NERW 9/10/18: USTN Closure Disrupts WABC, Others

In this week’s issue… Cumulus changes news, traffic services – Minihane extends WEEI leave – New morning show in CT – CBC ends more AM service

By SCOTT FYBUSH

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

*Let’s be honest: working for an outsourced traffic, news or weather service has never been the most stable employment in broadcasting. The bigger the big groups get, the more disruption they cause when they switch providers – and for what’s often considered a commodity service, it usually doesn’t take much to get a radio group to change providers.

But when the group is as massive as Cumulus and when the switch is as big as the one last week that took all of Cumulus’ stations over to iHeart-owned Total Traffic & Weather Network (TTWN), the changes were rather noticeable, nowhere more so than at New York’s WABC (770).

WABC, of course, had been unusually dependent on Cumulus’ previous partner, US Traffic Network. The local newscasts from anchors such as Jerry Barmash and Lisa Ritchie? Those actually came from USTN. The traffic reports from local icon Jeff McKay and others? That was USTN, too – and it all made for a difficult week at both ends of the now-broken connection.

As you’ve read on RadioInsight and elsewhere, Cumulus’ decision to drop USTN was the last straw for the service, which had been embroiled in a legal battle with Entercom. Without those big groups, USTN saw no future in its radio traffic and weather business, shutting them down as of Friday and the end of the Cumulus contract. And so it wasn’t just the end of a client relationship for USTN’s airstaff – it was the end of a job. USTN released its employees from their non-compete deals (where they were enforceable at all), but for now there are still plenty of good news and traffic people in New York and elsewhere looking for work.

Will the switch away from USTN do damage to WABC, too? Voices such as McKay and Barmash made up a lot of the station’s local content during its syndicated dayparts, and losing them all at once can’t be a good thing for a station that’s already struggling mightily for any ratings relevancy at all.

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*In NEW YORK City, a new FM signal is drawing attention – at least in the areas that can hear its directional signal, the first FM to broadcast from the new 1 World Trade Center. As we’ve been chronicling here in NERW over the years, Rahul Walia’s 99-watt W284BW (104.7) hopscotched its way to the top of 1WTC from NEW JERSEY. It signed on for real last week with a two-hour loop of songs about New York (Springsteen’s “The Rising,” among others), and while it’s shown on the FCC’s books as a relay of WPAT (930 Paterson), the programming is actually coming from the HD2 of SBS’ WPAT-FM (93.1 Paterson), where Walia is presumably looking for a tenant willing to pay big dollars for the translator’s reach. While it has a sharp directional null to the north to protect co-channel WSPK up in Poughkeepsie, we’re hearing the translator comes in nicely across most of Brooklyn and well out the south shore of Long Island.

*Translators were making news upstate, too, where Saga ended its brief “XA Radio” stunt (all X Ambassadors, all the time) and launched “Alt 95.9” on its Ithaca translator, W240CB, last Tuesday afternoon, competing against the Cornell students who’ve been doing an alternative format on their commercial station, WVBR (93.5).

You really do need a scorecard to keep track of everything that’s supposed to be going on over Saga’s Ithaca signals, which now shake out like this: news-talk WHCU (870, plus a 97.7 translator); oldies WNYY (1470, plus a 94.1 translator); top 40 “Z95.5” WFIZ (95.5 Odessa, plus a 94.9 Ithaca translator and WQNY-HD2); AC “Lite” WYXL (97.3); classic rock “I100” WIII (99.9 Cortland, plus a 100.3 Ithaca translator); country “Q Country” WQNY (103.7, plus a 103.3 Ithaca translator); modern rock “Alt” (WQNY-HD3, plus a 95.9 translator); sports “Buzzer” (WYXL-HD2, plus a 96.3 translator); AAA “Vine” (WYXL-HD3, plus a 96.7 translator) and 80s “Rewind” (WFIZ-HD2, plus a 107.7 translator).

