NERW 2/8/2016: WCVB Bulks Up Against New Competition

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: February 9, 2015

*Morning drive in New York City has been a surprisingly volatile shift lately, and this week the volatility comes in the world of Spanish-language radio, where Luis Jimenez is headed back to his original New York radio home, Spanish Broadcasting System. In a 14-year run at SBS, Jimenez took WSKQ-FM (97.9) to the top of the ratings, the first time a Spanish-language station had landed there – and then he made big headlines in 2008 when he jumped ship to competitor Univision Radio. Jimenez was a big part of the launch of WCAA (105.9), which quickly transitioned to a better signal as WXNY (96.3), but he disappeared from that station last year amidst big budget cuts at Univision.

Now he’s returning to SBS, but not to WSKQ. Instead, Jimenez will be on sister station WPAT-FM (93.1 Amor FM), where his “Sin Censura con Luis Jimenez” (“Uncensored”) show will be originated for national syndication. Is Jimenez a big enough name to pull WPAT-FM out of its distant third place among New York’s big Spanish-language FMs, far behind both WSKQ-FM and WXNY?

*In upstate NEW YORK, Ray Marks had a long and prominent career in radio news in and around Buffalo, starting as a reporter/anchor at WYSL (1400)/WPHD (103.3) and WGRQ (96.9) and a producer at WIVB (Channel 4). He was best known for his many years as an anchor and news director at WBEN (930) and WGR (550), right up until Entercom merged his WGR newsroom into the WBEN operation in the 1990s. Marks stayed in radio as news director at Jamestown’s WJTN (1240)/WWSE (93.3), then went on to contribute stories to WBFO (88.7) and teach at Medaille College in retirement. Sadly, his retirement was cut short by a leukemia diagnosis last year, and after a courageous fight against the disease, Marks died on Wednesday. He was 70.

*If you’re a baseball fan in central PENNSYLVANIA, you’re probably (but far from certainly) a Phillies fan – and you’re probably going to have to twist your dial to find your team this coming summer. The Phils had been heard on Cumulus-owned sports talker WHGB (1400) and its FM translator on 95.3, but that station (which just relocated its translator home to a more potent signal on 96.5) is switching to the Washington Nationals this year. That clears up a territorial conflict with the station that took over ESPN Radio when WHGB switched to CBS Sports Radio in 2013: Hall’s WLPA (1490 Lancaster) was already carrying the Phils, but its new FM sister, WLPA-FM (92.7 Starview) covered too much of Harrisburg and couldn’t carry Phillies games in conflict with WHGB. Now Hall has full rights to the Phillies in both Lancaster and Harrisburg, and this year the Phils will be heard on both 1490 and 92.7. (The WLPA simulcast will still split for Penn State football, where WHGB still holds the exclusive territorial rights to Harrisburg.)

Five Years Ago: February 7, 2011

*Will NEW YORK become the latest state to make pirate radio a crime? Beset by a growing number of unlicensed broadcasters and an understaffed FCC that can’t keep up with the interference they cause, state lawmakers in Florida and New Jersey have passed laws in recent years giving state law-enforcement officials the power to investigate and shut down unlicensed broadcasters.

Now the Empire State is poised to join them, as Albany lawmakers consider a pair of bills (A.326 in the state assembly, S.2737 in the state senate) that would make a class D felon out of anyone who “knowingly makes or causes to be made a radio transmission in this state without first having obtained a license or an exemption from licensure” or “acts, whether directly or indirectly, to cause an unauthorized radio transmission to, or interference with, a public or commercial radio station…or to enable the radio transmission or interference to occur.”

The bill has the support of the New York State Broadcasters Association, whose members (especially in the New York City area) have long been plagued by pirates that interfere with their signals and, in some cases, their business. So it’s not surprising to see the outspoken Bill O’Shaughnessy, whose WVIP (93.5 New Rochelle) broadcasts leased-time programming to many of the same audiences targeted by the pirates, making a strong case for the anti-pirate law.

O’Shaughnessy praises the dedication of the “legitimate entrepreneurial minority broadcasters who play by the rules and serve a wide range of constituencies with community programming broadcast in many different languages,” but he warns that “their dedication and hard work is seriously threatened by the ‘fly by night’ pirates who are in clear violation of Federal laws concerning the integrity of the spectrum.” And he says the situation has gotten so out of control that “FCC field agents have actually been threatened when, with their limited staff resources, they tried to move on the pirates.”

