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March 3, 2008

This Week's Bloodbath: Citadel

TOWER SITE CALENDAR 2008 - NOW AVAILABLE!!!

*It's beginning to sound like a broken record (remember those?) - Big Conglomerate Broadcaster posts bad quarterly earnings results, and within a day or two, dozens more talented broadcasters are out on the streets, never mind how good their ratings might have been or how many years they'd been with the station.

The disease seems to be working its way through all the big "C" companies, first with CBS Radio and Clear Channel earlier this year. On Leap Day Friday, it was Citadel's turn, as the company reeled from the losses that followed last year's ambitious purchase of the ABC Radio assets, which helped drag its stock down to the $1 level from a year-ago high of $10.40 per share.

After posting a net loss for the quarter of $848 million, the job cuts came fast and furious at most of the former ABC Radio properties. In Atlanta, nearly the entire airstaffs at WKHX(FM) and WYAY(FM) were history; in Washington, smooth jazz WJZW(FM) and its airstaff were gone, replaced with automated "True Oldies"; in Chicago, much of the news staff at WLS was history - and in New York, WABC (770) and WPLJ (95.5) were not immune.

At WABC, the cuts claimed John R. Gambling, the third-generation talk host who came to the station in 2000 after his Rambling With Gambling morning show was cancelled by WOR following an amazing 75-year run. In his place, former WABC morning host Curtis Sliwa, relegated to a 5-6 AM talk hour, will move to the 10-11:45 AM slot preceding Paul Harvey and Rush Limbaugh. But newsman George Weber, who'd been Sliwa's sidekick in the early mornings, won't join him on his new shift - Weber's out as well.

Down the hall at WPLJ, the "Rocky Allen Showgram" is history as well. Allen, who did afternoons on WPLJ from 1993-1998, then spent just over a year on WABC, returned to WPLJ in 2005 along with his sidekick Blain Ensley.

For now, their show has been replaced by middayer Race Taylor, but bigger changes may be afoot at WPLJ. While the station's lackluster ratings performance has long been excused by some of the biggest revenues in the market, Citadel officials say that's changing. In a Friday conference call, Citadel's Farid Suleman said CBS Radio's competing hot AC entry, "Fresh" WWFS (102.7), had cut into WPLJ's performance.

"We're not going to let that happen again," he told reporters and analysts on the call. Is a format change in the works?

*The week's other big radio headline came from upstate, where Rochester's Brother Wease announced he's returning to the airwaves, just a month after contract negotiations between the veteran morning talker and his longtime radio home, WCMF (96.5), broke down.

We'd been hearing lots of rumors about Wease being seen in the hallways at Clear Channel, the biggest local competitor to WCMF's new owners, Entercom - and it turns out that the corporate hiring freeze at Clear Channel wasn't as rock-solid as it appeared to be, since the company will hire Wease to be the new morning voice at its classic rocker, "Fox" WFXF (95.1 Honeoye Falls).

Current "Fox" morning man J.P. Hastings won't be vacating his chair right away, though. Because of Wease's non-compete with Entercom, his return to the Rochester airwaves may not happen until this fall. In the meantime, Wease will be working off the air at Clear Channel, mostly in the sales department, though he tells us he's also booking some guests on Bob Lonsberry's talk show at Clear Channel's WHAM (1180).

Wease's crosstown move sets up an interesting morning showdown: his former sidekicks, including comedian Tommy Mule and producer Bill Moran, remain at WCMF as the hosts of that station's replacement morning show, which means Wease will have to hire a new morning crew for his "Fox" debut later this year. He's done that before, as former sidekicks including Stephanie Miller, B.J. Shea and Gregg "Opie" Hughes have moved on to bigger things, but this is the first time he'll be competing directly against his former co-workers. (Including, we'd note, his former colleague Dave Kane, whose midday show on WCMF will air against the last hour or so of Wease on WFXF.)

*There's a new format coming to Buffalo this morning, as Dick Greene takes control of WECK (1230 Cheektowaga) from Regent, replacing the classic country format with a new lineup of talk programming anchored by veteran Buffalo talents Harv Moore (late of WHTT) and Tom Donohue (most recently with WLKK) in morning drive. The schedule will also include some programming heard on Greene's Niagara County outlet, WLVL (1340 Lockport), such as "Tradio" and a 10 AM talk show hosted by Scott Leffler. Tom Schuh, formerly with Entercom, is the PD of the station, which will also include syndicated talkers Bill O'Reilly, Neal Boortz, Dennis Miller and Jim Bohannon, plus Fox Sports overnight and on weekends.

