NERW 10/23/17: Repack Mystery Clears in Boston

In this week’s issue… NBC Boston’s next landing spot – More repack news from NY, NJ – AES, NAB meet in New York, NYSBA inducts Hall of Famers – NYC talk vacancies – Vermont AM array coming down

By SCOTT FYBUSH

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

*While we wait to find out more about who’ll end up with the stations CBS Radio and Entercom are spinning off in Boston, we return this week to our other favorite topic of Hub broadcast speculation: where will viewers see NBC Boston when all the dust settles from the upcoming TV repack?

We’re fast approaching the first anniversary of Comcast’s launch of its new Boston O&O, which ended up reaching over-the-air viewers via three transmitters: full-power Comcast-owned Telemundo outlet WNEU (Channel 60/RF 34) up in New Hampshire, low-power WBTS-LD (Channel 8/RF 46) at the Cedar Street tower in Needham, and a lease of a subchannel (designated “60.5”) from the big UHF signal of WMFP (Channel 62/RF 18) at the Chestnut Street tower in Newton.

It’s that “60.5” signal that has been the most potent delivery method for NBC Boston since it signed on New Year’s Day – but the use of WMFP may become more challenging when WMFP’s owner, NRJ TV, takes its spectrum auction payout for agreeing to move the station down to high-band VHF on RF 10. (That move, when it takes place, will also change WMFP’s city of license from Lawrence to Foxborough.)

Given the known issues with DTV on VHF, we suspected NBC was going to look elsewhere for a post-repack home, and indeed it is: the network’s next new home will be on a portion of the UHF channel 32 spectrum where public broadcaster WGBX (Channel 44/RF 43) will move in the repack. What? Why? How? Read on…

*The key to NBC’s new home came in a channel-sharing filing made last week by OTA Broadcasting’s WYCN-CD (Channel 13/RF 36) up in Nashua, N.H. OTA took a hefty incentive payment to give up its UHF channel, and now it’s entering into a channel-share deal with WGBH to host the WYCN license on WGBX’s UHF spectrum.

The 25-year deal filed last week looks like a typical channel-share deal at first, until you read down to the part about how “NBCU Boston shall have completed its purchase of Sharee’s station.” Which tells us this: when the WYCN license leaves UHF in Nashua and lands on some of WGBX’s spectrum (the agreement calls for it to get only enough for one SD channel), it will be owned by NBC and presumably carrying NBC Boston, substituting “13.1” for the “60.5” on WMFP that is, we’d guess, going to go away when WMFP goes to VHF.

There’s one more twist that may yet play out: the agreement filed last week allows NBCU to substitute any other station into the WGBX channel-share at its discretion. So instead of WYCN’s license and virtual channel 13, NBC could also take its own WBTS-LD license (which can’t stay on RF 46 and doesn’t yet have a post-repack home of its own) and put that on the WGBX share, using virtual “8.1” instead of virtual 13. That move would sacrifice the rest of the services now on WBTS – relays of Telemundo and TeleXitos from WNEU and Cozi on 8.3 – but if WBTS is going away anyway, those may be a moot point anyway.

For Comcast, this set of moves ensures a full-market home for NBC Boston, since WGBX operates as part of the group of stations with maximum signals from the master antenna at Cedar Street. (And we learned something else from this filing: as we’d suspected, WGBX will have a new full-power auxiliary facility over at American Tower’s Cabot Street site in Needham; we’d assume the other stations using the Cedar Street master will also have auxes there as the repack rolls on.)

For WGBH, the repack just keeps paying out: it’s banked $161.7 million already for moving WGBH-TV from RF 19 to low-VHF RF 5, it’s getting the donation of a commercial low-power license, WFXZ-LD, to share on RF 5 – and now it’s getting what we’re assuming will be significant lease money in perpetuity from Comcast to host NBC Boston on WGBX.

*Who else is channel sharing? New York’s WNET (Channel 13), for one – it’s receiving a donation of low-power commercial station WMBQ-CD, which sold its channel 46 RF spectrum in the incentive auction. Now WMBQ and WNET have executed a channel-share agreement under which WMBQ will get at least one SD channel’s worth of bandwidth over WNET’s RF 13 facility, which will soon migrate from the Empire State Building to the World Trade Center. What will WNET do with its new commercial license? We’re still waiting to see…

Across the Hudson, the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority sold its RF channels for WNJN-TV in Montclair and WNJS in Camden, but it’s keeping both licenses alive, filing channel-share agreements that will see the WNJN license hosted on WNJB (Channel 58/RF 8) in New Brunswick and WNJS on WNJT (Channel 52/repack to RF 22) in Trenton.

Why? WNJN and WNJB are both in the New York DMA, while WNJS and WNJT are both in Philadelphia’s DMA, and by keeping two licenses in each market, NJTV can in theory get two program streams on cable must-carry in each market.

