In this week’s issue… Changes coming in Philadelphia? – Mets jump to new radio home – New morning show in Toronto – Remembering Bill Gable
By SCOTT FYBUSH
*MACON, Ga. – NERW is on the road again this week, bags packed and aircheck decks rolling as we make our way south to the NAB and RAB’s Radio Show, which gets underway tomorrow in Orlando.
We’ll bring you full coverage of the convention in next Monday’s NERW and, more immediately, over at the Top of the Tower Podcast, where Wednesday’s episode will come from the show floor.
Back home, here are a few of the big stories we’re following as we travel –
*In eastern PENNSYLVANIA, Entercom is making some headlines ahead of the convention. It’s finally made official what we’d long suspected, signing a deal for 67,000 square feet at the 2400 Market Street office building just down the road from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, where it will combine its new headquarters with its local stations, now at four different locations around the city and nearby Bala Cynwyd.
It’s brought WBEB (101.1) under its radio.com banner, ahead of closing on the $57.5 million deal that will make WBEB an official part of the Entercom cluster. And what’s going on at its WTDY (96.5)? The station has dropped its afternoon host, Rebekah “Bex” Maroun, with no immediate replacement – could this lead to a format change at the hot AC station, which competes perhaps too closely with new clustermate WBEB?
*In NEW YORK, Entercom officially announced its new five-year deal to move the Mets over to WCBS (880) from iHeart’s WOR (710), along with promotional support from the rest of the Entercom cluster (save, perhaps, for the Mets’ former home, WFAN, where the rival Yankees are the dominant radio partner). There’s no word yet about whether the existing Mets booth team of Howie Rose and Josh Lewin will move over, but no real reason to expect them not to, either. One immediate change: as soon as the Mets season is (officially) over, Pete McCarthy’s evening “Sports Zone” show on WOR goes away, likely replaced by more syndicated talk from iHeart’s Premiere.
Behold, the 2025 calendar!
We chose the 100,000-watt transmitter of the Voice Of America in Marathon, right in the heart of the Florida Keys. This picture has everything we like in our covers — blue skies, greenery, water, and of course, towers! The history behind this site is a draw, too.
Other months feature some of our favorite images from years past, including some Canadian stations and several stations celebrating their centennials (can you guess? you don’t have to if you buy the calendar!).
We will ship daily through Christmas Eve. Place your order now for immediate shipping!
This will be the 24th edition of the world-famous Tower Site Calendar, and your support will determine whether it will be the final edition.
It’s been a complicated few years here, and as we finish up production of the new edition, we’re considering the future of this staple of radio walls everywhere as we evaluate our workload going forward.
The proceeds from the calendar help sustain the reporting that we do on the broadcast industry here at Fybush Media, so your purchases matter a lot to us here – and if that matters to you, now’s the time to show that support with an order of the new Tower Site Calendar. (And we have the new Broadcast Historian’s Calendar for 2025 ready to ship, too. Why not order both?)
Visit the Fybush Media Store and place your order now for the next calendar, get a great discount on previous calendars, and check out our selection of books and videos, too!
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*Up the Hudson Valley, John “Tigman” Rutigliano is changing stations, joining iHeart’s WBWZ (93.3) for afternoons after a long run with Townsquare doing nights on WPDH (101.5) in Poughkeepsie and afternoons on WQBK/WQBJ in Albany. No replacement has been named yet for his Townsquare gigs.
*It’s been a busy week for translator objections: in lower Manhattan, Rahul Walia’s W284BW (104.7), still stunting with a two-hour loop of New York-themed songs from WPAT-FM (93.1)’s HD2, faces a protest to the west from WRNJ (1510) in Hackettstown, NEW JERSEY. The WRNJ objection claims that the W284BW signal, broadcasting from way up there atop 1 World Trade Center, is interfering with WRNJ’s existing 104.7 translator. WRNJ is asking the FCC to delay processing of W284BW’s license application while it studies the interference and prepares a formal filing.
*In MASSACHUSETTS, two translator construction permits are off the books because of interference concerns. In Springfield, Saga quashed Carter Broadcasting’s application for a 95.1 relay of WACE (730 Chicopee) after presenting evidence of local listenership to Saga’s WPVQ (95.3 Greenfield). And in Medford, the WBIX (1260 Boston) application for 97.3 was the latest attempt to use that channel to face strong objections from WJFD (97.3) in New Bedford. WJFD, whose Portuguese programming competes with WBIX, has been fiercely defending the fringe-area listenership to its unique format, and it persuaded the FCC that there’s no way the WBIX translator could hit the air without interfering.
