April 28, 2008
Philly Loses "Big Ron"
TOWER SITE CALENDAR 2008 - ALMOST SOLD OUT!!!
*One of the legendary top 40 voices of the
northeast has been silenced, far too young. "Big Ron"
O'Brien, whose career included stops at Philadelphia's WFIL,
WYXR/WLCE and WOGL and New York's WXLO, WNBC and WTJM, died Sunday
morning (April 27) of complications from pneumonia.
 O'Brien
began his broadcast career in 1969 at KUDL in Kansas City, and
in the typical progression of the day, he quickly moved through
Denver (KTLK), Chicago (WCFL) and Atlanta (WQXI). By 1974, he
was in New York, doing nights at "99X," and by 1976
he was in Philadelphia at WFIL, where he spent three years.
O'Brien then moved to Los Angeles, where he worked at KFI
and KIIS, then to St. Louis and Denver (with a brief interlude
at WNBC in the early 1980s) before returning to Philadelphia
in 1996, where he worked at WYXR (104.5, later WLCE). In 1999,
O'Brien was part of the inaugural airstaff at New York's WTJM
(Jammin 105); in 2002, he joined Philadelphia's WOGL (98.1) for
afternoon drive, and it was there that he remained for what turned
out to be the last six years of his career.
O'Brien had been ill for several months, WOGL says. He was
just 56.
*Elsewhere in PENNSYLVANIA, the sale of WNTJ (850 Johnstown)
from Forever to Birach Broadcasting has closed, and as of midnight
last night, the news-talk format that had been on 850 (and simulcast
on WNTW 990 in Somerset) has moved back to its former home on
1490 in Johnstown. The 1490 signal, which holds the WPRR calls
long heard in Altoona, has been running an all-sports format;
it returned to Forever's hands last fall in a purchase from Nick
Galli's 2510 group. The WNTJ calls will return to 1490 as well,
probably later this week.
 So what
happens now with 850? The $300,000 purchase by Birach includes
not only the license for 850 (and for another Forever station,
WCND 940 in Shelbyville, KY) but also the 115-acre tower site
in Paint Township, Somerset County. Forever was reportedly eager
to be free of the hassles of maintaining that nine-tower site,
easily the most complex directional array in the northeast, and
NERW suspects Birach isn't in this deal with the intent of maintaining
the 10 kW DA-1 Johnstown signal on 850, either. Birach has interests
elsewhere in the region (including WWCS 540 in Canonsburg, near
Pittsburgh, and WTOR 770 Youngstown, NY, serving Toronto) - could
the company have plans to move the Johnstown signal elsewhere?
That would be a challenging task, since that nine-tower directional
array shoehorns the Johnstown 850 into a tight squeeze between
other 850 signals in Cleveland (WKNR) and Boston (WEEI), not
to mention 860s in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Toronto
and plenty of other nearby-on-the-dial stations that would need
to be protected.
In the meantime, there's a loop repeating over (and over and
over) on 850 directing listeners up the dial to 1490 - and no
indication at all on the WNTJ website that anything has changed.
Speaking of complex directional arrays, Renda Broadcasting
has just won FCC permission to begin construction of a new six-tower
array on the Allegheny/Washington County line south of Pittsburgh,
to be the new home of its WPTT, which has been granted its long-desired
move from 1360 (licensed to McKeesport) to 910 (licensed to Mount
Lebanon). The WPTT move is half of a frequency swap; religious
WAVL (910 Apollo), northeast of Pittsburgh, was just granted
its CP to move to 1360. WAVL will build a five-tower site east
of Pittsburgh, bumping its power up from 5 kW days to 6.7 kW
days and from 7 watts at night to 69 watts; WPTT will go from
5 kW days (non-directional from a tower near Pittsburgh's Squirrel
Hill neighborhood) and 1 kW nights (directional from a four-tower
array in McKeesport) to 7 kW, daytime-only, from the new 910
site. We'd expect to see some sort of application for night power
on WPTT filed sooner or later.
In eastern Pennsylvania, Nassau is converting its LMA of WFKB
(107.5 Boyertown) to a sale. It'll pay WDAC Radio Company (which
also owns WDAC 94.5 in Lancaster) $22 million for the station,
which runs classic hits as "Frank FM." As part of the
deal, Nassau agrees to continue carrying WDAC's religious programming
on an HD subchannel of WFKB.