But the broadcast community in New York is far from unanimous in its support of the bill. The Society of Broadcast Engineers has opposed state involvement in broadcast regulation, warning that the establishment of state jurisdiction in one context (pirate radio, in this case) could lead to states asserting regulatory authority over other aspects of broadcasting as well – including areas such as tower siting where broadcasters have traditionally relied on federal preemption of state law to get around local authorities that have tried to restrict their operations.

*One of CANADA‘s first black-owned radio stations has changed hands, and that’s brought big changes in staff and programming at “Flow 93.5,” CFXJ Toronto.

CTV closed on its C$27 million purchase of the station from founder Denham Jolly last week, and wasted no time moving the station’s studios from 211 Yonge Street to the CHUM complex between Richmond and Queen streets.

With a new slogan of “Hip-hop, dance and R&B,” CTV’s version of Flow more closely resembles a rhythmic top-40 than the urban station Jolly was running – and along with the format shift came the departure of many of Jolly’s employees, including PD Wayne Williams and much of the station’s airstaff.

*When we sat down to write last week’s NERW, we didn’t include an item about the “suspension” of the morning team at Ottawa’s “Virgin Radio” (CKQB 106.9). Something about the story – perhaps the idea that the hosts were pulled from the air after disobeying orders from “the boss” to stop mentioning the station’s former identity as “The Bear” – carried with it a strong whiff of eau de publicity stunt.

And sure enough, our nose wasn’t steering us wrong: as of Friday morning, the “Virgin” identity, which never quite fit the rock format in Ottawa as well as it did at Astral’s top-40 “Virgin” signals in Montreal and Toronto, is gone. 106.9 is now back to “The Bear” after just over two years – and the existing airstaff (yes, including the “suspended” morning team) remains in place.

*There’s a new FM station on the air – sort of – in Danbury, CONNECTICUT, where Berkshire Broadcasting has changed the callsign of WREF (850 Ridgefield) to WAXB, rebranding the station as “B107.3” as it makes its FM debut on newly-acquired translator W279AN (107.3 Danbury), transmitting from the tower of co-owned WLAD (800)/WDAQ (98.3). The new B107.3 keeps the same satellite-delivered True Oldies Channel format; its new calls, meanwhile, have a history in the market, having been heard on the competing station that’s now WDBY (105.5 Patterson NY) back when it was “B105.5” from 1996-2002.

Ten Years Ago: February 8, 2006

So much for the oldies on Buffalo’s WWKB (1520) – after a three-year run with the format (almost to the day, actually), they’re gone, as of 3 PM Monday, replaced with liberal talk. And that means two liberal talkers in Buffalo, unless Entercom’s pre-emptive strike on 1520 knocks WHLD’s plans out before the new station can even get out of the gate.

There are certainly bigger stories making headlines in PENNSYLVANIA this week – especially for football fans anywhere west of Harrisburg or thereabouts – but for fans of old-time radio history, there’s a pretty significant story developing in the small town of Grove City, halfway between Pittsburgh and Erie. That’s where one of the last vestiges of the early history of educational radio may now have breathed its last. WSAJ (1340) traced its history back to amateur station 8CO, which began operations in 1914. After being silenced by the war, Grove City College returned to the air in 1920 as 8YV, and in 1921, 8YV received a broadcast license as WSAJ, using a transmitter built by electrical engineering professor Dr. Herbert W. Harmon. For most of its existence, WSAJ shared time with what’s now WOYL in Oil City, and even after WOYL went full-time (with a directional antenna), WSAJ remained at 100 watts, operating only two days a week from the very same wire cage antenna (rebuilt in 2002) from which it signed on in 1921. There’s very good reason to believe that the antenna atop Rockwell Science Hall is the oldest AM transmitter site in the United States, predating by several years the KGFJ (KYPA) site in Los Angeles.

Sadly, WSAJ’s long run on the AM dial now appears to be over. The station added an FM service on 91.1 in the eighties, and the AM facility’s been somewhat neglected ever since. Its 1950-vintage transmitter was out of service for a while, and the old cage antenna was damaged a few years ago. And while the antenna was fixed and a new LPB transmitter installed, WSAJ’s management apparently lost interest in their historic little treasure somewhere along the way. Last week, word began circulating that there wouldn’t be a renewal application filed for WSAJ(AM), and it now appears that the FCC has cancelled WSAJ’s license and deleted the AM callsign. That’s stirred concern among some NERW readers, who wonder whether it’s possible to save this nifty little relic of another era of broadcasting. From what we’ve heard, there are engineers and FCC experts out there who are willing to take on the task of trying to get the license renewed and putting the AM 1340 signal back on the air – and there’s apparently a closed-circuit student station on campus that would no doubt appreciate having the over-the-air signal, even with only 100 watts. (Students are heard for four hours nightly on WSAJ-FM, which runs satellite-delivered classical and jazz for the remainder of its broadcast day.)