*In MAINE, Hearst has closed on its purchase of WPXT (Channel 51), which becomes a sister station to ABC affiliate WMTW (Channel 8). WMTW immediately jumps into the 10 PM news race, launching a broadcast on WPXT that competes with the WGME-produced offering on Fox affiliate WPFO.
*In VERMONT, there’s a new identity on adult hits WWMP (103.3 Waterbury), which swapped out “MP103” for “Free 103.3” in late August.
*In RHODE ISLAND, Ion now has the FCC’s blessing for a city of license change, moving (at least for the purpose of a small line of on-screen type once an hour) WPXQ channel 69 from Block Island to Newport. Ion tells the FCC it has no plans to relocate WPXQ’s RF 17 transmitter, which rimshots Providence from the south and will be required to continue to put a signal over Block Island.
*Back in northwest Pennsylvania, WESB (1490 Bradford) has lit up its new translator at 107.5. The new translator brings a new image to the station, too – it’s now “B107.5,” still with the strong focus on local news that it’s long had.
There’s a call change in Loretto, where WWGE (1400) is now, yup, WYUP. No word yet on what new owner Matt Lightner has planned for those new calls near Altoona.
*In CANADA, we’re still waiting for word about whether any broadcast facilities suffered damage from the tornado that hit the Ottawa/Gatineau area late last week. We’d love to hear from readers up that way, where we understand there’s still a major power outage. We know, if nothing else, that the power outages took Mark “Cub” Carson off the air just a few hours into his return to the Ottawa airwaves, where he’s now doing nights at “Rebel” CIDG (101.7).
In Toronto, Corus has a new brother-sister duo lined up to take over mornings at CFNY (102.1 the Edge) in January: Ruby Carr moves to Toronto from mornings at Newcap’s CKZZ in Vancouver, while Alex Carr has been doing middays for Corus in Vancouver at CFOX (99.3).
And we close with the sad news of the death of Bill Gable, who was a 46-year institution on the airwaves on both sides of the border. “Brother” Bill started in radio as a teenager on WAEB (790) in Allentown, Pennsylvania, then worked at legendary stations such as WEAM in Washington and WHBQ in Memphis before RKO moved him to CKLW in Windsor in 1972. In 1980, he went to CFTR in Toronto, then returned to the U.S., working in North Carolina and Florida before heading back to Toronto and CHFI in 2002. He spent his last few years in radio at CFZM (740) in Toronto before retiring in 2014.
Gable was just 69 when he died in Windsor Sept. 18 of COPD.
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From the NERW ArchivesYup, 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 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 25, 2017 *When Ken Squier announced earlier this year that he wanted to sell his Radio VERMONT Group to local owners, he meant it: beginning October 1, the stations that have been in his family since 1931 will go into the very good hands of local broadcast veteran Steve “Corm” Cormier. Vermonters know Corm best as the longtime co-host of the “Corm and the Coach” morning show that aired on several Burlington-market stations including WIZN (106.7), where he was also PD in the 1980s and 90s. More recently, Corm’s been getting into station management down at WTSA in Brattleboro – and even more recently as Squier’s sales manager at the Radio Vermont stations. The deal, which has yet to be filed with the FCC or have a price announced, will give Corm three programming streams in central Vermont: the heritage full-service Radio Vermont on WDEV (550 Waterbury)/WDEV-FM (96.1 Warren) and translators, AC “101 the One” on WCVT (101.7 Stowe) and WEXP (101.5 Brandon), and country WLVB (93.9 Morrisville). [2018 update: a year later, there’s still been no actual transfer of the licenses filed at the FCC. It appears Cormier is running the WDEV stations under an LMA.] *In Binghamton, Steve Gilinsky’s WLTB (101.7 Johnson City) has split off its full-market translator at 102.5 (W273AB Vestal) with a separate format from top-40 “Magic 101.7.” As of last Friday night, it’s now doing classic rock as “102.5 the Vault,” picking up some of the slack left behind from Equinox’s recent flip that took one of its translators, “Z93” (W225BC/WRRQ-HD3), from classic rock to hip-hop. *In CANADA, “Tootall” (aka Robert Wagenaar, but everyone knows him as “Tootall”) signed off Friday after a remarkable 40-year run at Montreal’s CHOM (97.7), most of it spent in middays. In addition to a day of tributes from CHOM staffers and alumni, local dignitaries and musicians, Tootall was honored Friday night with a concert at Montreal’s Club Soda featuring still