And in our listing of regional stations that won awards at
the NAB Show in Las Vegas, we left out a big one - Clear Channel's
WUSL (98.9 Philadelphia) took home the inaugural Crystal Heritage
Award, created to honor stations that have won five of the regular
Crystal Radio Awards, most recently in 2007.
|
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 40 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. |
*NEW YORK's WOR (710) is apparently
about to bring back one of the station's signature voices. John
R. Gambling is the third generation of Gamblings in what had
been an unbroken chain on WOR's "Rambling with Gambling"
morning show from 1925 until the station fired him in 2000. Gambling
resurfaced a year later on WABC (770), but lost his midmorning
shift there in Citadel's budget cuts earlier this year.
 Now
Allan Sniffen's New York Radio Message Board is reporting that
WOR will bring Gambling back to morning drive, possibly as early
as next week, alongside current morning host Joe Bartlett. The
odd player out, apparently, will be Bartlett's current co-host
Donna Hanover.
WOR hasn't commented on the reports yet, but there's a news
conference planned for Wednesday; we'll keep you posted.
One of WOR's longtime news voices has died. Lester Smith came
to New York in 1957 (on the same day the Dodgers left town),
and spent most of the next two decades announcing news and sports
on WOR radio and television. Smith died April 11; various reports
had his age at either 90 or 91.
There's a new market manager en route to the Citadel cluster
in Syracuse (WNTQ, WAXQ, WLTI and WNSS). Dan Austin starts his
new job in his hometown May 12, having just given his two weeks'
notice at Albany Broadcasting, where he's been GM for the past
five years.
Speaking of Albany Broadcasting, there was some heavy-duty
stunting going on all weekend at WZMR (104.9 Altamont), with
the station running jockless and a repeated (and very clever)
loop announcing, "Let's be FRANK... we're going to MIX things
up. Kiss the secret and mystery goodbye. Things will go a lot
Smoother. They told us we didn't know JACK or BOB. Should we
just get MOVIN'? Guess we won't be the same old Channel anymore.
A new STAR is coming. Things might be Bright, Hot, Sunny, Fresh,
or even Kool.This has a Point... we'll Blaze through it. Find
out what the Buzz is on Monday morning at 8 on FM 104.9."
(Monday, 8:03 AM - Turns out it was a stunt to announce
the lineup for this summer's EdgeFest concert...)
In Utica, WUMX (102.5 Rome) has named a new morning host to
replace the now-cancelled "Wake Up with Whoopi" syndicated
show. Sam Schrier heads east from Rochester, where he's been
producing the morning show at WBEE-FM (92.5).
(One more Whoopi-related note: we're told her show disappeared
from Binghamton's WMXW at the end of February, replaced by Doug
Mosher, who's also now the PD there, in addition to his existing
PD duties at sister stations WBBI and WINR. Mosher replaces Bob
Taylor, who was also PD of WMRV; those duties are now being handled
by the cluster's operations manager, Jim Free, who's also PD
and morning man on WKGB. And we should note as well that the
Binghamton cluster is back in the Clear Channel corporate structure,
after being placed in a divestiture trust for a spinoff that
never happened.)
Down the road from Binghamton, there's a new station on the
air in Delhi. Double O Radio's WTBD (97.5) signed on last week,
running a satellite-delivered adult hits format.
*The big news in MASSACHUSETTS last
week came from the TV management front, where WHDH-TV/WLVI VP/general
manager Randi Goldklank was all over the tabloids after being
arrested at Logan Airport following an incident during a flight
last Sunday night. Goldklank told state police that a male passenger
sitting next to her had been harassing her; Delta Airlines told
police she had been acting "unruly" aboard the plane.
A police report claimed Goldklank told the officers who met the
plane, "I'll have a news crew down here in minutes and you
will lose your (bleeping) jobs."
