NERW 5/14/2012: Boston’s master TV antenna comes down for repair

In this week’s issue: Remembering Carl Beane – More local at Philly’s “IQ 106.9” – CPTV loses Huskies – WKAJ tries once more – WXBR evicted from Brockton studios – Brian Thomas leaves CBS-FM

by SCOTT FYBUSH

*Over-the-air TV viewers in eastern MASSACHUSETTS are one big step closer to once again having reliable reception of the signals transmitted from the Richland Tower master TV site in Needham.

On Monday, tower crews pulled off the high-stakes, high-altitude task of removing the upper master UHF antenna that failed back in April. That antenna, which appears to have suffered a massive failure of its power divider, is now back at the Dielectric factory in Maine being rebuilt, and that means up to another month of temporary operation at the Needham site.

Here’s how it all plays out: since a week or so after the burnout, the four stations that used the upper master antenna (CBS’ WBZ-TV Channel 4/RF 30 and WSBK Channel 38/RF 39, public television WGBX Channel 44/RF 43 and Hearst’s WCVB Channel 5/RF 20) have moved their operations down to the identical lower master normally used by WGBH Channel 2/RF 19. WGBH, in turn, has been operating from the much lower auxiliary antenna belonging to WCVB – at least when there aren’t workers on the tower, in which case all the stations shift to other, lower-powered auxiliary antennas recently mounted on the tower, or briefly sign off while climbers are passing through their antenna apertures.

The project is expensive and potentially very dangerous to the climbers (it’s been only a few months since a climber died on the nearby “FM-128” tower while doing similar work high up on that tower), and it’s giving Boston’s TV stations a renewed realization of how many viewers in the digital age still depend on antennas to receive their signals.

With any luck, the upper antenna will be rebuilt and returned to the Needham site by early June…and it’s a good bet that larger TV broadcasters will be thinking a little harder about the need for better backup facilities for their DTV transmissions.

*Meanwhile in Brockton, it’s turning out to be a very bad month for WXBR (1460), the AM signal long known as WBET. For several years now, WXBR has been the last remaining tenant in the mostly vacant office building at 60 Main Street that was the longtime home of the Brockton Enterprise, the radio station’s former parent company. But on May 2, sheriff’s deputies padlocked the studios for non-payment of rent (reportedly some $7,000 worth), ousting local host Ron van Dam five minutes into his show.

WXBR’s current owner, Business Talk Radio Network, has kept the station on the air since then with satellite feeds, but there’s been no local programming and it’s not clear if there will ever be any more under this ownership. A sale of the station to Florida-based Azure Media is still awaiting FCC approval.

*Radio People on the Move: Matt Phipps is the new music director and afternoon host at WXRV (92.5 Andover), where he fills posts that have been officially empty for a while now. Phipps began doing the afternoon shift at “The River” over the winter following the departure of the station’s longest-running jock, Bob Stuart; the music director position had been vacant since PD/MD Catie Wilber left at the beginning of the year. Phipps had been working for Metro Networks and, before that, for WBOS (92.9) in its own AAA days.

CBS Radio’s WBMX (Mix 104.1) has a new morning sidekick: Ryan “Salt” McMillan moved north from North Carolina last month to join Karson and Kennedy in morning drive at the hot AC signal.

*We send our very best wishes out to Boston (and southern MAINE) radio maverick Bob Bittner, owner of WJIB 740 Cambridge and WJTO 730 Bath, who’s recuperating from a minor heart attack he suffered late last week while undergoing another medical procedure at Maine Medical Center. Word is that Bob will have a stent put in today, and he’s expected to be home in Bath as early as Tuesday.

*And of course we join in the mourning for Carl Beane, the Red Sox PA announcer who died in a car crash after suffering a heart attack Wednesday afternoon. Carl is being remembered fondly (most touchingly, perhaps, in this ESPN obituary by Gordon Edes) for his passion for the Sox and for the colorful figure he cut at Fenway. But we remember him, too, for his many years in and around New England radio.

