NERW 9/11/17: Carton Out, Who’s In at WFAN?

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: September 12, 2016

*As another milestone anniversary of the September 11 attacks came and went in NEW YORK over the weekend, perhaps the most remarkable conclusion we can offer in our fifteenth-anniversary update is how little there actually is to update.

Over the weekend, we reposted the “9/11 Plus One” article that first appeared in this space in 2002, and in doing so we were struck by how optimistic we were back then about the prospects for an improved reconstruction of the broadcast facilities that were destroyed on that terrible September day. At the time, we thought, it would be “no more than a year” before construction was underway – or even complete – on a new tower that might return New York’s TV signals to the heights they’d occupied on the old 1 World Trade Center.

Instead, in a way we could hardly have anticipated back then, a combination of political delays, technical holdups and transformations of the entire broadcasting landscape have left the situation not that much different from the way we left it back in 2002.

*It’s been three years since China Radio International came to MASSACHUSETTS with Radio One’s lease of WILD (1090 Boston) to a group led by James Su of California. Now Su’s Radio Boston Broadcasting, Inc. is buying the AM signal out from Radio One, ending that company’s 17-year run in the market. It was back in 1999 that Radio One paid $10 million for then-WCAV (97.7 Brockton), and a year later when the company bought WILD from the Nash family for $5 million.

The sale price this time doesn’t even break the $1 million mark: Radio Boston Broadcasting is paying $888,231 to take ownership of the station. That money will come partially from Su, whose Universal Broadcasting Group owns 78% of the company, and partially from AIM Broadcasting, which owns 22%. AIM, in turn, belongs to John and Greg Douglas – and if that first name sounds familiar, it’s because John Douglas was a radio owner in Boston back in the 1990s, when his Achievement Radio Holdings had WBPS (890).

*Who’s “Tony” and what’s he doing in Utica, NEW YORK? That’s Galaxy’s new HD-fed translator format at W256AJ (99.1), the high-powered Smith Hill signal that had been simulcasting ESPN with WTLB (1310) and its Mohawk Valley sister stations.

The new format launched at 11 Thursday morning, fed by the new HD2 signal of WKLL (94.9 Frankfort); it’s a variety hits format that’s launching with 10,000 commercial-free songs. (As for ESPN and WTLB, it will return to the FM dial before long on the translator Galaxy is buying from Vermont.)

Five Years Ago: September 10, 2012

*Even as voters in Quebec were giving their nod to the separatist party that wants to pull the province free of English-speaking CANADA, complete with a platform calling for control of broadcasting in Quebec to shift from the CRTC to the provincial level. one Montreal TV broadcaster is asking the CRTC for permission to switch from multilingual television to full-time English-language programming.

When Rogers announced back in May that it planned to buy CJNT (Channel 62, aka “Metro 14”) from Channel Zero, the big national broadcaster was clear about its intent to make CJNT the Quebec home for its CityTV service, which currently has a not-quite-national reach stretching from Vancouver to Ontario but no further east. Even before the sale went through, Rogers struck an affiliation deal with Channel Zero to begin branding CJNT as “CityTV” and to carry some of City’s programming – but it was stymied by the longstanding restriction on the CJNT license designating it as a multicultural station, with 75% of its prime-time programming required to be in languages other than English or French. Rogers is supplying some of that programming, too, from its Toronto-based “OMNI” multicultural network.

At a hearing on November 7, the CRTC will consider Rogers’ request to approve its C$10.3 million purchase of CJNT and to relicense the station as an English-language CityTV outlet. At the same time, the CRTC will also hear a related application from a new group called “ici” (International Channel/Canal International) for a new TV station in Montreal that would be fully multicultural, providing shows in 15 languages aimed at 18 ethnic groups. The new signal would operate on channel 47, with 5.5 kW max DA (2,7 kW average)/196 meters, and it would share a common master control and a news staff with CJNT, though its sales staff would operate autonomously. Rogers says it will provide 10% of the value of the CJNT purchase to ici over five years to help launch the new station, and it tells the CRTC it will make its OMNI programming available to ici, “should ici decide to acquire it.”