Goldklank was arrested for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest
and assault and battery on a police officer. She's on leave from
the stations and apparently in rehab. At least for now, station
owner Sunbeam Broadcasting is standing behind Goldklank, who
was reportedly on medication for depression after the recent
death of her mother. Former WHDH-TV general manager Mike Carson,
who'd been consulting for the station, is back as interim VP/GM
in Goldklank's absence.
 *One
of Boston's best-known and longest-running sportscasters has
died. Don Gillis began his career in radio, first at New Bedford's
WBSM and then at Boston's WHDH, in the late forties, filling
in for Red Sox announcer Curt Gowdy when illness kept him off
the air for much of the 1957 season and hosting the "Voice
of Sports" talk show, which set the stage for all the sports
talk that would follow over the decades in Boston. When WHDH-TV
(Channel 5) launched a nightly sportscast in 1962, Gillis was
the station's first sports director, crafting the blueprint for
local TV sports reporting. Gillis was the first sports anchor
in Boston to have film clips during his reports, and he'll forever
be remembered for his coverage of the Red Sox during their "Impossible
Dream" season of 1967.
When WHDH-TV folded a decade later and was replaced by the
new WCVB on Channel 5, Gillis followed many of his colleagues
out to Needham, becoming WCVB's sports director for its first
decade on the air.
Gillis retired as sports director of WCVB in 1982, but he
stayed on as host of "Candlepin Bowling" on Saturday
afternoons until the end of the show's run in 1996.
Gillis died Wednesday (April 23) at his Cape Cod home. He
was 85.
*The FCC has granted WESX (1230 Salem) a construction permit
to change city of license to Nahant, relocating its transmitter
from its longtime site in Marblehead to the WLYN (1360) tower
in Lynn. WESX will drop power from 1000 watts to 450 watts, nondirectional,
when it makes the move. (WESX had originally requested a new
city of license of Saugus, but was unable to show that it would
provide sufficient nighttime community coverage there.)
 *There's
a new public radio station on the air in northwestern CONNECTICUT.
Marshall Miles' Robin Hood Radio group, which leases WHDD (1020
Sharon) and operates a commercial full-service/variety format
there, has been testing the new WHDD-FM (91.9 Sharon) and will
formally launch the new station May 5.
The directional class A signal (650 watts at 49 feet below
average terrain) will carry a mixture of public radio programming
(including Morning Edition from 5-6 AM and All Things Considered
from 4-6 PM), as well as a simulcast of WHDD(AM)'s "Marshall
and Mike" morning show from 6-9 AM.
Miles says WHDD-FM is the first signal to make it on the air
from the thousands of new noncommercial FMs granted in the window
that the FCC opened last year; in fact, it appears WHDD-FM may
be the second, after a new station in Alabama that signed on
a couple of weeks ago.
*Bob Bittner's Blue Jey Broadcasting is adding
a second MAINE AM station to its holdings. The maverick
station owner, best known for his listener-supported WJIB (740
Cambridge MA), is paying JJ Jeffrey's Atlantic Coast Radio $27,000
for WWBK (900 Brunswick), which Jeffrey has been operating as
a simulcast of all-sports WJJB (1440 Westbrook)/WJJB-FM (95.5
Topsham). Bittner tells NERW he'll install a music format (the
exact details as yet undetermined) on WWBK, separate from the
standards/oldies format he's running on nearby WJTO (730 Bath).
Will Bittner move WWBK from its present site in Brunswick (shared
with Saga's WCLZ 98.9) to the WJTO site a few miles away?
 And
there was yet another award from the NAB Show that we missed
last week - veteran jock and station owner Bob "Doc"
Fuller was honored with the Ward L. Quaal Pioneer Award by the
Broadcasters Foundation of America.
Fuller started on radio in his hometown of Newburyport, Massachusetts
as a 16-year-old DJ on WNBP (a station he'd own much later in
his career), then went on to Portland radio in the sixties as
a jock at WJAB and WLOB. Fuller moved into ownership when he
and J.J. Jeffrey bought WBLM (then on 107.5) in 1975. They grew
their company, Fuller-Jeffrey, from that one station to a coast-to-coast
group of more than 30 stations before selling the company in
1999.
*The number-three network in French CANADA
is changing owners and paring back its operations. Montreal-based
Remstar acquired the TQS network out of bankruptcy earlier this
year, and it's now asking the CRTC for permission to shut down
the network's news operations as part of the relicensing process
under the new ownership.
