NERW 7/16/2012: Will Montreal’s 690 Speak French Again?

From the NERW Archives

Yup, 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 and – where available – fifteen 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: July 18, 2011 –

*GALLUP, N.M. – As we write this week’s column in the midst of a cross-country drive (more on that in a bit), we’re still waiting for the shoes to finish dropping at the 101.9 spot on the NEW YORK radio dial, where Randy Michaels’ Merlin Media group took over WRXP from Emmis Communications on Friday.Here’s what we know so far: WRXP in its current form came to a close Thursday, as the jock lineup (Steve Craig, Leslie Fram, Matt Pinfield, “Drelio”) exited the station and said their on-air goodbyes. The music continued into Friday, when it was replaced by something called “101.9 FM New,” which at least for the weekend appeared to be a female-friendly hot AC mix.

The week may also bring new calls to 101.9, which has requested “WEMP” (perhaps for the “EMPire State”?), a set of calls more familiar from their longtime use in Milwaukee. But what of the domain names that were registered for “WYNY” on 101.9? As always with Michaels and the programmers he’s assembled, it’s hard to tell what’s smokescreen and what’s real until it becomes official.

Whatever the new 101.9 format will be, it didn’t materialize this morning: the “FM New” programming continued with longtime 101.9 veteran Paul Cavalconte hosting and former WINS (1010) traffic voice Jeff McKay giving the traffic information – but, as of yet, no sign of the news or talk that’s been rumored for the station.

It’s just that kind of chaos on which Michaels thrives; in Chicago, the rumors of his planned flip of WKQX (101.1) to all-news led CBS to pull the trigger on its own long-rumored addition of an FM simulcast of all-newser WBBM (780), which will be heard starting next week on WCFS (105.9), which had been struggling with the “Fresh” AC format. But CBS appears to be in no hurry to make a similar move in New York, where its three FM properties (“Now” WXRK 92.3, WCBS-FM 101.1 and “Fresh” WWFS 102.7) are finally healthy and profitable after years of their own format struggles.

One more loose end: the “RXP” branding survives, as does its sister “Q101” in Chicago, thanks to deals that Merlin struck to sell that intellectual property to a group that specializes in barter ad deals for radio. The new “RXP” continues as a jockless stream at 1019rxp.com.

*There was a format change in Buffalo, too, as Dick Greene’s WECK (1230 Cheektowaga) pulled the plug on his attempt to go up against talk giant WBEN (930/107.7).

On Tuesday, WECK PD/afternoon host Brad Riter and midday talker Nick Mendola both lost their jobs, replaced temporarily by Fox Sports before Friday’s format change to “The Breeze,” an attempt to mix soft AC with some more contemporary tunes. (Coldplay, for whatever reason, kept getting mentioned as a core artist of the new format.)

Morning host Tom Donahue, a veteran of Buffalo music radio, continues with the new format.

*Radio People on the Move: Aaron Read has exited the GM post at WEOS (89.7 Geneva) after four years on the job – and he’s headed all the way west to become chief engineer at KCSB (91.9) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. (That explains why the column is coming from New Mexico this morning; your editor hit the road with Read, a longtime friend, to help him get to the West Coast quickly – and to experience the majesty of a coast-to-coast road trip. Expect some interesting Tower Site of the Week installments soon…) Back at WEOS, station manager Greg Cotterill has taken over from Aaron. 2012 update – Aaron didn’t stay out west for long; he’s now director of engineering at Rhode Island Public Radio.

*Could a new commercial FM signal be coming to PENNSYLVANIA‘s largest market? Family Stations quickly fell out of the headlines after founder Harold Camping’s Judgment Day prediction went astray in May, followed by Camping’s debilitating stroke in June – but alert observers noted that Family quietly applied last week to change its Philadelphia-market WKDN (106.9, licensed in Camden, NEW JERSEY) from non-commercial to commercial status.

Since Family Radio itself isn’t commercial, rumors are swirling that WKDN, which has a big class B signal blanketing most of the Philadelphia market, might be up for sale, or at least for trade. It wouldn’t be the first time Family has unloaded a big FM signal; in recent years, it has traded commercial-band FMs in San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento for AM stations. (And the rumor mill obligingly notes that Greater Media has recently upgraded a pretty big AM signal, WPEN 950, that’s being underutilized as a simulcast of sports-talk WPEN-FM 97.5 – or could the other player be CBS, which did the San Francisco AM/FM trade with Camping and which would no doubt love to move its Philly sports-talker, WIP 610, to FM?) 2012 update: 106.9 went to Merlin, of course, and is now talker WWIQ.