more tributes and an all-star lineup of Montreal bands. Nobody will fill Tootall’s shoes (we’ve seen ’em – they’re big!), but the midday shift on CHOM will belong to Randy Renaud beginning today. Five Years Ago: September 23, 2013 *A venerable central PENNSYLVANIA AM station is hitting hard times. WHYL (960 Carlisle) has been flirting with bankruptcy for a few years now, but its staff held on and kept things going at “Nice 960″ right up until last week. That was when veteran morning man Ben Barber apparently couldn’t take the uncertainty any longer. With the station facing a forced sale and paychecks apparently on the verge of being cut off, Barber announced on Wednesday that he’s retiring, closing the books on a 50-year career spent entirely in Cumberland County. “It’s turned out to be a very, very good 50 years,” Barber told the Carlisle Sentinel, which reports that his co-host Dennis (Gerkin) Edwards was laid off the next day. Barber says he’d have liked to have stayed a little longer, but health issues also contributed to the decision to step down. WHYL remained on the air at last report, but running on automation while awaiting new ownership. *A radio brand long established in Australia has arrived in CANADA‘s Niagara Region, courtesy of Vista Radio. Last week, Vista pulled the plug on adult hits “Ed 105.1″ (CJED) in Niagara Falls, playing Christmas music for a few days while promising a “gift” for the region on Friday at noon. And when noon arrived on Friday, it wasn’t just CJED flipping formats: Vista also flipped its sister station, “Z101″(CFLZ 101.1 Fort Erie), creating a new top-40 simulcast between the pair of overlapping signals under the new branding of “2Day FM.” *A big noncommercial FM signal in MAINE is back on the air with reduced facilities after suffering severe damage to its antenna system. Light of Life’s WMDR-FM (88.9 Oakland) was knocked off the air at its Streaked Mountain antenna site August 30, with water in its transmission line causing severe arcing that damaged its ten-bay antenna. Engineer Joel Epley tells NERW he’s hung a three-bay Shively antenna on the tower to get WMDR-FM back on the air at 4800 watts ERP, a far cry from its usual 100 kW, but a big improvement over no signal at all. The damaged main antenna came down from the tower last weekend and is now on its way back to Shively for rebuilding. “It will be several weeks at least before we can get it rebuilt and hung on the tower again,” Epley reports. Ten Years Ago: September 22, 2008 *When former WBZ-TV sportscaster Bob Lobel and WODS (103.3 Boston) afternoon jock Karen Blake teamed up for a brief stint as guest hosts of WODS’ morning show a few months ago, it’s a good bet that nobody listening (and perhaps not even Lobel and Blake themselves) expected the pairing to become permanent. What’s going on over at 83 Leo Birmingham Parkway? The message boards and mailing lists were alight with speculation over the weekend, up to and including the idea (improbable, we’d think) that Lobel, along with the Patriots and Bruins rights that CBS holds on its other Boston stations, could be the building blocks of a new all-sports station on 103.3. CBS itself isn’t saying much beyond the suggestion that the presence of Lobel, who’s been on the beach since being bought out of his WBZ-TV contract last year, may be only in a “guest host” role – which, of course, only fuels speculation about what PD Jay Beau Jones might have in mind over the long term. Playing into that speculation are a few more moves: J.J. Wright appears to be Blake’s replacement in afternoons, and former evening jock Patrick Callahan just returned to the station last week, after budget cuts claimed his job back in February. (He’d been over at Greater Media’s WROR in the meantime.) Oh, and out in Worcester, morning co-host Chris Zito disappeared from Citadel’s WXLO (104.5 Fitchburg) late last week – and did we mention that Jay Beau Jones used to program WXLO before moving to WODS? *A venerable VERMONT station brand is back on the air in the Burlington market, as Vox’s WXZO (96.7 Willsboro NY) flipped last Wednesday (Sep. 17) at 9 AM from talker “the Zone” to oldies as “True Oldies 96.7 DOT-FM.”
*When the FCC sits down for an open commission meeting on Thursday, one of the topics on the agenda is the protest filed by some Ithaca radio listeners to what they see as excessive media consolidation in that small upstate NEW YORK city.As of this past Thursday (Sept. 18) at 5 PM, Ithaca’s dominant radio cluster, the 2 AM/3 FM Saga Communications group, has some new commercial competition – Finger Lakes Radio Group’s WFIZ (95.5 Odessa), playing top 40 as “Z-95.5, Ithaca’s Hit Music Channel.”
