NERW 2/27/2012: New talker launches along LI Sound

In this week’s issue: New talker launches along Long Island Sound – Tower down in Oswego – Mohawk Valley’s WKAJ built, deleted – New DTV subchannels in NYC – Country flip in Westchester – Al Terzi retires

by SCOTT FYBUSH

*It’s taken a long, long time to get a signal on the air at 94.9 in Montauk, NEW YORK.

It was way back in September 1989 when a group called “Women Broadcasters, Inc.” first applied for a class A construction permit way out there on the eastern tip of Long Island. That incarnation of 94.9 never came to fruition; after years of delays, the permit was cancelled in 1996 and the frequency was left fallow for more than a decade before being offered again at auction.

Last year, 21 rounds of bidding for the 94.9 signal ended with a $180,000 bid from “CSI Media Research,” part of John Fuller’s growing media presence based in southeastern CONNECTICUT, which is the area Fuller will be targeting when he officially signs on the station, now WJJF, this week.

The new WJJF (its calls are Fuller’s initials, previously used on his first station in the area, now WCRI 1180 in Hope Valley, R.I.) will be a news-talk outlet calling itself “94.9 News Now” and anchored by a local morning show hosted by Lee Elci. Elci’s been working for Cumulus (and before that, Citadel) for the last six years at another talker in the region, WXLM, following that talk format and those calls as they’ve moved around the dial from 104.7 (another Montauk-licensed signal) to 102.3 to 980.

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The rest of the lineup at WJJF will be syndicated: Laura Ingraham 9-noon, Dennis Miller noon-3, Mike Gallagher 3-6 and Michael Savage from 6-10 PM. But Fuller is promising plenty of local news amidst that syndicated lineup, with two reporters out covering stories on the Connecticut side of the region and at least part-time coverage of eastern Long Island as well.

WJJF joins two other signals in Fuller’s cluster – AC WBMW (106.5 Ledyard) and top-40 WWRX (107.7 Pawcatuck) – but it won’t enjoy as strong a signal as either of those facilities; its 5.8 kW/341′ class A signal from Montauk will just brush the Connecticut coast with a 60 dBu signal, and at least for now it faces additional co-channel interference from a religious translator in Montville, W235AJ. Does Fuller have plans to improve WJJF’s signal? We wouldn’t be surprised; he’s in the process of upgrading WBMW from A to B1 by swapping its community of license with WWRX.

*Over the course of two stints at Hartford’s WFSB (Channel 3), Al Terzi has spent 28 years behind the anchor desk – but that’s come to an end. The station apparently couldn’t come to terms on a new contract with Terzi, and so he’s gone from the 5 PM and 5:30 PM newscasts, where WFSB’s Dennis House is filling in until a replacement is named.

*Clear Channel’s shift of ESPN to FM in Hartford (at what’s now WUCS 97.9 Windsor Locks) left Hartford’s longtime ESPN affiliate, WPOP (1410), looking for new programming – but this week, Clear Channel will flip WPOP to Fox Sports Radio, giving it control of both national sports networks in the Hartford market. Local WPOP host Paul Nanos will continue to be heard, but he’ll move from afternoons to mornings when the network switch happens next Monday.

*Longtime Nutmeg State broadcaster Gary Girard has died. After 20 years on the air at WPOP and other stations, Girard worked in sales at WHCT-TV (Channel 18), managed WNLC/WTYD in New London, and worked for the NAB before starting his own station. Girard put WKCD (107.7 Ledyard, now WWRX) on the air in 1995, then sold it after he suffered a stroke three years later. Girard was just 68 when he died February 22 in Florida.

*While John Fuller gets WJJF on the air out at the end of Long Island, a new upstate NEW YORK AM signal apparently won’t get to sign on, even after spending what was likely hundreds of thousands of dollars constructing a new directional array in the Mohawk Valley.

That’s WKAJ (1120), which started out in 2008 as a construction permit in Little Falls, then migrated in 2011 to a 10 kW daytime/400-watt nighttime authorization that would have been the first signal licensed to St. Johnsville. When the CP was granted to Long Island’s Michael Celenza, it was set to expire in April 2011. A 2010 transfer to Cranesville Block Company (which owns WCSS 1490 in Amsterdam) extended that deadline to October 15, 2011, and harsh weather and flooding prompted Cranesville to request “tolling” of that deadline that pushed it out to December 15.

