and in recent years the station was unable even to get climbers to set foot on it to take care of painting and other maintenance. The end of the line for the 1947-vintage tower came last Wednesday (April 20) after one of its base insulators failed, forcing the Cumulus station to topple the tower. The 100,000 pounds of steel came down with one big “thud,” bringing down various STL antennas and the old WYFM (102.9) top-mounted antenna with it. (WYFM moved a few years ago, and is now transmitting from the tower of sister station WHOT-FM in Youngstown, Ohio.) As for WPIC, it’s running 400 watts from a temporary longwire antenna designed by retired engineer Jerry Starr, and it’s looking for a site for a new tower to return to its usual 1000 watt daytime (50 watts at night) operation.

Fifteen Years Ago: April 28, 2000

The last major independently-owned FM station in the Buffalo market is being sold to cable giant Adelphia Communications. WNUC (107.7 Wethersfield) will add programming from Adelphia’s Empire Sports Network to its country format when the deal closes this summer. WNUC is one of the oldest FM licenses in Western New York, tracing its lineage back to 1948, when, as WFNF, it was part of the early Rural Radio Network that relayed WQXR-FM New York across the state. In later years, as WRRL and then as WBIV, it was part of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “Ivy Network” that supplanted Rural Radio in the 1960s. In 1982, WBIV was sold and became WUWU, a quirky rock station that gained a following across Buffalo and into Rochester, where its signal penetrated well (and still does). WUWU later went jazz, then easy listening as WEZQ. Current seller John Casciani purchased the station in 1988 as smooth-jazz WBMW, flipping it to country as WNUC “New Country” a short time later. Even as talks leading to the sale were taking place, WNUC modified its format last month, becoming harder-edged country as “The Bullet” (leading one local wag, on hearing of the sale, to quip, “So the Bullet missed its target?”)

This is the latest sign of Adelphia’s committment to the Buffalo market; the company is also negotiating with the city of Buffalo to build a major office building on the city’s waterfront to accomodate the space needs the company can no longer meet in its tiny hometown of Coudersport, Pennsylvania.

Elsewhere in NEW YORK, the morning show linuep is changing yet again at WABC (770 New York). As had been widely expected, the Rocky Allen Showgram, brought over from sister station WPLJ, was pulled from WABC in favor of veteran station hosts Curtis Sliwa and Ron Kuby, who move to mornings from the 6-8 PM slot. Another veteran WABC host, former mayor Ed Koch, is returning to radio with a one-hour afternoon gig on WEVD (1050).

Upstate, Mike Doyle moves down the Thruway from Pilot’s Syracuse group (WNSS, WNTQ, WAQX, WLTI), where he was market manager, to become GM of Entercom’s Rochester group (WEZO, WBEE-FM, WQRV, WBBF). Still to be filled at Entercom: openings for a CE and a night slammer for “99BBF”.

Our condolences to family and fans of Russ “The Moose” Syracuse, who died April 18 at age 70. While Syracuse was better known for his West Coast work at KYA and other San Francisco stations, his career began in Upstate New York, with his nickname coming from a particularly noisy entrance into the WKBW studios circa 1962.

Two AM frequencies in CANADA are silent now, with the end of the simulcasting on Montreal’s CIQC (600) and CKVL (850) as of last Sunday (4/23) at midnight. The stations have been replaced by CINW (940) and CINF (690), with no sign — yet — of applications to take over their old frequencies. This should mean an easier time for outlying listeners to Boston’s WEEI (850) this winter; the station’s signal is often plagued by interference from CKVL to the north.

Twenty Years Ago: May 2, 1995

WKRH 105.9 in Bath ME is off the air. It’s supposed to reappear later this month as religious WBCI-FM under new ownership. This is the second time this decade that this station has gone through a silent period. Circa 1990 they were off for a while as they transitioned from CHR WIGY to classic-rock WKRH. The station has a good class B signal over the Portland market, they’ve just never gotten it to work for them.

New calls for “Mix 96.7,” the alternative rock station in Rochester NH (part of a quadropoly with standards WMYF-AM, newly-standards WZNN-AM (ex-CNN Headline News), and AOR WERZ-FM). The former WWEM is now WSRI.

Speaking of calls with SR in them (and how’s THAT for a meaningless segue?), the WYSR calls abandoned by 104.1 in Waterbury (Hartford) CT have resurfaced to the northwest on 98.3 Rotterdam (Albany-Schenectady-Troy) NY. The former WTRY-FM has been calling itself “Star” for a few months, since it broke from its simulcast with oldies WTRY-AM 980. WYSR 98.3 and WWCP 96.7 Clifton Park (using the “UN” alternative format) are both owned by Jarad Broadcasting, but local ad time is sold by Liberty Broadcasting, which also owns WTRY(AM), country WGNA AM-FM, and AOR WPYX-FM.

Another Albany mega-opoly is about to shed one station. Albany Broadcasting is selling 50kw WPTR-1540 to an as-yet-unnamed religious broadcaster. Albany Broadcasting’s other stations are AP all-news WROW 590, ac WJYB-95.5, and chr WFLY-92.3.

The folks up in Greenville, Maine are getting nervous about the town’s biggest landowner, the shortwave station formerly known as WCSN. The Christian Scientists sold the station this year to a group called Prophecy Countdown, an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists. The station is now known as WVHA. The AP reports that while WCSN never tried to take a religious exemption from paying property taxes, WVHA plans to seek such an exemption — a big deal considering the radio station makes up more than 10% of the town’s tax base! Also, neighbors are worried about increased security at WVHA. Apparently the new owners asked a lot of questions about how long the station can get by without outside supplies and power…and that has neighbors wondering what they’re planning.

And outside New England, a note that the “Jukebox Radio” network has reconfigured. Jukebox started as an attempt to program translator W276AQ Fort Lee NJ, just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan. The original idea was to buy a dark high school station on 88.7 in Franklin Lakes NJ and use that station (redesignated “WJUX”) as the primary. Then, last fall, Jukebox bought and built the CP for WXTM-99.7 Monticello NY, a commercial station. WXTM became the primary, WJUX 88.7 went dark, and 103.1 W276AQ was able to air commercials at long last. 99.7 has now picked up the WJUX calls, the *88.7 station now has calls WNJW, and will be sold and pick up a new format.