*NEW YORK City hosted a bevy of out-of-town broadcasters this past week, there for the double whammy of the Audio Engineering Society and NAB New York conventions, held in adjoining exhibit halls at the Javits Center.

On the AES side, highlights of the show included several of David Bialik’s special sessions on the broadcast track: a tour of the new 1 World Trade Center TV transmission facility Wednesday night (left) and a chat with the audio team from “The Late Show” on CBS Friday night. The NAB New York show is primarily aimed at TV broadcasters, with plenty of sessions covering ATSC 3.0 and other hot tech topics, plus tracks focusing on the business of TV and on podcast production.

The New York State Broadcasters Association took advantage of all the visiting broadcasters by hosting several of its events at Javits, too, including a Thursday afternoon meeting with local FCC agents to talk about pirate broadcasters and the statewide EAS system. Earlier in the day, NYSBA honored iHeart CEO Bob Pittman with its Broadcaster of the Year award (an event some smaller broadcast owners pointedly shunned, in criticism of iHeart’s effect on the larger industry) – and with the induction of three broadcasters into its Hall of Fame.

This year’s honorees were Buffalo radio stalwart Sandy Beach, now of WBEN (930), who brought previous inductee Danny Neaverth along for moral support; longtime Rochester TV anchor Janet Lomax (right, with Hall of Fame chair Ed Levine), recently retired from WHEC (Channel 10); and Art McFarland, veteran education reporter at New York’s WABC-TV (Channel 7).

(You can read more of our NAB New York/AES coverage for Radio World, here and here.)

*There were two talk vacancies in the city while we were in town, including a fairly prominent one in the morning: iHeart’s WOR (710) now has Len Berman flying solo on the wakeup show after Todd Schnitt did his last shift on Thursday. On Friday morning, Berman told listeners that iHeart had been unable to reach a new contract deal with Schnitt, who’d been part of the WOR show since 2015, frequently from his home base down in Tampa. Schnitt’s syndicated afternoon show (which isn’t heard in New York) will continue.

Uptown at Cumulus’ WABC (770), Eboni K. Williams is out in middays, where the Fox News contributor had been co-hosting from noon-3 PM since June, when she replaced Ron Kuby. No replacement has been named there, either.

In Albany, Crawford Broadcasting has once again taken WDCD (1540) silent after the FCC turned down an application to reduce its power under special temporary authority. Was Crawford simply too honest in telling the FCC it wanted to try taking WDCD from 50 kW down to either 25 kW or 10 kW to see if it could still cover the market with a lower power bill?

*There’s a new LPFM signal on the air in Syracuse, but it has a history that stretches back to before there even was an LPFM service. Remember the old Syracuse Community Radio, which had big plans for translator coverage into the core of the city but only ever made it to air via WXXE (90.5 Fenner), far to the east of town? That full-power FM license (albeit only 49 watts) was sold off to WRVO public radio and is now WMVQ, making way for SCR’s principals to get the new LPFM license for WSPJ-LP (103.3), transmitting from a very low antenna on a phone pole in a sports park next to the Thruway in Liverpool. The new “Spark Radio” community programming is also being heard on translator W229CU (93.7) at the studio location in the Westcott Community Center in the city proper.

*In Buffalo, our colleague Tom Taylor of Tom Taylor NOW picks up on an interesting Cumulus story: the Buffalo cluster that includes 97 Rock and 103.3 the Edge is working on building an 11-acre festival site next to its studios on James E. Casey Drive right off the 190 southeast of downtown.

“We can control our own logistics and work around our schedule, not someone else’s schedule” for station events, Cumulus market manager James Bearance told Buffalo Business First about the plans for the space

*The New York City TV community is mourning Michele Marsh, who was a fixture on the city’s newscasts from 1979 until 2003 at WCBS-TV (Channel 2) and then WNBC (Channel 4). Marsh, who’d started her TV career up in MAINE at WABI-TV (Channel 5) in Bangor in the 1970s and then worked in San Antonio, was just 25 when she began at WCBS as 11 PM anchor. She moved from channel 2 to channel 4 in 1996 after newsroom layoffs that ousted several WCBS-TV staffers, and anchored the 6 PM news at WNBC until leaving the station in 2003. Marsh had been fighting breast cancer when she died Tuesday at home in Connecticut; she was just 63.

*A NEW JERSEY translator has been sold to a Philadelphia broadcaster. Mega Philadelphia LLC, which owns WEMG (1310 Camden), is paying Hope Christian Church of Marlton $100,000 for W277BA (103.3 Millville). Will it begin migrating north toward Philadelphia, where WEMG is already heard on a potent 105.7 translator – or will it stay put, relaying WEMG’s Spanish-language programming for the sizable Hispanic audience in south Jersey?