Even with that extension, though, WKAJ wasn’t on the air by mid-December – and had Cranesville remained in touch with the FCC, it might have been able to salvage its investment. But December 15 came and went with no communication between the station and the Commission, and so did the new year. Finally, the FCC contacted WKAJ’s lawyers on January 5 with what amounted to a “what the heck?” letter. When Cranesville responded three days later, it said the station had been completed. That was too late for the FCC, though: on January 25, it moved WKAJ to the “deleted” list, which prompted Cranesville to file a petition for reconsideration two days later.

Cranesville says it was blindsided by a contractor that abruptly abandoned the project just as the CP expiration deadline was approaching, and that the holiday season made it impossible to find a replacement contractor in a hurry. By January 26, Cranesville says the four-tower WKAJ array had been built (at a “significant investment of time and money”) and the station was almost ready to sign on, give or take a transmission cable to one tower that needed to be recut.

But in FCC-land, “almost” isn’t good enough, especially when it’s not just one deadline being missed. Even WKAJ’s “Petition for Reconsideration” submitted January 27 was filed a week later than Commission rules require, and while the FCC tried to give Cranesville the benefit of the doubt by treating the petition as a request for a waiver of the rules, it found that the situation didn’t merit a waiver.

“The matters upon which CBC relies — construction of four broadcast towers, installation of a transmitter, and related matters – appear to have occurred after the December 15, 2011 permit expiration, at a time when CBC had neither requested a waiver of the deadline nor special temporary authority to construct despite expiration of its permit. CBC’s construction would, thus, have been without any color of authority,” said the FCC on Thursday. “The Commission has a longstanding policy not to credit unauthorized construction and/or operation when considering whether a permittee’s efforts justify a rule waiver. The public interest is generally not served by a waiver under such circumstances.”

The bottom line: there doesn’t appear to be any happy ending here, and it’s a shame. With better communication between Cranesville and the FCC (and, frankly, with the use of a well-connected Washington communications law firm instead of a local Albany lawyer with little pull at the Commission) it’s likely the appropriate extensions and special temporary authority would have been granted, allowing WKAJ to make it to the air legally. Instead, Cranesville appears to be nearly out of options. It’s clear that the FCC won’t license WKAJ on its own, and that means that any further action may have to happen at a higher level – say, Congressional intervention. Given its very substantial investment in building the WKAJ facility, it’s probably worth it to Cranesville to at least see whether the area’s representatives in Washington can be persuaded to weigh in. It is, after all, an election year…

(One more loose thread: without WKAJ on the air, veteran Utica personality Hank Brown remains without a platform. He’d been planning to lease time on the new station for a morning show, and had even promised several start dates, but those plans are now very much in limbo.)

*There was another station off the air in central New York, too, and it says something about wintertime in the Oswego area that we’re only now getting wind of the collapse of a tower up there.

WWLF-FM (96.7 Oswego) operated from a self-supporting tower on County Road 29 east of Oswego – at least until the high winds of a January 17 storm took that tower down.

*Two of New York City’s biggest TV stations are adding new DTV subchannels. CBS long shunned the use of subchannels out of concern for the picture quality on its stations’ main channels, but that trend is shifting. Last fall, CBS announced it would be launching all-news channels in its biggest markets, and last week “CBS New York Plus” quietly appeared on the 2.2 subchannel of WCBS-TV (Channel 2). In its early days, at least, the new channel consists of repurposed segments from WCBS-TV newscasts accompanied by text displays of news, sports and weather; going forward, CBS says it will also incorporate material from its New York radio stations, WCBS, WINS and WFAN.

Meanwhile, WWOR-TV (Channel 9) is getting ready to bring the African-American-targeted “Bounce TV” network to the nation’s biggest market: there’s now a 9.3 channel labelled “Bounce,” though no Bounce programming yet. (“9.2” in New York is the WWOR relay that airs over the bandwidth of sister station WNYW-TV.)