In Syracuse, Nick Caplan has exited morning drive and the PD chair at "Movin'" WWLF-FM (100.3 Sylvan Beach)/WOLF-FM (96.7 Oswego); station manager Sam Furco is handling programming there for now.

There's a callsign shuffle up north: in the Watertown market, WBDI (106.7 Copenhagen) takes the WBDR calls that had been on its former "Border" simulcast at 102.7 in Cape Vincent; the Cape Vincent station is now running adult standards as "The Lake," aimed across the water at Kingston, and it's now WLYK.

Mike Perry was the first on-air personality at New York's WWFS (Fresh 102.7) when he moved up to the Big Apple from Florida to take afternoons last year; now he's leaving the CBS Radio station, which is looking for a replacement.

Speaking of former CBS Radio personalities, JV and Elvis, late of middays at WFNY-FM (Free 92.3; now WXRK), have resurfaced as webcasters, doing their thing on a new 24-hour service at DogHouseFM.com.

On Long Island, Gabrielle Vaughn is leaving the midday shift, and the music director's position, at WBLI (106.1 Patchogue); she'll continue to do some fill-in work after she departs the station in a month's time.

WBLI garnered lots of media attention after suspending morning host Randy Spears for a comment he made during the show Wednesday morning that poked fun at the Long Island community of Mastic. Spears (who goes simply by "Randy" on-air) was pulled off the show Thursday morning after refusing to make an on-air apology for the comment; he's expected to be back on the air this morning to say he's sorry.

In northern Westchester County, Albany's ever-expanding WAMC public radio empire has just added another construction permit. WWES (88.9 Mount Kisco) will be a 200-watt, vertical-only relay of WAMC, transmitting from the south side of Bedford Hills and serving an area that will include Bedford, Mount Kisco and Chappaqua.

And that's not WAMC's only expansion this week - they've also signed on translator W271BH (102.1 Highland), which fills in a few pockets in the mid-Hudson Valley that have some shadowing from WAMK (90.9 Kingston).

An Albany morning jock is getting her moment in the reality-TV spotlight this week, courtesy of ABC's "Wife Swap." Cat Noel, of the Cat and Darwin morning show on WZMR (104.9 Altamont), traded households - and jobs - with a "traditional Texan mom" whose family runs a pet crematorium. How did it all go? The results will air on ABC at 8 PM Wednesday...

On the TV side of things, Dan Forman is out at New York's WNBC (Channel 4) after a 13-year run with the station, the last six as senior VP of news and station manager. Forman's departure comes after some rough years for the station, including plummeting news ratings that have often found the once-dominant NBC O&O in third place during its early-evening and 11 PM newscasts.

*With all of William F. Buckley's many interests (he was, among other things, a connoisseur of peanut butter), it should come as no surprise that there was a broadcast connection in his life even deeper than his decades as host of "Firing Line."

Buckley, who died Wednesday (Feb. 27) at 82, served from 1973-75 as chairman of Starr Broadcasting, which owned WNCN (104.3 New York), and what a tumultuous time that was: in 1974, Starr flipped WNCN from its longtime classical format to rock under the new calls WQIV. Back when the FCC paid attention to stations' format choices, that flip was a big deal - so big, in fact, that the "WNCN Listeners' Guild" prodded Starr into flipping the station back to classical and selling it to GAF Broadcasting. (It was in the aftermath of the WNCN brouhaha that the FCC got out of the format-regulation business; 18 years later, GAF flipped WNCN back to rock as WAXQ without much of an outcry.)

GETCHER 2008 TOWER SITE CALENDAR - BEFORE THEY'RE ALL GONE!

Still haven't ordered your 2008 Tower Site Calendar? You do realize that it's now...er...2008, don't you? We're already down to the last 80 or so calendars, and they're going fast. The 2006 and 2007 editions of the calendar sold out, and this one will do so as well, possibly as soon as this month.

This year's edition is a particularly fine one, if we do say so ourselves. From the cover photo of KAST in Astoria, Oregon to the back cover shot of the Blaw-Knox diamond tower at WBNS in Columbus, this year's calendar features 14 all-new full-color shots of famous broadcast sites far and wide. There's KROQ in Los Angeles, KFBK in Sacramento, WESX in Salem, WGAN in Portland, Black Mountain in Vegas, Mount Spokane in Spokane, and many (ok, several) more.

