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June 9, 2008

Montreal's AM 940 Drops Talk

TOWER SITE CALENDAR 2008 - ALMOST SOLD OUT!!!

*CANADA's second-largest market is about to lose its second-largest English-language commercial news-talk station.

Corus' CINW (940 Montreal) has failed to make a dent in the ratings pretty much from its first day on the air back in 1999, when the former CIQC (600) relocated up the dial to the frequency formerly occupied by the CBC's CBM. The station launched as an all-news outlet, "940 News," in parallel to French-language CINF (690), but while the vibrant Francophone market supported an all-news entrant, Montreal's declining Anglo population remained locked to Standard's CJAD (800) and to the CBC.

Even after the all-news format gave way to a mix of news and talk as "940 Montreal," ratings and revenues failed to improve, and late on Friday Corus Quebec VP Mario Cecchini took to the airwaves to announce that, effective June 14, CINW will flip to oldies as "AM 940 - Montreal's Greatest Hits."

The move will put 18 people out of work at Corus.

Over in Ontario, our friends at Milkman UnLimited report that veteran Niagara radio host John Michael died Friday (June 6) at 72. Michael came to CJRN (710 Niagara Falls) in 1964, eventually moving to CKTB (610 St. Catharines). After a return to CJRN, then back to CKTB, Michael retired in 2003.

In Peterborough, the last of the old CKPT (1420) towers came down last Monday, nearly 50 years after the four-tower array was built on Crowley Line just south of the city. The AM signal went dark for good on May 5, and two of the four towers came down a week early because of structural deterioration, reports the Peterborough Examiner.

Meanwhile, the station's FM replacement, CKPT-FM, moved up the dial from 99.3 to 99.7 last Monday, hoping to alleviate interference to the CBC's CBCP (98.7 Peterborough.)

On the TV side, CTVglobemedia is once again rebranding the "A-Channel" stations it acquired as part of its purchase of CHUM Ltd. Starting this fall, those stations (including CHRO -TV Pembroke/Ottawa, CKVR-TV Barrie, CFPL-TV London and CKNX-TV Wingham) will be known simply as "A." (Yes, they'll be competing against Global's "E!" stations, including CHCH-TV Hamilton; and, yes, we got a chuckle from the message-board wag who noted that, being Canadian and all, the stations should have rebranded as "Eh" Channel...)

And the only listener we know of who has an L-band Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) receiver in the greater Toronto area, DXer Bill Hepburn in the Niagara region, reports that most DAB broadcasting from the CN Tower has gone silent, with only the CBC's multiplex transmitter still on the air. The verdict may still be out on Ibiquity's HD Radio system south of the border, but it's pretty safe to say that Canada's DAB system is all but dead at this point, barring some sort of miracle.

*A veteran MASSACHUSETTS TV reporter is the latest departure from what's become a fast-spinning revolving door at CBS' WBZ-TV (Channel 4) in Boston.

Joe Bergantino, who's been the head of the station's "I-Team" investigative unit for most of his 22-year tenure there (in two stretches, one in the early eighties and again since 1991), took a buyout and departed at the end of May, two months after his I-Team producer was cut as part of the massive nationwide staffing reductions at CBS' owned-and-operated TV stations. Among Bergantino's accomplishments during his time at WBZ was breaking the first of the stories in the priest abuse scandal that tarnished the Boston archdiocese. It's not clear whether WBZ-TV will continue the I-Team with another reporter at the helm, nor does Bergantino have any immediate plans, though we're sure we haven't seen the last of him. (He's married to Candy Altman, vice president of news for Hearst-Argyle, which just happens to own WCVB, where his skills would make a nice fit.)

The end of May also brought farewells for two other WBZ veterans, arts reporter Joyce Kulhawik and anchor Scott Wahle, whose last assignment was on the 9 PM newscast WBZ produces for sister station WSBK (Channel 38).

Across the newsroom at WBZ (1030 Boston), they're mourning weekend anchor Jim Mitchell, who collapsed at the Warner, N.H. bookstore he owned early Wednesday morning and was found dead shortly thereafter. Mitchell's radio career began by accident, when his car broke down outside the studios of WLNH (1350 Laconia) in the mid-seventies; he later worked at WHDH (850 Boston) and WEEI (590 Boston) before joining the WBZ staff in 1998. Mitchell was a passionate booster of his adopted New Hampshire hometown, where he operated the "Main Street Bookends" store with his sister. He was just 58.

Where are they now? Former WBZ morning host Peter Meade has joined the PR firm Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications as managing director. Meade left Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, where he was an executive vice president, back in February.