*Back on the radio side of things, it appears there won’t be major changes at WBLS (107.5) or WLIB (1190) as a result of the bankruptcy of owner Inner City Broadcasting. Radio Business Report reported Friday that a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge has approved the $180 million “stalking horse” bid by YMF Media, an alliance of Inner City’s major creditors, the Yucaipa and Fortress investment firms. (The “M” in the middle is reportedly basketball star-turned-entrepreneur Magic Johnson.)

The YMF group will have to spin off one of Inner City’s five stations in Columbia, S.C. to avoid the ownership cap there, but the New York AM/FM combo will stay intact – and that’s probably the best possible news imaginable for Family Stations, which can now continue moving forward with its planned sale of New York-market WFME (94.7 Newark) without potential buyers comparing WFME’s signal to the superior full-market signal of WBLS.

*Merlin Media’s WEMP (FM News 101.9) has reportedly named Eric Seidel as its new interim program director. Seidel worked in NERW-land in the 1980s as a reporter at WCAU (1210 Philadelphia, now WPHT), and had most recently been down in Atlanta as program director of Clear Channel’s WGST (640).

*Country music fans in the southern part of the New York metro area already have their dials pointed to 106.3 to hear Press Communications’ WKMK (106.3 Eatontown NJ) – and as of Thursday, their counterparts at the northern end of the market will be able to hear country on 106.3 as well.

That’s thanks to Cumulus, which is flipping WFAF (106.3 Mount Kisco) from a simulcast of adult contemporary WFAS-FM (103.9 Bronxville) to a simulcast of “Kicks Country” WDBY (105.5 Patterson), which operates out of the Cumulus cluster in Danbury/Brookfield, Connecticut. The new “Kicks” simulcast will reach from the Danbury area south to central Westchester County; depending on the behavior of the Bronx pirates who also use the 106.3 frequency, it will sometimes be audible in southern Westchester and into the Bronx as well.

(This is not the first time 105.5 and 106.3 have been simulcast; from 1993-1996, they operated in tandem as “New York’s Superstation,” WMJV/WMJU, and as “B-105/B-106,” WVYB/WVIB.)

*Is there another Hudson Valley format change on the way? Our friends at RadioInsight.com report there’s a slew of domain registrations pointing to an upcoming flip at Clear Channel’s hot AC “Star 93.3” (WBWZ New Paltz), which appears to be getting ready to rock as “Rock 93.3.” (Radio Insight suggests that could be followed by a shift from rhythmic top 40 to mainstream top 40 at sister station WPKF “Kiss 96.1,” and a rebranding to “Oldies 93.5” at WZCR Hudson.)

*Some translator shifting upstate: With a new full-power outlet coming to the Binghamton market on 93.3, licensed to Susquehanna, PA, the longtime Endicott translator for WPEL-FM (96.5 Montrose PA) has to find a new home – and so W227AB is applying for a shift up the dial from 93.3 to 94.7. The move will also come with a power increase from 41 watts to 250 watts from the translator’s existing location just west of Endicott.

In Dansville, Family Life Ministries’ W282AC (104.3) has a construction permit to move to 104.5; that will get the WCOU (88.3 Attica) relay out of the way of new W282BQ (104.3 Avon) at the other end of Livingston County.

*In Olean, there’s a new morning show host at Colonial Radio Group’s WXMT (106.3 Smethport PA): Roxanne Stuart comes to town from KTHR in Wichita, where she’d worked with Colonial’s new operations manager Steve Mills.

*Buffalo’s WBFO (88.7) officially changes hands Wednesday night – and so far, there’s little official word about what will be heard on that frequency (and simulcasters WOLN 91.3 Olean/WUBJ 88.1 Jamestown) once new owner WNED takes over.

Behind the scenes, we’re hearing the transition will actually take place at 10 AM on Thursday, following one last WBFO-produced “Morning Edition” with host Bert Gambini to close out the station’s Allen Hall studios on the UB South Campus. After that, it appears most of what will air on WBFO will come from WNED’s existing news staff, largely as a simulcast with WNED (970). Informed sources tell us WBFO news director Eileen Buckley will join the WNED news staff, but most of the rest of the existing WBFO news staff won’t make the transition.

As for WBFO’s music programming, word is that the station’s signature weekend blues shows will survive, but it’s likely hosts Jim Santella and Anita West will be heard on Saturday and Sunday evenings instead of their current afternoon slots.