Five Years Ago: July 16, 2007 –

*It was a huge week in broadcasting at both ends of the Boston-New York axis, and if you’re looking for the big developments from the Big Apple, you may want to keep scrolling down a bit – we’re leading off this week with some even bigger surprises from eastern MASSACHUSETTS.

The first came on the radio side of things, when lawyers for veteran WRKO (680 Boston) afternoon talk host Howie Carr announced last Monday that he would leave the Entercom talk station when his contract expires September 19. Instead, Carr’s representatives said, the Boston Herald columnist would take over the morning shift formerly occupied by Don Imus on Greater Media’s WTKK (96.9 Boston), the FM talker that’s been rapidly eroding the comfortable hold WRKO once had on the city’s talk audience.

For Carr, the move would mean head-to-head competition with WRKO’s floundering Tom Finneran morning show – not to mention a higher salary, a more prominent role in a WTKK lineup that’s live and local most of the day, and no more pre-emptions for afternoon Red Sox games. For Entercom, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars to renew its deal with the Red Sox in part to provide a promotional boost for the WRKO lineup, Carr’s departure is a potential disaster, since his show represented the biggest revenue draw on the talk station’s schedule (as well as a lucrative syndication offering to other stations around New England.)

As news of Carr’s planned move splashed across the headlines in Boston, things started getting even testier. WRKO, which apparently had declined to exercise a one-year renewal clause in Carr’s contract, told the Globe that it had the right to match any offer Carr received from Greater Media. Carr’s lawyers responded with a lawsuit seeking to declare that clause unenforceable, thanks to the state’s new ban on non-compete contracts – and they noted that while WRKO was willing to match WTKK’s salary offer, it couldn’t match the other terms of the new deal, most notably the morning slot on the FM dial.

Carr was off the air at WRKO for most of the week, but returned on Thursday with a prepared statement that had been drafted for him to read. Any illusion that Carr might have agreed with the words he was reading (“My job is to provide you with the most entertaining and compelling show that I can do each day, not to discuss my personal matters”) was carefully shattered with a few “it says here” comments inserted in the reading – and at week’s end, the only certainties were that the lawyers on both sides will be paying for plenty of summers on Cape Cod with whatever time they’ll lose this summer hashing this mess out, and that we’ll be hearing a lot more about Carr’s planned move in the next few weeks.

*Even as Carr’s news was all over the papers and websites Tuesday, an even more veteran Boston broadcaster was making headlines of her own. Natalie Jacobson, who’s been part of the news team at WCVB (Channel 5) since the station’s first day on the air more than 35 years ago, announced that she’ll retire from the Hearst-Argyle ABC affiliate after next Wednesday’s 6 PM newscast.

Jacobson has been an anchor on WCVB since 1976, much of that time spent sharing the anchor desk at 6 and 11 with her former husband, Chet Curtis. He moved to New England Cable News after their 2001 divorce, while Jacobson slowly eased back on her workload at Channel 5, giving up the 11 PM newscast and concentrating on the 6, which she’d been co-anchoring with Ed Harding.

Jacobson, 63, told the Globe that she’d been contemplating retirement for a while, and that her decision not to seek renewal of her contract at the end of July came as a surprise to WCVB management when she informed them in late June. We’re hearing, though, that the decision may not have been Jacobson’s – and the rather abrupt timing of her departure would seem to bear that out. (On the other hand, WCVB has no designated successor to Jacobson, and it will rotate reporters in her anchor chair for a while.)

In any event, Wednesday’s farewell will include a special edition of “Chronicle” devoted to Jacobson’s career. After that, Jacobson says she’s going to work on a multimedia venture aimed at baby boomers in their retirement years.

*There was just one big radio story in NEW YORK last week, of course, and we pointed the NERW-mobile south and east for the day on Thursday so we could be there as WCBS-FM (101.1 New York) relegated “Jack FM” to its HD2 subchannel and brought the oldies – beg pardon, the “classic hits” back to the main FM channel they’d occupied from 1972 until the abrupt switch to “Jack” in June 2005.

That format change two years ago took place with no advance warning and no fanfare, but this time was different. Outside in Times Square, we spotted one lone CBS-FM fan holding a “welcome back” sign (with “Hit the Road, Jack” on the flip side), an echo of the street protests that quickly formed back in 2005 to protest the format flip.

Up on the 40th floor of the Viacom building at 1515 Broadway, guests stepping off the elevators saw no sign of “Jack” – just the new-old WCBS-FM logo all over the place, and more than a few magnets and stickers bearing the 2005-era logo adorning cubicles and filing cabinets as well.