Does Grove City College know what it’s on the verge of losing for good? And is it too late to do anything about it?

Western NEW YORK is getting another progressive talk station, with a familiar Buffalo name at the helm. Starting next Monday (Feb. 13), Citadel will lease WHLD (1270 Niagara Falls) to “Niagara Independent Media,” a consortium that includes longtime Buffalo newsman Ray Marks. He and Alex Blair will host a 6-10 AM talk show on the station, with programming from Air America filling out the day. Alert NERW readers will recall a mention late last year of the WHLD calls appearing on – and then disappearing from – the Air America website, and now we know why.

It’s the end of the line for more than half a century of community radio at two eastern MASSACHUSETTS AM stations. The Asher family, which put WJDA (1300 Quincy) on the air in 1947 (the calls stand for James D. Asher) and which has owned WESX (1230 Salem) for years, is selling the stations, for $4.5 million. The buyer is Principal Broadcasting Network, with financial support from Mercury Capital Partners, and when the deal closes, Principal principal Otto Miller (who ran New York’s WNWK and WKDM for Multicultural Broadcasting) will reportedly flip the stations to a religious format similar to that at WDJZ (1530 Bridgeport CT).

Fifteen Years Ago: February 5, 2001

Radio listeners in western MASSACHUSETTS woke up to some changes on Thursday (Feb. 1), at least if they were fans of the adult album alternative sounds of WRSI or the country music on WPVQ.

We told you a few weeks ago that Vox’s purchase of WPVQ from Cardwell Broadcasting would mean the move of WPVQ’s country from the Turners Falls 93.9 signal to WRSI’s Greenfield-licensed 95.3, with WRSI’s “River” format drifting downstream to 93.9 and its translators, W246AM (97.1) in Amherst and W287AK (105.3) in South Hadley. And indeed, the switch happened right on schedule at midnight, accompanied by days of reminders on both stations (though, oddly, very little on either station’s Web site.) But as country listeners move over to 95.3 (now known as “The Bear”), River fans have still one more frequency to check for their station. In addition to the former WPVQ outlets, Vox also put the River on what had been WSSH (101.5 Marlboro VT), part of a three-station simulcast of soft AC (along with WZSH Bellows Falls and WWSH White River Junction) as “Wish.” The new calls on 101.5 are WRSY (the other two stations continue with Wish), returning the AAA format to an area WRSI used to serve when it was simulcast on still another frequency, the 100.7 in Wilmington, Vermont known as WVAY, then WMTT, and now WVAY again. (That station has been simulcasting Vox classic rocker WEXP Brandon-Rutland for the last few months.)

Easy come, easy go: Boston’s newest independent TV station, WHUB-TV (Channel 66 Marlborough), quietly ended its run on Wednesday after less than half a year with the format. The station is back to the Home Shopping Network fare it used to run (as WHSH), while it awaits the sale of parent USA Broadcasting to Univision, expected in the next few months. Looking for WHUB-TV’s local sports (like the upcoming Beanpot hockey tournament?) You’ll find many of them on AT&T Cable’s channel 3.

Twenty Years Ago: February 8, 1996

Kiss 108, WXKS-FM Medford-Boston, promotes itself as being “Where the Stars Come Out to Play”…and Kiss stars Matt Siegel, JJ Wright, Dale Dorman, et al. will be playing in the big leagues on Friday, That’s when Kiss’ new corporate owner, Evergreen, will be simulcasting Kiss-108 over WYNY-103.5 New York, as part of ‘YNY’s ongoing format change from country to something as yet unannounced. Other Evergreen stations getting a Big Apple tryout over WYNY include WRCX, Chicago; KKBT, Los Angeles; and KMEL, San Francisco.

Following up on the format and call swap late last year, WHIM 1450 in West Warwick RI now has new owners. Richard Muserlian’s Providence Broadcasting will pay $200K for the 1kw AM which used to be WKRI. The spanish-language programmers who used to do weekends on WKRI 1450 are now full-time on the former WHIM facility at 1110 in East Providence, as WPMZ, “Poder Once-Diez.”