Stay tuned, as always, to our Facebook and Twitter feeds for updates as WNED makes an official announcement of its new schedule (and, perhaps, of the fate of the AM 970 signal, which is likely to be put up for sale once the better 88.7 signal joins the WNED family.)

*And we’ve been remiss in not noting the death February 13 of Carlos de Jesus, one of New York City’s first prominent disco DJs. De Jesus worked at WKCR (89.9), WNJR (1430 Newark) and WBLS (107.5), but he was best known as one of the star personalities on WKTU (92.3) in the 1970s and early 1980s. De Jesus served as WKTU’s program director in the latter years of the disco era, and he hosted “New York Hot Tracks” on WABC-TV (Channel 7) from 1983-1986.

*Shamrock Communications is pulling a manager out of its Scranton, PENNSYLVANIA headquarters and sending him west. Willobee came to the top floor of the Times-Tribune building two years ago as operations manager, and now he’s being dispatched to Reno to play the same role at a brand-new cluster Shamrock is building out there. A new cluster, you say? Yes indeed – that same auction that landed 94.9 in Montauk for John Fuller allowed Shamrock to pick up four new FM channels licensed to communities north and east of Reno. Those class C signals will all operate from a shared site 54 miles away from Reno, with on-channel boosters turning them into “real” Reno signals. This isn’t Willobee’s first time out west; he worked at KEDJ (106.3) in the Phoenix market before programming WEQX (102.7) in Vermont and then joining Shamrock in 2010.

Replacing Willobee back in Scranton is Scott Laudani, who’s held a host of programming jobs all over New England at stations such as WHJY, WHEB/WGIR-FM, WLZX and most recently New Haven’s WPLR.

Over at Cumulus’ Wilkes-Barre/Scranton cluster, there’s an imaging shift at country WSJR (93.7 Dallas): it’s segued from “JR 93.7” to “Great Country 93.7,” the Cumulus satellite-delivered format that’s appeared on several of the company’s stations (most notably WNNF Cincinnati) in the last few months.

*We’re getting a better idea of where Merlin Media will move WKDN (106.9 Camden, NEW JERSEY) once it closes on the purchase that the FCC just approved last week. In addition to approving Merlin’s purchase of the signal from Family Stations, the FCC also signed off on a new auxiliary transmitter site for the station. WKDN’s 9 kW/800′ aux site on Philadelphia’s One Liberty skyscraper will sit just under the antennas for WMMR (93.3 Philadelphia) and WPHI (107.9 Pennsauken NJ) – and it’s widely expected that once the aux license is granted there, the next step will be a complete move of 106.9 from its present site in Camden to One Liberty.

(Licensing the Center City skyscraper as the permanent site for 106.9 will allow about twice as much power than the 9 kW aux authorization, and should considerably improve WKDN’s signal in Philadelphia’s western suburbs.)

*Fans of legendary MASSACHUSETTS morning man Dave Maynard will get together later this week for a memorial service. The longtime WBZ personality will be remembered Wednesday morning (Feb. 29) at a celebratory mass at Saint Cecilia’s Parish at 18 Belvidere Street in the Back Bay. Maynard died Feb. 9 in Florida; donations in his memory can be directed to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation (http://www.pdf.org/).

*It didn’t take long for “Coast to Coast AM” to find a new radio home in RHODE ISLAND: the overnight talk show has moved from Cumulus’ WPRO (630)/WEAN (99.7) to Clear Channel’s WHJJ (920 Providence).

(“Coast to Coast” has also vanished from another Cumulus talker in the region: it’s no longer being heard on WNBF 1290 in Binghamton, N.Y.; like WPRO, WNBF has replaced Coast to Coast with Cumulus’ own “Red Eye Radio.”)

*Another quiet week in CANADA, save for a lineup shuffle at Corus Radio’s Barrie, Ontario cluster, where the veteran morning team of Jamie and Tara are moving from CIQB (101.1) to its adult contemporary sister, CHAY (93.1). John Facey moves from afternoons at B101 to morning drive alongside Lisa Paivel, while Chris Liedtke takes over afternoons there, effective today.

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