 Remstar
says it can't afford to continue doing news, and it tells the
CRTC that Quebec viewers are well-served by the province's other
news sources, including dominant commercial network TVA and public
broadcaster Radio-Canada. But its proposed changes (including
cutting 271 jobs, more than half the network's staff) are facing
political challenges from Quebec officials, who are likely to
speak out against the Remstar application at a CRTC hearing June
2.
TQS hopes to discontinue most of its newscasts in early June,
leaving only two province-wide evening newscasts on the air through
Sept. 1, when those, too, would be cancelled.
Will the CRTC force Remstar to keep the TQS news operation
alive, or even to undo the purchase of the network? We'll be
following this process closely.
Meanwhile, there's another TQS-related transaction on the
CRTC's agenda, as Remstar seeks to sell the three Radio-Canada
affiliates that it's been operating alongside its own TQS stations
in Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivieres and Saguenay. Radio-Canada itself
hopes to buy CKSH (Channel 9) in Sherbrooke, CKTM (Channel 13)
in Trois-Rivieres and CKTV (Channel 12) in Saguenay from TQS,
which ended up with the stations when their former owner, Cogeco,
bought into the TQS network. Radio-Canada has been handling most
aspects of the stations' operations for the last few years, running
them as semi-satellites of network flagship CBFT (Channel 2)
in Montreal.
In Ottawa, Gord "Gordman" Taylor has departed the
PD chair at CKQB (106.9 the Bear) after 21 years at the station
and its predecessor, CJSB (540 Rock). No replacement has been
named yet.
On the Ottawa TV dial, Sun TV (CKXT) hopes to change channels
on its DTV transmitter. CKXT-DT's Ottawa transmitter now operates
on channel 62, but it's applying to move to channel 20, sharing
an antenna with TVOntario.
Over on the Quebec-New Brunswick border, the CRTC has denied
Radio Rimouski permission to add two transmitters to extend the
reach of its new CFYX (93.3 Rimouski). The station was hoping
to add a 280-watt transmitter on 92.7 in Amqui, Quebec and a
1.4-watt transmitter on 97.3 in Edmundston, New Brunswick. The
CRTC ruled that both Amqui's only station, CFVM, and the two
French-language stations in Edmundston are in "precarious"
financial positions, and that Edmundston is distant enough from
Rimouski to make CFYX's programming of little relevance to listeners
there. (Two years ago, a sister station to CFYX, CIEL Riviere-du-Loup,
was also denied an Edmundston relay on 97.3.)
|
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!)
April 30, 2007 -
- An unusual radio fundraising campaign in MASSACHUSETTS has
wrapped up with an early declaration of success.
- As we've amply chronicled over the years, WJIB (740 Cambridge)
is a most unusual commercial station, operated as a one-man venture
by owner Bob Bittner, who's run the station for the last decade
and a half with no commercial spots at all, just some leased-time
programming and a lot of standards, soft AC, oldies and good
old-fashioned "beautiful music." Two financial blows
to WJIB almost put that operation in jeopardy this spring: first,
the loss of Radio France International's contract to lease two
hours of morning drive, and second, WJIB's ratings spike that
put it in danger of owing a much larger ASCAP/BMI bill than it's
enjoyed over the years with ratings below 1.0.
- So Bob decided to ask his audience for their support. Six
weeks ago, he began airing occasional messages gently asking
for voluntary donations to keep WJIB going past his self-imposed
June 30 deadline. It turns out, as Bob put it in his on-air announcements
last Wednesday, that June 30th came early - and that he's already
made his $88,000 goal after just six weeks of occasional on-air
fundraising announcements.
- "I am impressed with your generosity, and your deep
commitment to keep WJIB playing this great music that we're known
for," Bittner said in his announcement. "And I feel
really good too; that all of my work over the years selecting
and putting this music together has been validated." Bittner
says the over 2,400 contributions he received - not tax-deductible,
by the way - ranged from $5 to two $1,000 checks, and that not
a single check bounced. (Two, however, sent in checks made out
to "WGBH"!) And he says his experience proves that
"a smaller commercially-licensed station has another alternative
than to scratch for limited advertising dollars," providing
another possible path for niche music formats like his to succeed.