When he died, Carl was on his way home from a morning substitute shift at WARE (1250 Ware), where he’d started his career in the 1970s. He’d also worked over the years at WESO (970)/WQVR (100.1) in Southbridge and at WXLS (98.3, now WILI-FM) in Willimantic, Connecticut – and for the last couple of decades, he’d made a name for himself as a solidly dependable sports stringer, providing reports from Boston sports venues to a list of stations that included Boston’s WBZ (1030, where he was a frequent guest on the Steve LeVeille Broadcast) and New York’s WFAN (660).

Carl was just 59.

*What’s happening with the Nassau Broadcasting properties in NEW HAMPSHIRE, VERMONT and Maine? Amidst rumors that Nassau’s biggest creditor, Goldman Sachs, wasn’t happy with the bargain price ($12.5 million) at which Jeff Shapiro and Bill Binnie had scored two dozen Nassau signals in this month’s bankruptcy auction, we checked in with Shapiro – and he tells us “it’s a bit early to be too specific, but everything is on track” for those signals to end up in the hands of his partnership with politician-turned-broadcaster Binnie.

*It was a bad week for CONNECTICUT Public Television. Just weeks after launching its “CPTV Sports” service as a broadcast subchannel on its DTV transmitters around the state, the network lost out on its bid to continue carrying University of Connecticut women’s basketball.

Over 18 years of carrying the Huskies, CPTV had carved out a distinctive niche for itself as one of the rare public broadcasters with a major sports presence, and it didn’t hurt to have the UConn women’s team shooting to national championship after national championship along the way. That eventually attracted the interest of bigger commercial players, which is why UConn ended up signing a four-year deal to place the games on SNY, the New York-based home of the Mets.

The move will give UConn better visibility outside Connecticut, especially in the big New York City market, but it’s a blow to CPTV, which has depended on revenue from underwriting for UConn games to finance much of its growth.

“In preparation for receiving this news, we have been working toward developing a new strategic plan which builds upon our new initiatives. We are confident that our future is financially sound,” says CPTV president/CEO Jerry Franklin, who says the network is looking forward to celebrating its 50th anniversary later this year.

*More translator news from the Nutmeg State: while it fights to hang on to translator W250AA (97.9 Naugatuck), Danbury’s Portuguese broadcaster WFAR (93.3) is selling its Bridgeport translator, W285DE (104.9), to John Fuller’s Red Wolf Broadcasting. The deal includes some unusual provisions: in addition to a $75,000 cash payment, Red Wolf will also relay WFAR’s programming over the HD3 subchannel of its own WMRQ (104.1 Waterbury) for at least the next five years, giving WFAR the potential for a much stronger signal over the Hartford market, But what about radios to receive the new WFAR signal on WMRQ’s HD signal? Red Wolf will provide WFAR with 50 HD Radio receivers, at a cost of no more than $60 per radio.

*Remember WKAJ (1120 St. Johnsbury), the upstate NEW YORK AM construction permit that went forward with construction of a brand-new four-tower directional 10 kW facility even after its CP had officially expired last fall? Permittee Cranesville Block Company isn’t giving up on the signal even after the FCC refused to issue a license to cover earlier this year, deleting the call letters and cancelling the CP.

Last week, the FCC issued a public notice that Cranesville had filed a petition in late April for a waiver of the FCC’s usual rules that dictate a strict “build it by the deadline, or it goes away” policy for new CPs. So far, the Commission hasn’t acted on the petition, nor has it released the details of Cranesville’s appeal…we’ll keep you posted as we learn more.

(Speaking of near-expiration CPs, Holy Family Communications has been testing its new Auburn-area signal, WTMI 88.7 Fleming, but while the construction permit ran out last Monday, May 7, there’s been no filing that we can find for a license to cover, nor for the program test authority that WTMI would have to have obtained before the end of the CP in order to proof its directional signal.)