(And why do we say “supposed to be”? A reconnaissance mission to Ithaca on Alt’s first night found WHCU’s programming still running on WQNY-HD3 and no HD at all on WYXL – and ended with what we hope won’t be a too-expensive speeding ticket on Route 89 on the way home!)

In other translator news around upstate New York, Bob Savage’s WYSL (1040 Avon) has turned on its second translator. W238DE (95.5 Spencerport) brings WYSL’s talk programming to the west side of Monroe County, augmenting his existing Rochester 92.1 translator. In Syracuse, Craig Fox’s “Dinosaur” oldies are now also on 107.5 in the Baldwinsville area, fed by WFBL (1390). That’s the sixth translator for Dinosaur, if we’re counting right, part of a network that now stretches from Auburn to Oneida. And south of Buffalo, Crawford’s WDCZ (970) has filed for a license to cover for its new translator at 94.1, which will fight back and forth with CBL-FM (CBC Radio 2) on the same frequency from Toronto.

In Jamestown, WLKW-FM (95.3 Celoron) applies to move off the downtown office building where it’s had its antenna ever since it signed on in 2012. That building also houses the studio of WLKW-FM and sister station WKZA (106.9 Lakewood), but with WKZA being sold to crosstown rival Media One, and with WLKW-FM being donated to EMF, the plan is to move the 95.3 signal over to the big WWSE (93.3) tower behind Media One’s studios on the hill west of Jamestown. (You can virtually visit both sites in this Tower Site of the Week installment from 2017.)

WLKW-FM would drop from 2.5 kW down to 700 watts, but would go up from 10 meters to 123 meters with the move, greatly improving its signal over Jamestown and vicinity as it becomes “K-Love.”

*Way up north, RadioActive’s WWWF (107.1 Dannemora) files to change calls to WPLA, which makes the calls less connected to the “What the FM?” variety format that’s been programming the Plattsburgh-market signal.

And back down near the big city, a pair of translator applications on Long Island are part of a group of 16 mutually-exclusive groups of “Auction 100” translator proposals subject to a Sept. 20 deadline from the FCC. WLIE (540 Islip) applied for 99.1 in Hempstead, while WNSW (1430 Newark) applied for 99.1 in nearby Manhasset. They both have the opportunity to file for minor changes to eliminate the mutual exclusivity, though there’s no other channel either signal can use – and thus these are likely headed to auction unless someone drops out first.

*In CONNECTICUT, the syndicated Tom Joyner morning show is history at its longtime New Haven home, WYBC-FM (94.3). The Yale Broadcasting Company station, which operates under an LMA with the Connoisseur cluster in town, is going local for the first time we can recall since it started its urban AC format. Operations manager Juan Castillo will host the new show.

There are two Nutmeg State translator applications subject to the FCC’s Sept. 20 minor change settlement deadline – WFNW (1380 Naugatuck) and WSNG (610 Torrington), both for 104.5. Can they resolve their conflict with directional antennas?

*Even the longest-running relationships between outsourced traffic/weather providers and big station groups weren’t secure last week. Just ask Elliot Abrams, one of the signature voices of AccuWeather and a longtime morning fixture on WBZ (1030) in eastern MASSACHUSETTS. (How long? Way, way back in 1992, one of your editor’s first tasks there was to answer the phone when Elliot called and to record his forecasts on carts – carts! – to be loaded into the primitive automation system.)

After all those years, we’re hearing Abrams’ tenure at WBZ was unceremoniously ended last week, and while AccuWeather will continue to provide forecasts to WBZ, it will be with voices other than the pun-happy Abrams.

Behind the scenes, Friday brought still more changes in the WBZ newsroom with the exit of assistant news director Jon MacLean, another veteran whose time there went back to the Westinghouse era. No replacement has been named yet, with Kate Gallagher and Jay Borselle filling MacLean’s duties for now.

*Across town at Entercom, morning co-host Kirk Minihane won’t be returning to his WEEI-FM (93.7) duties on the “Kirk and Callahan” morning show any time very soon. In a statement Thursday, Minihane said he’s taking an “indefinite” leave of absence as he deals with mental health issues that have had him mostly absent from the show since August, when he was hospitalized after what he later revealed had been a suicide attempt. “Truth is I came back to work too fast,” Minihane wrote; in his absence, Mike Mutnansky will continue to co-host the show.