- In Worcester, WTAG (580) morning host Hank Stolz left the
Clear Channel station last week, just after celebrating his tenth
anniversary there on Monday, but he's not disappearing from central
Massachusetts morning radio. On Wednesday, competing talker WCRN
(830) announced that it's hired Stolz as its new mid-morning
talk host. He'll debut there today with "The Hank Stolz
Experience," to be heard weekdays from 9 AM-noon, immediately
following WCRN's Peter Blute morning show. Stolz's show replaces
the leased-time "Money Matters" show in that slot,
and it gives WCRN a live-and-local lineup all morning long. Meanwhile
at WTAG, Stolz's co-host Sherman Whitman continues in morning
drive.
- A VERMONT commercial station is helping Plattsburgh's WCFE-TV
(Channel 57) get a signal back on the air after the collapse
of its tower on Lyon Mountain April 18. WCAX-TV (Channel 3) in
Burlington announced Tuesday that it's allowing "Mountain
Lake PBS" to broadcast over one of the subchannels of WCAX-DT
(Channel 53) until WCFE can rebuild its own tower later this
summer. The WCFE subchannel will apparently appear as "57.1"
on DTV tuners, and more importantly, will resume the feed of
WCFE's signal to cable companies in Vermont, Quebec and northeastern
New York. WCAX quickly rounded up some loaned microwave equipment
to get the WCFE signal across the lake to its transmitter on
Mount Mansfield. (And when you look up the definition of "broadcasting
in the public interest," that should be a WCAX logo you
see...)
- In NEW JERSEY, the David Sarnoff Library in Princeton took
a pounding from the nor'easter that hit the region April 15.
The storm deposited 20 inches of water in the building's sub-basement,
soaking 600 cubic feet of boxes that contained records from the
RCA Labs dating from World War II to 1960, including notebooks
documenting the development of the company's early television
cameras and satellite communications.The library's insurance
doesn't cover the estimated $60,000 cost of drying and restoring
the documents, work that's now underway at Document Reprocessors
in Middlesex, New York (just down the road from NERW's Rochester
headquarters), and the library is looking for donations to help
pay for the restoration work.
April 28, 2003 -
- Just in to NERW is word that Jerry Williams has died. The
dean of Boston talk radio, Williams came to town in 1957, already
a decade into a career that began in Bristol, Virginia in 1946.
At Mac Richmond's WMEX (1510), Williams' night shift was a sharp
departure from the top 40 the station played the rest of the
day. When Williams took the air at 10 PM, WMEX turned into Boston's
first talk station, as Williams interviewed the newsmakers of
the day and took listeners' phone calls.
- In 1965, Williams departed for Chicago's WBBM, but he was
back in town four years later, bringing his talk show back to
the nighttime airwaves at WBZ (1030), where he stayed until October
1976, when he headed to New York for a brief stint at WMCA (570),
followed by four years at Philadelphia's WWDB (96.5).
- In 1981, Williams was back on the air again in Boston as
part of the original talk lineup at WRKO (680), the station that
was once WMEX's competitor in the waning days of AM top 40. Williams,
now ensconced in an afternoon drive shift, quickly became the
best-known and most controversial talker in town, using his show
as a forum to oppose mandatory seat belt laws and, most memorably,
to support a 1990 tax revolt (launching, in the process, the
political careers of Barbara Anderson of Citizens for Limited
Taxation - not to mention the radio career of the Herald's Howie
Carr, who would later make that WRKO shift his own).
- In 1994, Carr replaced Williams in the afternoon, with the
veteran host moving to mid-mornings on WRKO (a shift he derided
as "The World's Shortest Talk Show"); by January 1997,
Williams had been relegated to a weekend slot, and by 1998 he
was gone from WRKO and living in retirement on the South Shore.
- Williams couldn't stay silent for long, though. In January
2000, he resurfaced as part of an ambitious talk lineup on the
"new" WMEX (1060 Natick), but health problems got in
the way, and he was off the air there within two months. A stroke
in April 2001 further weakened him, but not enough to keep him
from trying a daily show on WROL (950 Boston) last December and
even making a return to WRKO to do some weekend fill-in this
past February.