*Radio People on the Move: in New York City, Brian Thomas is moving on from a huge success in the PD chair at WCBS-FM (101.1), where he revived the oldies – er, “classic hits” – format after the “Jack FM” interregnum. Thomas will keep his title of VP/Classic Hits Programming (and will keep working with CBS-FM and sister station WODS in Boston) as he moves south to Tampa to become VP/programming for CBS Radio’s six-station cluster there. (The cluster includes classic hits WRBQ-FM 104.7, which Thomas programmed back in the days when it was owned by Clear Channel.) No replacement has been named in New York.

Down the dial, WRKS (98.7 New York) has requested new calls to go with its new ESPN Radio format, and they’re no surprise: it will become “WEPN-FM” any moment now, matching soon-to-be-ex-AM-simulcast-partner WEPN (1050). It’s not yet clear whether Emmis will park the WRKS callsign on another of its stations somewhere else.

*In Glens Falls, they’re mourning Rick Knight, morning man at Pamal’s WNYQ (101.7 Hudson Falls). Knight, whose real name was David Titterington, died suddenly Saturday morning, ending a 40-year radio career that had also included stints at the old WAYI (107.1 Hudson Falls, now WFFG) and WKBE (100.5, now 100.3 Warrenton) as well as at WFLY in the Albany market. Knight was just 59.

*In NEW JERSEY, they’re mourning April Kauffman, who hosted talk shows on WIBG (1020 Ocean City) and WOND (1400 Pleasantville). Best known for her tireless support of veterans’ issues, Kauffman was found shot to death at her home in the Atlantic City suburb of Linwood on Thursday. She was 47; police say the crime wasn’t random, and they hope to make an arrest soon.

*A decidedly unexpected HD Radio development from western PENNSYLVANIA: we’re hard pressed to think of any market where a full-power commercial station is using one of its HD subchannels to carry the programming of a competing commercial operator – and for no compensation, at that.

Locally-owned Steel City Media isn’t your usual operator, though, and unlike its bigger corporate competitors it has the flexibility to try something creative on not much more than a whim. Steel City’s WLTJ (92.9) and WRRK (96.9) have been running a bunch of creative formats on their HD2, HD3 and, yes, HD4 channels – and last week, chief engineer Paul Carroll decided it would be interesting to use WLTJ’s HD3 (which had been running an automated classic rock format) to bring the classic rock format of WKVE (103.1 Mount Pleasant) to a wider audience.

WKVE is owned by Bob Stevens’ Broadcast Communications Inc., which competes with Steel City within the greater Pittsburgh market, but the WKVE signal doesn’t reach into Pittsburgh itself very well. That’s where 92.9-HD3 comes in – not only will it make “KVE” available to whatever Pittsburgh residents might have an HD Radio receiver, it will also put the programming on a stream for the first time. (WKVE didn’t even have a website until the very recent debut of www.kve.fm.)

Carroll says he’s hoping the wider availability of WKVE’s programming via WLTJ’s HD might also spark some word of mouth about HD Radio and bring some extra visibility to Steel City’s other services.

Stevens, meanwhile, is expanding his reach south of the Mason-Dixon line: he’s buying three western Maryland stations from a bankruptcy receiver. Pittsburgh broker Ray Rosenblum handled the $775,000 deal, which adds WMSG (1050 Oakland MD), WWHC (92.3 Oakland MD) and WKHJ (104.5 Mountain Lake Park MD) to the Broadcast Communications family.

*Susan Koeppen is returning to Pittsburgh TV tonight, making her first appearance since undergoing surgery in March to repair a faulty heart valve. The KDKA-TV (Channel 2) anchor first discovered she had heart problems when she collapsed while running last November. She’s been on and off the air ever since, but she’s hoping to be back on the desk at KDKA for good beginning at the end of May.

*Radio People on the Move: Zack Williams has departed CBS Radio’s WBZZ (Star 100.7) in Pittsburgh, where he was assistant music director and night jock. Williams is heading back to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; no replacement has been named yet.

*The newest talk station in the Philadelphia market made a few more additions to its on-air lineup last week. WWIQ (106.9 Camden) is using former WKXW (New Jersey 101.5) evening talk host Michelle Jerson to fill the noon-3 PM slot that’s widely expected to go to Rush Limbaugh once he’s off WPHT (1210 Philadelphia); “IQ 106.9” is also carrying morning traffic reports from Jeff McKay of sister station WEMP (101.9) in New York.