*Is it even news anymore that Equity’s WEZW (93.1 Wildwood) is the first station in the country to go to an all-Christmas format? “Easy 93.1” has developed a tradition of flipping from its usual soft AC to holiday tunes the week before Halloween, and when it flipped last week, that was no exception to the rule. If past history holds, we’ll start seeing bigger signals such as New York’s WLTW (Lite 106.7) and Philadelphia’s WBEB (101.1 More FM) making the flip within the next week or so, too.

*In western PENNSYLVANIA, the frequency change at Erie’s “Rocket” happened right on schedule at noon Friday, with “For Those About to Rock…” as the first song on WRKT’s new home at 104.9. Connoisseur’s frequency change kept WRKT licensed to North East, but the move from its former 100.9 transmitter site just across the state line at New York’s western tip over to the WRTS (103.7) site just above Erie means a much stronger in-town signal for what’s now “Rocket 105.”

(And did any of our Erie-area readers happen to record the frequency switch over the air? We couldn’t be there in person and would love to hear what it sounded like…)

In Pittsburgh, Salem talker WPGP (1250) has signed on its new translator, the former W279BK, which moved all the way across the state from Carbondale to the 1250 site just south of the Monongahela River, where it’s operating on 92.5 with 110 watts horizontal, 73 watts vertical.

*The smallest NPR affiliate in the country (or at least in the lower 48) is in CONNECTICUT, as you might now – and now WHDD (1020 Sharon) is back on the air with a new transmitter. Marshall Miles’ “Robin Hood Radio” had its old AM transmitter burn out a few weeks ago, but its listener base in the tri-state area of northwest Connecticut, western Massachusetts and the Hudson Valley came through with funding for a new Nautel, which went into service last week with the help of contract engineer extraordinaire John Ramsey, who sent along this photo. (Robin Hood stayed on the air via WHDD-FM 91.9, as well as its simulcasts over WLHV 88.1 in New York and WBSL 91.7 in Massachusetts.)

WHDD has found some interesting ways to raise money of late – it also received a donation of a drawing of the Empire State Building done by one Donald Trump, which was auctioned last week for $16,000 with part of the proceeds benefiting the station.

Oh – and a happy 65th birthday to Marshall, who marked his big day with a station party on Sunday!

Down by the Long Island Sound shoreline, WFIF (1500 Milford) is now reaching New Haven listeners 24/7 via new translator W296DB (101.7), which signed on from the West Rock tower farm last Monday. (Fybush Media was proud to provide consulting services to owner Bill Blount for this project.)

*It’s the end of the road for a venerable VERMONT directional array. WSYB (1380 Rutland) has operated for decades with 5000 watts non-directional by day, dropping to 1000 watts at night with a two-tower directional pattern that nulls southward toward New York City and westward toward a now-defunct co-channel station in Kingston, Ontario.

Now owner Pamal wants to take WSYB non-directional at night as well, dropping power from 1000 watts down to just 25 watts, while at the same time eliminating the expense of maintaining an aging directional system. For listeners in Rutland, WSYB’s programming will still be audible all night long on its new translator, W261DE (100.1).

*Back in MASSACHUSETTS, WNTN (1550) was slated to take a big power cut when it relocated from its home of nearly 50 years in Newton to become a diplexed tenant on the WJIB (740) tower in Cambridge. The initial construction permit for the move took WNTN down from 10 kilowatts daytime power to just 750 watts at the new site – but WNTN doesn’t want to stay there. It’s now applying to run 6700 watts by day from the WJIB tower, which will fill most of Route 128 with a 5 mV/m signal. (In effect, it will be about the same size signal as it had from Newton, since the Cambridge tower is significantly taller; the big difference is that the new coverage will shift eastward, losing some of the western suburbs for better city coverage.) At night, WNTN will still use only 3 watts from the Cambridge site.

*There’s a second 10 PM newscast returning to the RHODE ISLAND TV airwaves. WJAR (Channel 10) starts a new “10 at 10” show next Monday, airing on MeTV on 10.2 and on its OSN cable network. 11 PM anchor Patrice Wood and Dan Jaehnig will anchor the 10 PM show as well.

*An interesting long read from an otherwise quiet week up in CANADA: Steve Faguy points out that changes in NAFTA under the Trump administration could – could – bring about significant modifications to the current system under which Canadian cable and satellite providers don’t pay for carrying US-based network affiliates. If that happened, Faguy says, US broadcasters could get the same kind of retransmission-consent money from Bell and Shaw and Cogeco that they now get from Spectrum and Comcast and Cablevision. (And, he notes, the CBC and CTV could get retrans-consent dollars from US border systems that carry their programming.)

More dramatically, those changes could end the sim-sub rules that now dictate how prime-time schedules are constructed on Canada’s commercial broadcast networks.

Will it all happen? Maybe not – but read Steve’s analysis here.

*In suburban Toronto, the CRTC has approved Elliot Kerr’s latest application to relocate his as-yet-unbuilt CKNT (960 Mississauga) – but it can’t stay unbuilt much longer. Kerr has a drop-dead date of November 30 to get the new talk station on the air or lose his permit.

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