The calendar is just $18 with shipping and handling included - or better yet, beat our move to mandatory subscriptions later this year and get a free calendar with your $60 subscription to NERW for 2008. (Remember, the proceeds from both the calendar and the subscriptions help keep NERW right here on the web, as we head into our fourteenth year of news and analysis.)

So click right here and you can be sure to have your very own Tower Site Calendar 2008! (And thank you!)

The 2008 Tower Site Calendar is dedicated to the memory of Robert Eiselen (1934-2007), whose digital imaging skills made even a bunch of pictures of radio towers look almost like art. His contributions were essential to the calendar's evolution from 2003 to the current edition, and he will be missed dearly.

*Perhaps the most famous voice in PENNSYLVANIA sports broadcasting history has been silenced. Myron Cope died Wednesday (Feb. 27) at 79, ending a career that included 35 seasons as color announcer for the Pittsburgh Steelers, as well as a 22 year run, from 1973-1995, as host of the city's first sports talk show, on the former WTAE (1250) and many years as a sports commentator on WTAE-TV (Channel 4).

Cope, born Myron Kopelman, already had a distinguished career as a print writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and later in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post when he was recruited for the Steelers' radio team in 1970.

His unusual turns of phrase - both Yiddishisms such as "Yoi!" and catchprases such as "The Immaculate Reception," for the pass that won the 1972 Steelers their Super Bowl championship - endeared Cope to generations of Steelers fans. He even created one of the team's icons, the "Terrible Towel" that began waving from the stands at the old Three Rivers Stadium in 1975.

Cope retired from the Steelers' broadcast booth in 2005 as he fought a series of illnesses that included a growth on his vocal cords; the next year, he donated the trademark rights to the Terrible Towel to the Allegheny Valley School, where his autistic son, Daniel, has lived most of his life.

Fittingly, a sea of Terrible Towels waved in front of Pittsburgh's City Hall Friday during a memorial ceremony for Cope, as the city said "Bye, now" to the man so closely associated with all those winning seasons.

(And we welcome cartoonist and PBRTV.com contributor Jason Togyer to the pages of NERW with this drawing imagining the most popular talk show in the afterlife this week...)

*In other Keystone State news, there's a new VP/GM for Entercom's Wilkes-Barre/Scranton cluster. Ryan Flynn has been with the stations (WGGY/WGGI, WDMT, WKRZ/WKRF and the WILK network) since 1998, most recently as director of sales. Flynn fills the gap left by John Burkavage's recent move to Entercom's Greenville/Spartanburg cluster in South Carolina. The cluster has also named a new director of engineering; Dan Pregnar moves up to the top engineering job there, succeeding his former boss Lamar Smith, who's headed for Austin.

Across town at the Times-Shamrock group, the ESPN programming now heard on WEJL (630 Scranton)/WBAX (1240 Wilkes-Barre) is adding an FM frequency. W241AZ (96.1 Dunmore) and W241BB (96.1 Wilkes-Barre) have both applied for special temporary authority to rebroadcast their sister AM stations.

East of Scranton, a newly-granted station on 90.3 takes the calls WFTE; it's licensed to the "Center for Creative Cooperation, Inc.," the center's application calls for a pretty ambitious schedule of community-oriented programs targeted at the towns around Lake Ariel and Lake Wallenpaupack, up in the hills.

Down in Gettysburg, there's some jock shuffling at WGTY (107.7): evening jock Dan Douglas moves to middays, and adds music director duties, shifting midday guy Dave Cannon to overnights and overnighter Jeff Diggs to evenings.

And a couple of notes from just over the state line in Ohio Media Watch territory - in Alliance, "Q92" finally has calls to match; more than five years after returning to that identity, WZKL (92.5) has managed to free up its old pre-1992 WDJQ calls, which had been in use by the Coast Guard. And in Warren, Salem is selling WHKZ (1440) to Pittsburgh's Pentecostal Temple Church, which also owns WGBN (1150 New Kensington), for a reported $550,000.

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*In VERMONT, Pamal has split what's now WDVT (94.5 Rutland) away from "Cat Country," which is now heard solely on its new home at 105.3, WJEN (ex-WEBK Killington). The new format on 94.5, which launched Feb. 22 at 6 AM, is classic hits "The Drive."