- It was October 20, 1927 when the callsign "WEVD"
was first heard on the NEW YORK radio dial, on a little 500-watt
signal way up there at 1220 kilocycles - and ever since then,
those calls have been heard somewhere on the dial in market number
one. But after more than 75 years and three distinct spots on
the dial (the original WEVD, which landed on 1300, then on 1330,
and is today's WWRV; WEVD-FM, which lasted on 97.9 from the fifties
until 1988; and the former WHN/WMGM/WHN/WFAN/WUKQ on 1050, which
took the WEVD calls in a trade for the FM signal in 1988), the
initials of famed labor leader Eugene Victor Debs are about to
bow out for good. It's no surprise, really, that Disney will
change the calls when it formally converts its LMA of WEVD (1050)
into a $78 million purchase that's expected to close within the
week; after all, the WEVD calls have long since ceased to have
much relevance to New York radio listeners, and they've only
been heard once an hour since 1050 flipped to ESPN radio in September
2001. So "WEPN" it will be at 1050 on the dial...and
only those few of us who feel a deep passion for New York radio
history are likely to spend much time reflecting on the loss
of the fifth-oldest callsign in continuous New York use. (Only
WOR, WNYC, WMCA and WWRL have been around longer.)
April 30, 1998-
- Boston has lost one of its legendary broadcasters. Carl DeSuze
died Wednesday night at the age of 83.
- DeSuze was WBZ's morning host from the 1940s until the early
1980s, a record that's unlikely ever to be broken. His urbane
on-air manner and affection for all things European made for
an unlikely fit with WBZ's top-40 format in the sixties, but
the combination worked, and DeSuze remained on top of the ratings
for years. In addition to his duties as "New England's Alarm
Clock," DeSuze traveled the world, relating his experiences
in lectures across New England. A Maine native, DeSuze was proud
of his Bowdoin education. After college, he worked at several
Maine radio stations before moving to Boston and WBZ.
- On a personal note, your editor had the opportunity to work
with DeSuze while helping to prepare WBZ's 75th anniversary celebration
in 1996. While DeSuze's health was already failing, he was eager
to share his memories and his memorabilia. I'll long treasure
the memory of spending several afternoons at his home in Concord,
as he sifted through several boxes of photos and posters, recounting
the stories of celebrities interviewed and distant capitals visited.
DeSuze's death follows that of Gordon Swan by only a few months;
together, they represented an era of WBZ history that's now all
but lost.
- Listeners to Boston's number-three public radio station will
be hearing some changes come June. WUMB (91.9, simulcast on WFPB
Falmouth and WBPR Worcester) is abandoning its nighttime smooth-jazz
"Quiet Storm" format in favor of a mixture of blues,
world music, gospel, and reggae. Days are changing too, as the
acoustic traditional folk is joined by "electric folk"
(their words!) and world music. Could WUMB be taking a cue from
public radio stations like Philadelphia's WXPN or Spindale, North
Carolina's WNCW, which have found new audiences for public radio
with their folkish spins on the AAA format? We're looking forward
to giving the new 91.9 a listen...
- On we go to NEW YORK, where WTOR (770 Youngstown) is reportedly
testing, and has now applied for a license to cover. Another
770 in WABC's home state? You bet, since Youngstown is just north
of Niagara Falls, as far away from New York City as you can get
in the Empire State, and this 770 will be a daytimer with a directional
signal pointed straight out over Lake Ontario, towards Toronto,
hence the calls. NERW will be making the drive to Youngstown
this weekend; more on this one next week.
- And we mourn the passing of two veteran broadcast engineers.
Charlie Hallinan died last Wednesday at his home in Binghamton.
Hallinan was one of the founders of the Society of Broadcast
Engineers, and built many of the Southern Tier's radio stations.
And Mike Venditti of Cherry Hill, N.J. died at home on Monday.
Venditti was a legend in the world of superpower AM, having rebuilt
border blaster XERF (1570 Ciudad Acuna, Mexico) in the 1970s
and returned it to the air. Over the years, Mike built 57 AM
stations. He'll be deeply missed.
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