*Just across the border in northern NEW YORK, there are two format flips to tell you about, including one that has more of an effect on Canada than the U.S.

That’s Border International Broadcasting’s WLYK (102.7 Cape Vincent), which transmits from U.S. soil but aims its programming and sales across the river at Kingston, Ontario. As of Friday night, “The Lake” has segued from oldies to AC as “102.7 Light Hits, the Lake.”

A former Watertown-market sister station of WLYK has also flipped, and more dramatically: as of Tuesday, WEFX (100.7 Henderson) has ditched classic rock (“100.7 the Fox”) in favor of country as “100.7 the Eagle.” It’s one of two country signals in Community Broadcasters’ portfolio; the other is “Wolf” WLFK (95.3 Gouverneur), up north of Watertown.

Ten Years Ago: September 10, 2007

*Some sad news from MASSACHUSETTS just as we go to press early this Monday morning: Paul Sullivan, the former WBZ (1030) evening talk host, lost his battle with brain cancer Sunday night.

Sullivan’s fight took a turn for the worse last week, when WBZ released a statement from his family saying that Sullivan was taken off medical treatment and was receiving hospice care at Saints Memorial Medical Center in Lowell.

“Paul is surrounded by his family and friends and would like everyone to know how important all the thoughts and prayers have been to him,” said the statement.

That was Thursday, and now comes the word that Sullivan died with his beloved family by his side on Sunday evening, just ten weeks after he said farewell to his listeners in an emotional final show from the WBZ studios June 28.

Sullivan, 50, was a true Bay State original, a newspaper guy who came late to the radio medium, adding WLLH (1400 Lowell) to his career at the Lowell Sun in the late eighties. Sullivan began filling in for the late David Brudnoy on WBZ in the late nineties, and took over the evening shift after Brudnoy’s death in 2004, replacing Brudnoy’s nightly academic seminars with an earthier (and distinctively Merrimack Valley-accented) approach to talk radio.

It wasn’t long afterward that Sullivan’s brain cancer was diagnosed, and once again the WBZ family is mourning a good friend and talented broadcaster, lost far too young.

We here at NERW send our sympathies to Sullivan’s family and his colleagues. We’ll update this week’s column with any information about memorial services and special WBZ programming as it becomes available. (As we write this early Monday morning, Dan Pierce is on the air filling in for Steve LeVeille, and he’s talking about other topics.)

*As the soap opera that is the rest of Boston talk radio rolls on, Entercom Boston has averted one crisis, even as it’s knee-deep in legal action over another.

First, the success: over the weekend, Entercom’s WEEI sports network came to terms with morning talkers John Dennis and Gerry Callahan, clearing the way for them to return to the air from a month-long lockout as early as this morning, and with a five-year contract that will keep them in place at WEEI for a while to come.

We’ll defer to David Scott’s Scott’s Shots column over at Boston Sports Media Watch for all the details on the negotiations, which he says went all the way up to Entercom CEO David Field and lasted well into the weekend. But we’ll also note that Dennis and Callahan ended up in a much weaker negotiating position when their “Plan B” – a possible Nassau-run sports network hubbed at WCRB – suddenly turned into a Nassau/Entercom joint venture to put WEEI content on many Nassau stations in New England. We’d also note that WEEI was struggling to find adequate replacements for its morning team, just at a point where the station is heading into a critical programming season, what with the Patriots season underway and the Red Sox deep in the last weeks of a tight race to the playoffs.

But even if Field (and local honchos Julie Kahn and Jason Wolfe) can now relax a bit about their lineup on WEEI, the picture remains cloudy just down the hall at WRKO (680 Boston), where there’s just over a week remaining until the end of Howie Carr’s contract and plenty of legal action afoot to figure out where the Herald columnist and syndicated afternoon talker will land.