Over in Brattleboro, WTSA (1450/96.7) has moved into its new studios at 464 Putney Road, the former Roller Drome. An open house will follow in the spring, we're told.

*Western MASSACHUSETTS will get its own Fox affiliate before the month is over. Bruce Gormally, owner of WGGB (Channel 40) in Springfield, has set a March 31 launch date for the new Fox subchannel that will run on WGGB-DT's signal and on cable throughout the Springfield market. It'll be called "Fox 6," for its Comcast Cable dial position (Charter subscribers will see it on channel 10), and it will launch with a 10 PM newscast produced by the WGGB news staff.

Boston's WUMB-FM (91.9) began to unveil its new program schedule over the weekend, shedding its former "Folk Radio" imaging as it edges towards a more contemporary AAA approach that's being identified for now simply as "the WUMB music mix." The Globe's Clea Simon reports that the changes include the elimination of co-hosts from Dick Pleasants' morning show, the addition of a noon-2 PM Saturday shift for Pleasants, the move of "World Cafe" to 7 PM on weeknights and the retention of "Afropop Worldwide" and "Mountain Stage," now that WUMB has reached a deal with Public Radio International to reduce the fees it was charging for the shows.

It appears that Emerson College's WERS (88.9 Boston) will soon add a second translator signal. It's already heard in New Bedford at 96.5, and now Emerson is buying W268AM (101.5 Gloucester) from Oscar Aguero Ministries for $70,000.

*In MAINE, we can attach a price tag to Citadel's sale of WCYI (93.9 Lewiston): EMF Broadcasting is getting the station (via the Last Bastion spinoff trust) for what seems like the bargain price of $1 million.

*There's a frequency change in CANADA: after CTV's CKPT in Peterborough moved from its longtime spot at 1420 on the AM dial to FM 99.3 last year, it began experiencing interference problems with its third-adjacent neighbor, the CBC's CBCP (98.7). So "Energy 99.3" is on the move again, with a CRTC grant allowing it to slide up the dial to 99.7, where it will drop its average power from 5.7 kW to 3.7 kW and reduce its antenna height slightly.

And another third-adjacent frequency change: in Halifax, travelers' information station CIRH (97.9) is about to have its 10-watt signal overpowered by a new community station on 98.5 - so it's received the CRTC's blessing to move up to 107.7, with 560 watts, directional. (CIRH has also been named the "designated broadcast system" for emergencies by the Halifax Regional Municipality, and municipal officials were concerned that the 10-watt signal didn't cover the city well enough.

Back in Ontario, today's the launch day for a new classic rock station in the Orillia-Midland area. With Larche Communications' move of country "KICX" from CICZ (104.1 Midland) to CICX (105.9 Orillia), the "Jack" adult hits format on 105.9 will go away, and 104.1 will become "The Dock." Former KICX morning jock Ted Roop stays with the 104.1 frequency to become morning host on "The Dock," and Jack Latimer takes mornings on KICX at its new 105.9 spot. The stations have also combined studios, with both now operating from Orillia, reports the Orillia Packet & Times.

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 and ten years ago this week, or thereabouts - 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. Thanks to LARadio.com for the idea - and thanks to you, our readers, for the support that's made all these years of NERW possible!)