In the sales office, there was food (including an authentic New York hot dog cart) for invited guests and top CBS Radio management, at a level rarely seen for your usual format change. That included programming VP Greg Strassell, engineering honcho Glynn Walden – and, of course, Dan Mason, the CBS Radio president who’s set in motion a whole series of changes since returning to that post a few months ago, including this format flip.

Half an hour before the scheduled 1:01 PM format change, the assembled media (including Daily News radio columnist David Hinckley, at left above, and most of the city’s TV stations) began moving down the hall toward the studios.

At 12:40, general manager Jennifer Donohue (below, left) and PD Brian Thomas (in the background, below left) entered the air studio to administer the last rites, as it were, to Jack.

After a series of joking liners during the last day in which “Jack” (voiced by Canadian VO artist Howard Cogan) gets flowers from Bob Shannon (“Who’s Bob Shannon?”) and an unexpected delivery of moving boxes, the final “Jack” bit found him on the phone with Tony Soprano – and after an abrupt “gotta go,” the strains of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” blasted from the speakers, the room applauded, and Jack was off to HD2 retirement.

In good “Sopranos” finale fashion, the Journey tune abruptly cut off before its end – and the next sounds heard on 101.1 were radio static, the noise of a jukebox coming up to speed, and the strains of Frank Sinatra singing “Summer Wind,” the infamous last song played on the old CBS-FM back in 2005. That, in turn, gave way to a long montage of songs, soundbites and news clips tracking the years from 1964 into the eighties, and as the montage plays on, the crowd in the studio kept growing.

As 1:01 PM approached, the montage wrapped up with a greeting from former mayor Ed Koch, acknowledging how rare it is for a big corporation to admit it “blew it,” followed by “I Love New York” and the booming WCBS-FM legal ID, voiced – just as in the old days – by Ziggie Pelzer. The room cheered, the Beach Boys’ “Do It Again” started playing, Shannon started dancing, and CBS-FM was back on the air.

The mikes finally opened after the Beach Boys song, as morning man Dan Taylor led the room in a shout of “We’re back!,” which led into Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ “December 1963 (Oh What A Night.)” After that, Shannon’s first on-air words in two years – “As I was about to say…” – poked fun at the afternoon shift he never got to do on that fateful day in 2005. Shannon then introduced the new DJ lineup, including former WKTU jock Broadway Bill Lee in afternoons, Joe Causi on weekends (and, for this first day, at night as well), and Jeff Mazzei, who programmed the HD2 incarnation of CBS-FM during the “Jack” era, on overnights. (From left to right, that’s Lee, Taylor, Mazzei, Causi and Shannon in the jock photo above.) After Donohue joined Shannon to read a proclamation from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had publicly proclaimed back in 2005 that he’d never listen to the station again, the guests eventually begin filing out of the studio, letting Shannon and then Lee bring the music (and, perhaps more important, the personality) back to CBS-FM.

*Heading up to CANADA, the CRTC’s been busy approving new signals. In Sudbury, Ontario, six applicants (including incumbent broadcasters Haliburton and Newcap) responded to a call for applications last fall. The CRTC heard from the applicants at a hearing in March, and last week it ruled that Sudbury should get one new FM. Larche Communications was the winner, and it’ll do country (probably under its “KICX FM” brand) on its new 50 kW signal in Sudbury.

In Leamington, Ontario, Blackburn Radio is getting a second signal to add to its existing CHYR-FM (96.7). The new station will run 960 watts on 92.7, with a country format.

Ten Years Ago: July 15, 2002 –

Is the regulatory tide turning against big clusters and consolidation? A proposed Clear Channel purchase in MAINE is one of three deals facing a level of scrutiny the FCC hasn’t employed in decades. Clear Channel has been operating WSKW (1160 Skowhegan) and WHQO (107.9 Skowhegan) under an LMA from Mountain Wireless for several years, ever since Mountain’s proposed sale of the stations to Cumulus fell through due to financial problems at the Cumulus end.

Last October, Clear Channel filed to convert the LMA to ownership, a deal that would give Mountain Wireless $1.8 million and add WHQO and WSKW to the rest of the Clear Channel Augusta-Waterville cluster, a group that includes WFAU (1280 Gardiner), WCTB (93.5 Fairfield), WKCG (101.3 Augusta), WABK (104.3 Gardiner) and WTOS (105.1 Skowhegan, another former Mountain Wireless station). WHQO has been simulcasting the talk programming from Clear Channel’s WVOM (103.9 Howland) in the Bangor market, while WSKW has been sharing a sports format with WFAU and WIGY (97.5 Madison, just returned to the air this week after suffering tower damage). For the last few months, the Mountain stations have even operated from the same Augusta facility as the other Clear Channel central Maine stations.