As for WWIQ’s former callsign of many years, it’s staying in the Family Stations family at the other end of Pennsylvania: the former WXFR (88.3 State College) is now WKDN, even though it’s unlikely anyone in Centre County ever knew that callsign from its days on 106.9.

Over at Temple University’s public station WRTI (90.1 Philadelphia), general manager Dave Conant is pulling back a bit from what’s been a heavy workload: he’s stepped down as the station’s morning host, ending more than four decades on the air with classical radio, first at the old WFLN (95.7/900) for 26 years and then at WRTI since 1997. “It’s now necessary for me to focus full-time on guiding the station into a vibrant and exciting future,” he says. For now, Gregg Whiteside (late of New York’s WQXR) is hosting mornings while WRTI conducts a nationwide search for a permanent replacement.

*Religious station WPEL-FM (96.5 Montrose) wants to relocate its Williamsport translator. It’s applying to move what’s now W269AJ (101.7) up the dial to 102.1, moving it to a taller new county-owned tower near its existing site. The move would get the translator out of the way of another Williamsport translator that was recently displaced from 88.5 to 101.3, and it would allow for a better signal over Montoursville, east of Williamsport.

*There are some new FM signals coming to eastern CANADA. Last week, the CRTC approved applications for new FM signals in Fredericton, New Brunswick and New Glasgow, Nova Scotia.

In Fredericton, the new signal on 93.1 (with 50 kW/150 m, non-directional) will be the second station for Newcap Inc. in the  market, joining classic rock CFRK (92.3 Fred FM). The new 93.1 will program top-40, with a minimum of 120 local hours of programming (and four hours of local news) each week.

In New Glasgow, Hector Broadcasting is adding a sister station to its existing CKEC (94.1 East Coast FM), the only existing signal in town. Hector’s second signal will run 46.7 kW (100 kW max DA)/246.3 m on 97.9, programming a mix of classic rock, classic hits and contemporary rock. The grant of a new station came over objections from Atlantic Broadcasters, which runs CJFX (98.9 Antigonish) with a signal that reaches into parts of New Glasgow and Pictou County; the CRTC says while CJFX can be heard in New Glasgow, it’s licensed to serve Antigonish and thus won’t really be competing with Hector’s new offering.

*The CRTC also approved a license for a new native FM station at Wasauksing First Nation, in Ontario’s “cottage country” near Parry Sound. The tribe has apparently been operating on 91.3 as “Rez 91” for a while now; it’s not uncommon for First Nations stations in Canada to sign on first and seek a license later. The licensed signal on 91.3 will operate with the calls CHRZ, running 60 watts at 1 meter below average terrain.

*In Ottawa, Leigh Chapple stepped down last week after a remarkable 36 years with CJOH-TV (Channel 13), most of it spent anchoring the 11:30 PM newscast. Chapple will continue teaching at Algonquin College, where she’s been a part-time instructor for 15 years. CTV’s Ottawa outlet is also reworking “Regional Contact,” its long-running show featuring interesting people in eastern Ontario and western Quebec. Show host Kathie Donovan and producer Gerry Wall left the station this week. At the end of the summer, “Regional Contact” will end its regular Sunday-night run, instead becoming a series of features during the weekday CJOH newscasts and an expanded hour-long Sunday newscast.

*In Montreal, Ted Bird has departed the morning slot at CKRK (103.1 Kahnawake) after a year with the station on the First Nations reservation just south of the city. Steve Faguy reports Bird’s salary was apparently being paid in part by a “private donor” who didn’t want to pony up for a second year; it’s widely expected he’ll end up at one of Montreal’s bigger commercial stations.

And we close by noting the death of Neil McKenty, whose “Exchange” show was Montreal’s top-rated talk program during his 14-year run at CJAD (800) from 1972-1985. McKenty also hosted “McKenty Live” on CFCF-TV (Channel 12) for three years. The former Jesuit priest (he left the priesthood in 1969) died Saturday in Montreal. He was 87.