The rumor mill on Carr’s attempt to jump to rival talker WTKK (96.9 Boston) went eerily quiet just before Labor Day, right after a couple of columns (carefully planted, perhaps, by WRKO’s master PR practitioner, George Regan?) noted that Carr stood to make as much as $7 million from WTKK. And since then…radio silence, as it were, except on Carr’s own show, where he’s not discussing the contract issue at all.

So will Carr show up on WTKK’s morning drive in a few weeks? Stay tuned…

*Elsewhere on the FM dial, WXKS-FM (107.9 Medford) said farewell to its longtime home at 99 Revere Beach Parkway. Boston Radio Watch reports that “Kiss 108” signed on from its new digs across the street at 10 Cabot Road, shared with sister station WJMN (94.5 Boston), on Monday, August 27. WXKS (1430 Everett) will move its studios over to the new facility soon as well – but not with PD and morning man Raffy Contigo, who’s moved on to Houston’s KLOL (101.1). Afternoon jock Jose Miguel Espinal takes the PD chair at “Mega 1200/1430,” reports BRW.

*We knew the newly-freed Buddy Cianci was returning to the RHODE ISLAND airwaves on Citadel’s WPRO (630 Providence) – but we didn’t know, until now, how many changes Cianci’s return would bring to the schedule, not only at WPRO but across town at Clear Channel’s WHJJ (920 Providence).

Clear Channel, which syndicates Rush Limbaugh through its Premiere Radio Networks division, is bringing the Rush show in-house in Providence, moving him from WPRO to the noon-3 slot on WHJJ, effective next Monday. It’s still not clear whether Limbaugh’s move to WHJJ means the end of the local Helen Glover show, which has been occupying that slot as WHJJ’s only local entry – but it is clear that some big shuffles are in the works on the WPRO lineup.

Mornings on WPRO will be the province of John DePetro, who’ll yield his mid-morning slot to Cianci and former morning man Ron St. Pierre. They’ll be on the air from 10 AM until 2 PM, followed by an expanded Dan Yorke show from 2-6.

Can the local Cianci/St. Pierre show outdraw the syndicated Rush in the famously self-absorbed Providence market? We’d take that bet…

*It was a busy couple of weeks in PENNSYLVANIA, and especially in Philadelphia, where a closely-watched experiment to see if modern rock could work with HD Radio on a flea-powered AM signal has ended in – well, c’mon, what did you really expect it to do in eight months?

Tom Kelly’s Marconi Radio will continue its “Skin Radio” format online, but the terrestrial signal of WHAT (1340 Philadelphia) flipped on Aug. 31 to “Martini Lounge Radio,” a standards format. (We hear the digital signal’s been turned off there, too.)

Fifteen Years Ago: September 10, 2002

In MASSACHUSETTS, Costa-Eagle made the swaps on its Merrimack Valley AMs last weekend. The English-language talk that had been on WCCM (800 Lawrence) moved to the former WHAV (1490 Haverhill), with WHAV changing calls to WCCM. (What happens to listeners in Lowell who tuned into WCCM for Spinners baseball and other programming? They can’t hear 1490 there — in fact, it doesn’t even serve Lawrence well — and it’s likely the Spinners will change stations next year.) WHAV’s “Radio Impacto” Spanish-language news-talk moves down the dial to daytimer WNNW (1110 Salem NH), which changes calls to WCEC (“Costa Eagle Communications”), while WNNW’s Spanish tropical format and call letters move to Lawrence and the AM 800 signal.

A big change in the Boston TV market, even if the station in question is across the line in New Hampshire: NBC is buying WPXB (Channel 60) in Merrimack, N.H. from Lowell Paxson for a reported $26 million. The station, which now carries ShopNBC, will switch to NBC-owned Telemundo eventually, joining WTMU-LP (Channel 32) in Boston with the network feed. (Paxson’s son Devon owns WWDP, channel 46 in Norwell, which had been carrying Telemundo until switching to home shopping earlier this year.)