March 5, 2007 -

  • A happy reunion of a central PENNSYLVANIA morning show turned to mourning last week. Less than a month after Jeff "Jammer" Kauffman reunited with his former co-host Ed Coffey and Amy Warner to bring the "Coffey and Jammer" show back on the air at WTPA (93.5 Mechanicsburg), Kauffman took ill, missing much of last week on the air and prompting the station to call police Friday morning. When they arrived at his Berks County home, they found Kauffman had died, apparently of a heart attack - and it was up to Coffey and Warner to break the news on the air Friday morning, before ending the show early and putting the station on automation.
  • After a radio career that started at WKBO (1230 Harrisburg) and WHTF (92.7 Starview), Kauffman had been doing afternoons at WTPA in 1988 when he was paired with Coffey in morning drive. The two hit it off, and their show was one of the Harrisburg market's most popular before Kauffman departed in 1995, eventually to become a copy editor at the Reading Eagle and Reading Times. He returned to WTPA and the "Coffey and Jammer Show" in 2001, and the station drew protests three years later when it replaced the pair with the syndicated Bob and Tom Show. Coffey and Warner ended up at WMHX (106.7 Hershey), but when they returned to WTPA late last year, the station persuaded Kauffman to come back as well. The latest incarnation of "Coffey and Jammer" debuted the first week of February, and station officials tell the York Daily Record that Kauffman had been ill for much of the time since then, though they say they had no idea it was anything life-threatening. Kauffman was 57 years old.
  • Though it's not reflected anywhere on the FCC's website that we can find, Philadelphia's WHYY (Channel 12) has quietly moved its DTV signal to a different channel. The PBS outlet, licensed across the border in Wilmington, DELAWARE, was on channel 55, the frequency that Qualcomm has been clearing out nationwide for its new MediaFLO service. (That's why Long Island's WLNY shut off its analog channel 55 signal ahead of the 2009 deadline.) Now WHYY-DT has moved from 55 to 50, under experimental authority. It's using 50 kW, instead of the licensed 87 kW on channel 55, with a deeper directional null to protect WNJN (Channel 50) in Montclair, NJ.
  • In Buffalo, Citadel's WHTT (104.1) has fully implemented its new "Mix" identity, complete with a new logo on its website. What to call the station's format now? "Classic hits" seems pretty close to the mark, though with a randomly-chosen recent hour (the one in which we're writing this column, as it happens) including everything from Carl Carlton to Uncle Kracker, we'd accept "adult hits" as a valid description, too.
  • A call-and-format swap in CONNECTICUT has returned a heritage callsign to the frequency it long called home. WNEZ (1480 Windsor) has reclaimed its former calls, WKND, and the urban AC format that went with them. The WNEZ calls, and the Spanish news-talk format that went with them, replace WKND on 1230 in Manchester.

March 3, 2003 -

  • With a network of seven primary FM signals and translators that stretches north to Plattsburgh, south to Middletown, west to Oneonta and east to Southington, Connecticut, WAMC (90.3) in Albany, NEW YORK has become one of the larger public radio broadcasters in the country in recent years. Now the network is adding its first AM signal, as it pays Ed Levine's Galaxy Communications $500,000 for WHTR (1400 Albany), a 1 kilowatt facility that's spent the last few years simulcasting other stations in Levine's cluster (most recently, modern rock WKRD 93.7 Scotia), but which has a proud history under the WABY calls which still adorn its tower on Braintree Street in Albany. WAMC head honcho Alan Chartock tells the Albany Times Union that the AM 1400 signal will fill some holes in the main WAMC signal within city limits; the big FM signal comes from across the state line on Mount Greylock in Adams, Massachusetts and has some multipath problems in parts of Albany. Expect 1400 to change calls to WAMC(AM) and begin simulcasting the WAMC-FM signal within the next couple of months, we hear....
  • Moving down the Hudson Valley, Albany's Pamal group is wasting no time in its takeover of WYNY (107.1 Briarcliff Manor) from Nassau; it will LMA the station and begin a simulcast of CHR WSPK (104.7 Poughkeepsie) within the next few weeks. And another part of the 107.1 quadcast could soon be sold; our colleague Tom Taylor reported a rumor in Inside Radio last week that Jarad, owner of Long Island's WLIR (92.7 Garden City), WDRE (98.5 Westhampton) and WXXP (105.3 Calverton-Roanoke), is looking to buy WWXY (107.1 Hampton Bays) to add to its cluster out there. That would leave Nassau with WWYY (107.1 Belvidere NJ) and WWZY (107.1 Long Branch NJ), closer to its core of stations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
  • In PENNSYLVANIA, Rick Strauss is out as program director of classic rocker WMGK (102.9 Philadelphia); former 'MGK PD Buzz Knight is programming the station for now from his post as PD of Greater Media sister station WROR (105.7 Framingham) up in the Boston market.
  • Just south of Pittsburgh, Washington and Jefferson College's WNJR is powering up. Formerly a class D station with just 13 watts on 92.1, WNJR has made the move to class A status and 91.7 on the dial. Its new 950-watt signal now carries almost to Pittsburgh from its base in Washington, PA.
  • And there's a void this week in the hearts of all of us of a certain age, with news of the death on Thursday (Feb. 27) of Mister Rogers. Fred McFeely Rogers was part of Pittsburgh's WQED-TV (Channel 13) beginning in 1953, even before the station went on the air; in 1966, WQED became the home base for "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," and the show has been a PBS staple ever since, even though production of new shows ended several years ago. Upon word of Rogers' death (he was 74 and was suffering from stomach cancer), WQED preempted its full evening of programming to devote four hours to remembering the station's most famous personality.