The debut of WFIZ also means a venerable Ithaca translator has to move – W238AA (95.5), which now relays WHCU (870), slides up the dial to 95.9. Fifteen Years Ago: September 22, 2003 *It was a bad week for modern rock fans in New England – and nowhere more so than in Hartford, CONNECTICUT, where Clear Channel abruptly pulled the plug on modern rock “Radio 104” WMRQ (104.1 Waterbury) at 4 o’clock last Monday afternoon (Sept. 15), replacing it with urban “Power 104.1,” a clone of the successful WWPR (105.1 New York) that launched a year and a half ago down in the big city. The new “Power” is a direct competitor to Infinity’s WZMX (93.7 Hartford), which took the market by storm when it began playing hip-hop and R&B in the spring of 2001. WMRQ’s old format lives on for now as a Webcast (www.radio104.com), albeit without jocks or PD. One of WMRQ’s jocks, afternoon host/APD/MD Chaz Kelly, has already landed a new gig – she stays within the company and moves down I-91 to become PD of top 40 WKCI (101.3 Hamden) in the New Haven market. *Hurricane Isabel whipped her way across the northeast last week, knocking many stations off the air for at least a few hours – and taking down one PENNSYLVANIA tower. Philadelphia’s WHAT (1340) lost its tower Thursday night at the height of the storm. The Inner City Broadcasting urban talker had a long history with this tower, located on Conshohocken Avenue not far from the big Bala Cynwyd studio cluster. Twenty Years Ago: September 25, 1998 *Two of Boston’s AM stations are changing hands — one as part of a long-anticipated deal, the other out of the blue. *The expected sale is that of CBS’ WNFT (1150), which was one of the American Radio Systems stations CBS was required to sell in order to satisfy government regulations. The others (WRKO, WEEI, WEGQ, and WBMX) are going to Entercom, and now WNFT is going to Mega Broadcasting for a reported $5 million. Mega’s only current assets in New England are WNEZ (910 New Britain) and WLAT (1230 Manchester) in the Hartford market, and while WLAT fits with Mega’s group profile as a Spanish broadcaster, WNEZ runs an urban format, which leads NERW to wonder whether WNFT will stick with its current ABC/SMN “Touch” R&B oldies format, or whether its future is as a Spanish outlet. In any event, it’s nice to see 1150 being put in the hands of an owner who’ll likely pay some attention to it. Over the last decade, it’s been WHUE, WMEX, WROR, and WNFT, with formats that included business news, oldies, leased-time Spanish, Kidstar children’s programming, simulcasts of several FMs, and a few days as a testbed for digital AM. *Now for the surprise: “Mr. D” is selling WNTN (1550 Newton). Orestes Demetriades’ Newton Broadcasting Corporation was one of the last single-station owners in the Boston market, running the 10 kilowatt daytimer with a mix of leased-time programming (largely Spanish and Chinese) and AC music. Late word is that WNTN is being sold to Robert Rudnick’s Colt Communications for $602,800. |
In this week’s issue… WBUR backs off local talk - EMF's expansion in NY, nationally - Rochester broadcasters honored - Russell finds new PA radio home - Remembering Bruce Stevens - The new calendar's here!
In this week’s issue… Remembering WNY's Palvino, Harris - Will King sell Bangor stations? - Kay moves earlier - New signal on LI - Cumulus cuts hit PA, New England - Frizzell sells in NH
In this week’s issue… Saluting a small-town radio vet - Bell moves CP24 - Scott heads west - Burlington gets Air 1, "Experimental Radio" - Family Life heads down I-86
In this week’s issue… NY TV anchor, radio historian both retiring - XPN PD to retire - More Cumulus cuts - Rogers sells FMs as Corus makes big talent cuts By SCOTT FYBUSH Jump to: ME - NH - VT - MA...
“Permanent” may still be a bit of a stretch – but starting today, Lobel and Blake will take over from Dale Dorman (now relegated to Saturday duty, beginning next weekend) as the new morning team on “Oldies 103.”
Credit Vox honcho Ken Barlow for this one – the original WDOT (then on 1400, now WCAT 1390) was one of his first stops in the business as a young DJ, and the new DOT-FM brings together several WDOT alumni: after Don Imus (who stays on from the old format), it’s Dave Hunter from 9 AM-noon, Barlow from noon-4 PM, Big John Hill from 4-7 PM, and then ABC’s True Oldies (last heard in the market on Vox’s WVTK 92.1) with Scott Shannon at night. Another WDOT veteran, R.J. Potter, is doing weekends.
As NERW readers know, this is the former WFLR-FM (95.9 Dundee), now relocated to Connecticut Hill, overlooking Ithaca, with studios in the South Hill Business Campus on Danby Road. While WFIZ kicks off its debut with 10,000 songs in a row, sans commercials or jocks, WFLR-FM’s country format has completed its move to WFLR (1570 Dundee) and FM translator W245BL (96.9 Dundee), imaging as “Country 96.9 and 1570.”