A surprise station sale in CONNECTICUT, as John Fuller adds WKCD (107.7 Pawcatuck) to his WBMW (106.5 Ledyard) and WJJF (1180 Hope Valley RI) in the Groton-New London area; no word on how much Fuller is paying to buy the CHR station from AAA Entertainment.

Just across from Buffalo, there’s some noise being stirred up in CANADA over the new format at CKEY-FM (101.1 Fort Erie). “Wild 101,” programmed in Buffalo at Citadel, made its debut last Friday afternoon — and quickly drew complaints about its playing of unedited rap songs. The CRTC (and presumably the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council) are investigating; meantime, Wild is reaping a publicity bonanza in Buffalo.

We were in Niagara Falls last Friday morning to hear travelers information CFLZ (105.1) move its programming down the dial to CJRN (710), while CFLZ became the new home of the modern AC “River” format that had been on 101.1. As “105.1 the River,” CFLZ is running stereo for the first time, albeit with a signal that doesn’t really go south into Buffalo; the travelers information on 710 now reaches most of western New York and southern Ontario, meanwhile!

Twenty Years Ago: September 11, 1997

This week’s news begins in NEW YORK, where a small Hudson Valley radio station burned to the ground early Wednesday morning. The fire at WVIP (1310) in Mount Kisco began sometime before 1:30 in the morning, but was not reported immediately because nobody was at the daytime-only station. It took firefighters more than three hours to put out the flames, and by then WVIP’s famous round studio building was a total loss. WVIP’s 82 year old founder, Martin Stone, was taken to a local hospital for observation for high blood pressure after watching the station burn down.

Amazingly, WVIP was back on the air later Wednesday morning, operating from makeshift studios in the nearby transmitter building. It’s a tribute to the local broadcasting community that engineers and managers from other local stations have been pitching in almost nonstop since the fire to help get WVIP back on the its feet with a temporary studio and automation system. We’ll keep you posted over the next few weeks as WVIP recovers. Next month marks the 40th anniversary of this pioneering suburban station.

Up to NEW HAMPSHIRE, where Manchester listeners have a new station to add to their dials. WLMW (90.7) made its debut this week after years as a construction permit. The station is calling itself “Manchester’s new family radio station,” and it’s programming Donald Wildmon’s Mississippi-based American Family Radio network. Even though it’s just 15 watts, WLMW broadcasts from high up on Mt. Uncanoonuc in Goffstown, the same site as Manchester’s other FMs, and it’s been heard almost as far south as Nashua.

There’s yet another new format at little WVAY (100.7) in Wilmington, VERMONT. Another proposed sale of the station has fallen through, and so WVAY has dropped its simulcast of WSSH (101.5 Marlboro) and is back to doing its own programming, with jocks Debra Lee, Todd Phillips, and Joel Garofalo back behind the mike as of last Wednesday. WVAY is also reportedly back on its old 99.7 translator in Marlboro, W259AB. This was one of the translators that allegedly was under the control of Brian Dodge.

And just hours after we wrote that Philadelphia’s WFLN (95.7) was still classical, Greater Media proved us wrong. Last Friday at 6 pm, 48 years of classics came to a close, replaced by Sheryl Crow and the modern AC sounds of WXXM, “the Max.” The end of classical on WFLN was probably inevitable; the station had changed hands several times in the last year, each time for a bit more money, increasing the debt load on each successive owner. NERW is very sorry to see WFLN go; your editors visited the station back in 1994, and found the people who worked there to be among the friendliest and most professional radio folks anywhere. WFLN was a cultural institution in Philadelphia, and while Temple University’s WRTI (90.1) and its relays are stepping to the plate by adding classical music, that will in turn dilute WRTI’s legacy as the jazz station in Philadelphia.