*In TV news, WMFP (Channel 62) finally pulled the plug on its RF channel 18 signal from the FM128 tower in Newton late last week. After selling its spectrum at auction, WMFP found a repack channel-share partner south of town in the form of WWDP, whose RF channel 10 signal isn’t seen well outside the greater Brockton area. For most viewers, WMFP’s programming (just one stream of the SBN religious network) will thus become cable-only – if they notice at all. (And if they do notice, they’ll see that WMFP’s city of license changes from Lawrence to Foxborough as a result of the move.)

More viewers, perhaps, will notice the disappearance of the “Decades” retro network from the subchannels of CBS’ owned-and-operated stations, including WBZ-TV (4.2) in Boston as well as WCBS-TV (2.2) in New York, KYW-TV (3.2) in Philadelphia and KDKA-TV (2.2) in Pittsburgh. Those subchannels will be carrying the new “Start TV” service instead, and the CBS/Weigel partnership that runs Decades is looking for new subchannel homes in the lost CBS markets. (In Philadelphia, we hear Decades has already landed on one of the many subchannels of KJWP channel 2.)

*In VERMONT, there’s no replacing former Vermont Association of Broadcasters head Jim Condon, but the VAB’s business has to go on after his untimely death – and so Eric Michaels, formerly of WDEV in Waterbury, has taken over as interim executive director of the state association until its board can find a permanent new leader. The VAB says there will be a celebration of Condon’s life next month, and of course we’ll keep you posted as we learn more about those plans.

When Barrie Dunsmore died August 26, he was remembered – and rightly so – for his many years of international reporting, mostly at ABC News, where he spent 30 years. But we remember him, too, for his retirement years in Vermont, where he wrote for the Charlotte News and contributed commentaries for WVNY (Channel 22). Dunsmore was 79.

*From Bangor, MAINE comes word of the death of Chuck Foster, who was a beloved voice on the dial there for more than 30 years. Foster (whose real name was David Turke) started his career in Gardiner at WABK, then went to Bangor at WGUY and WLBZ (Z620). In the early 1980s, he started “All Hit Videos,” a local TV competitor to the nascent MTV (it aired on WVII-TV in Bangor and was briefly syndicated to other markets), then went on to start WBZN (107.3). Even after selling “Z107,” Foster continued to do afternoons there. Foster was 64 when he died August 28.

*There’s another Spanish-language signal on the air in Allentown, PENNSYLVANIA, where “La Matraka” began airing in late July over Kevin Fitzgerald’s W293BW (106.5), fed by the HD3 subchannel of iHeart’s WZZO (95.1).

In Johnstown, the FCC has granted Ted Schober’s application to move WKGE (the old WJAC) from 850 to 870, dropping it down to a three-tower, 7 kW daytimer and clearing the way for Schober’s related application in Enola, near Harrisburg, to also be granted. That one will be a 6500-watt day, 3400-watt night, DA-N signal on 850.

*In CANADA, CityTV debuted its new local newscasts in Montreal (on CJNT, channel 62) on Sept. 3. Like the other new “CityNews” newscasts in Edmonton and Winnipeg that recently launched, these new shows at 6 and 11 on weeknights have no anchors, just reporters presenting their own stories along with sportscasts from Rogers’ SportsNet operation in Toronto. (Read more about the launch from Steve Faguy, here.)

Several more CBC/Radio-Canada low-power AMs are disappearing. In La Romaine, Quebec, way out there on the Gulf of St.-Lawrence, the CRTC granted permission to convert Ici Premiere outlet CBSI-8 (1550) to FM, where it will run 50 watts/41.2 m on 99.9, still fed from CBSI (98.1 Sept-Iles). And in McAdam, NB, Radio One outlet CBAX (600) has signed off, having moved to FM as CBZF-1 on 95.5 with 50 watts.

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