March 5, 1998-

  • We begin this week's news with the passing of two of the industry's giants.
  • W. Gordon Swan was on the air at the Boston area's first radio station, Tufts University's WGI Medford Hillside...way back in 1922. Two years later, he joined the staff of Westinghouse's WBZ/WBZA in Boston, rising through the ranks until becoming program director. Swan was instrumental in bringing television to New England, as program director of WBZ-TV when it signed on in 1948. Swan remained with WBZ radio and television until his retirement in 1968. In recent years, Swan was writing a memoir of his days in broadcasting. Gordon Swan died Sunday at a nursing home in Kingston, Massachusetts. He was 92 years old.
  • The medium Swan helped create was later polished to a high sheen by Fred W. Friendly. As Ed Murrow's producer on "See It Now," and later as president of CBS News and as a statesman of the industry, Friendly stood for the highest values of broadcast journalism throughout his long career. He was also a veteran of New England radio, having started his career at WEAN (now WSKO) in Providence. Friendly was 82.
  • In upstate NEW YORK, things are finally settling down at the Jacor group of stations in Rochester. The FCC database lists new calls of WYSY and WISY for "Sunny 106," the erstwhile WMAX-FM (106.7 Irondequoit) and WMHX (102.3 Canandaigua), as well as a new call of WMAX-FM for "Jam'n 107," heretofore WRCD (107.3 Honeoye Falls) -- but as of Thursday evening, all three stations are still using their old calls. NERW suspects the WMAX-FM calls are being warehoused at 107.3 until they can be shipped off to one of the other "Max"es around the country (perhaps Greater Media's WXXM Philadelphia?) . Jam'n remains jockless for now, as does "Mix 100.5" (WVOR) outside morning drive...but NERW heard former WMAX afternoon jock Michael Gately doing a liner on WVOR this afternoon. Across town at WPXY (97.9), morning show producer Jim Eiseman has left the station "to pursue other opportunities."
  • Big City Radio's New York City-area stations are all getting power boosts. The FCC has approved power increases for the "Y107" trio of WWXY Briarcliff Manor, WWVY Hampton Bays, and WWZY Long Branch NJ will all increase their power in the next few months on 107.1.
  • On to MASSACHUSETTS, where we find a new owner for Worcester's WORC (1310). Andrew Davis' Davis Radio Corporation gets $715,000 for the talk station, whose new owner is Chowder Broadcasting Group. If the name sounds familiar, that's because the Chowder-heads (sorry...) recently bought WGFP (940) and WXXW (98.9) down in Webster. WGFP and WORC will make a worthwhile combination in Worcester County, with WGFP neatly filling the huge southern null in WORC's signal, which protects co-channel WICH in Norwich CT.
  • In CONNECTICUT, it's musical studios for two of Hartford's rock stations. No sooner did WHCN (105.9) vacate its Asylum Avenue home for SFX's corporate digs at 10 Columbus Drive, then WCCC (106.9/1290) came along to buy the old house on Asylum. It'll be a return home for 'CCC afternoon guy Michael Picozzi, who worked at WHCN on Asylum until last year. (It'll also be a big move up from the little building on South Whitney Street that WCCC has called home since the early eighties.)
  • The FCC paid a call on "La Nueva Radio Musical" in New Haven on Tuesday, warning operators Pedro Jimenez and Hipolito Cuevas that they faced a $10,000 daily fine if they continued operating the unlicensed station on 104.5 MHz. The New Haven Register reports Jimenez and Cuevas told the FCC that their station wasn't a pirate but a "microbroadcaster," but agreed to shut the transmitter off. Jimenez and Cuevas told the Register they think the FCC crackdown was prompted by a complaint from WYBC (94.3), which they accuse of being unfriendly to community broadcasters. WYBC has been in the media spotlight recently for its attempts to take over urban-formatted WNHC (1340).
  • Finally this week, a note from across the border: It won't be an April Fools joke when CHSJ in Saint John, New Brunswick turns off its AM 700 transmitter April 1. That's when the station will complete its move to 94.1 FM -- and disappear for good from New England's radio dial. Get those QSL cards in while you can...
  • CHSJ's not the only one vacating FM across the border; CKLY (910) in Lindsay, Ontario has been granted 91.9 MHz and will leave AM three months after the FM signs on. And CJEM in Edmunston, New Brunswick, just across the border from Madawaska, Maine, has been granted a move from 570 kHz to 92.7 MHz.

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