The hitch? If the deal is approved by the FCC (it already has Justice Department clearance), Clear Channel and Citadel (which has WMME/WEZW and WEBB/WTVL in the market) would share a whopping 99.5% of the radio revenues in the market, with just a handful of commercially-licensed religious stations (WMDR 1340, WWWA 95.3) as “competition” for radio ad dollars. So the FCC has designated the WHQO/WSKW sale, along with a Clear Channel purchase in Youngstown, Ohio (WRTK 1540 Niles OH, WAKZ 95.9 Sharpsville PA, WICT 95.1 Grove City PA, WBBG 106.1 Niles OH) and another one in Killeen-Temple, Texas, for a hearing on market concentration. Stay tuned as the Commission sets what promises to be a new precedent for acceptable levels of station revenue and ratings share…we’ll keep you posted.

Two MASSACHUSETTS PDs lost their jobs last week, both at Entercom stations in the Boston market. Jeff Scott, who came to “Star” WQSX (93.7 Lawrence) just this past April, was out the door last Monday, followed shortly by Dave Douglas, who’d helmed WAAF (107.3 Worcester) for several years. Douglas will be replaced by Keith Hastings, inbound from Saga active rocker WLZR in Milwaukee; no replacement has been named yet for Scott.

The NEW YORK TV dial continues to return to normalcy as the one-year anniversary of September 11 approaches. The latest station to return to full power after losing its World Trade Center transmitter is Telemundo’s WNJU (Channel 47), licensed to Linden, N.J. WNJU had been using the Armstrong FM tower in Alpine, N.J. as a temporary site for the last few months, with a weak signal over most of the city. It signed back on from the Empire State Building July 1, leaving only Pax’s WPXN (Channel 31) operating from another site.

Fifteen Years Ago: July 17, 1997 –

Our top story this week comes from MASSACHUSETTS, Springfield to be exact, where Clear Channel’s WHYN (560/93.1) announced this week that its newsroom will close at the end of August, with Metro Networks taking over WHYN’s news product on September 1. WHYN employed three full-time newspeople, and all of them (news director Denise Vozella, Sid Whitaker, and Bill Erickson) have been offered jobs at Metro’s Hartford newsroom, which will provide news for WHYN.

WHYN’s Gary James tells NERW that “this is an opportunity for the WHYN listeners to get even more local coverage because of the resources of Metro,” and he says that while the WHYN/Metro news staff will be based in Hartford, they’ll still do street reporting in Springfield and have an office at the WHYN studios. Other Springfield-area radio listeners aren’t quite as optimistic; recently-retired WHYN anchor Ron Russell (DeMatteo) tells the Springfield Union-News that the change feels “like a death in my immediate family.” And while WHYN management says listeners won’t notice any difference on the air, NERW has learned that the current WHYN news staffers aren’t in any hurry to accept Metro’s job offers in Hartford, meaning WHYN listeners could soon hear a new set of voices at the top of each hour. NERW has also learned that Hartford’s WTIC (1080), targeted as one of Metro’s likely clients for the Hartford newsroom, has decided to stick with its own news operation because of concerns about the depth and quality of Metro’s offerings.

Around New England: In MASSACHUSETTS, ARS has found yet another station to simulcast over its WNFT (1150) in Boston. The latest programming to show up on 1150 is sister sports station WEEI (850); no word on how long this one will last. In New Bedford, an organization called New Bedford Christian Radio has applied for a new station at 88.1; NERW wonders whether they’ll co-locate on the Tiverton RI tower of New Bedford-licensed WLNE-TV 6 to minimize interference….or whether WLNE will quash the application from the start.

In VERMONT, WXPS (96.7 Vergennes-Burlington) is back on with a sports-talk format; the calls stay where they are for now. The FCC has granted a translator at 96.3 in Quechee. W242AG will be the new calls for the relay of religious WCMD Barre. Just to the north, we’re told 106.3 will be the new frequency for the CBC’s CBV (980) in Quebec City, while the plans are to move Ste.-Adele’s CIME from 99.5 to 103.9, and Montreal’s CBM from 940 to 88.5. The FCC is still sparring with the CRTC over plans to move the 88.5 allocation from Cornwall ON to Montreal; they’re worried about interference to WWPV (88.7) Colchester VT and WXLU (88.3) Peru NY.