Over at WFNX (101.7 Lynn), morning co-host Dustin "Fletcher" Matthews is now the station's assistant PD, while music director Paul Driscoll adds "operations director" to his title.

And one more TV note: NESN anchor Hazel Mae is leaving the sports channel at the end of June after a four-year run; she's not saying where she's headed next, or why she's leaving NESN.

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 35 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.

*The studio shuffles continue in NEW YORK, where WCBS-FM (101.1) moved out of the Viacom Building at 1515 Broadway over the weekend. CBS-FM had been on the 40th floor there for about a decade, taking over the space formerly occupied by WLTW (Lite 106.7). With the expiration of its lease, CBS-FM is making a temporary move a few blocks north to 40 W. 57th Street, where it's squeezing into the WXRK (92.3) facility for the next year or so while CBS Radio builds out a new studio complex downtown. That project, which will also relocate WFAN from its present Astoria basement location and WINS and WWFS from their 888 Seventh Ave. studios, has been beset by construction delays and budget issues; there's no word on when it might actually be ready for occupancy. (Nor is there any word on what caused a total outage of the WCBS 880 on-air signal right in the middle of Sunday's Yankee game...)

Public broadcaster WNYC (820/93.9), meanwhile, drew the attention of the New York Times for its nearly-completed new studios on Varick Street, just down the street from the future CBS Radio studios. Some of WNYC's office staff have already moved into the new building, and the first of the broadcast staffers will begin moving as early as next week. It'll be a series of staged moves that will start with the station's weekly shows (Studio 360, On the Media) and end with the transfer of WNYC's daily news programming from the station's home of more than eight decades at the Municipal Building.

Former WABC (770 New York) morning co-host Ron Kuby is returning to the airwaves as the new 3-6 PM host on Air America Radio (heard in New York on WWRL 1600), where he fills the network timeslot formerly occupied by Randi Rhodes.

On the TV side of things, WPIX (Channel 11) will celebrate its 60th birthday next Saturday (June 14) in style. The station has scheduled a full day of special programming, with classic shows including the Honeymooners and the Three Stooges, then an hour-long anniversary special at 9 PM.

Speaking of TV anniversaries, WPBS-TV (Channel 16) in Watertown marked a 50th of sorts over the weekend, though the 1958 date being commemorated was the founding of the local group formed to bring public TV to the North Country. (It would be another decade before channel 16, then WNPE, would sign on; in the meantime, the organization produced educational programming that was broadcast over Watertown's commercial station, WCNY-TV 7, now WWNY.)

After just over a year as news director at Barrington Broadcasting's WSTM-TV (Channel 3) in Syracuse, Peggy Phillip is heading south. She left Channel 3 last week for a new job as news director at WMAR-TV (Channel 2) in Baltimore, the Scripps-Howard ABC affiliate there. No replacement has been named yet at WSTM.

Another upstate news director is departing, too: Dana Dieterle moves from WTEN (Channel 10) in Albany to Raycom's WOIO/WUAB in Cleveland, where he'll become assistant news director.

Not dead yet: WCKL (560 Catskill), which had its license cancelled and call letters deleted not long ago, has now been restored to the FCC's database. The station has been mostly silent for the last few years, but owner Black United Fund of New York brings it back on the air for a few weeks each summer to keep the license alive, and the FCC apparently missed last year's brief return from the dead.

Back to Syracuse for a moment, where a judge shot down Clear Channel's plans to hold a food- and drink-tasting event in a parking lot near Clinton Square, the downtown site of the big "Taste of Syracuse" event held last weekend and operated by a company that shares ownership with Clear Channel competitor Galaxy Communications. That company argued that the Clear Channel event represented "unfair competition" to its long-running Taste of Syracuse festival, and a judge agreed, granting an injunction barring Clear Channel from holding its "Fresh from Upstate" event.

The Binghamton Broadcaster Hall of Fame became a physical reality Sunday with an induction ceremony at the Bundy Mansion attended by many of the living inductees. There are now 20 members of the Hall of Fame, most of them inducted at the Broadcasters' Reunions held biennally in Binghamton, and now they're honored at the Bundy complex, which also has an exhibit devoted to one of the Hall of Fame's members, longtime WNBF-TV host Bill Parker.

And out here in western New York, we heard a fun bit of radio Saturday morning, when a Frontier Telephone fiber cut disrupted the studio-transmitter links for several local stations. While Entercom's WCMF (96.5 Rochester) and WPXY (97.9 Rochester) switched to their auxiliary transmitter site, which is fed by a separate circuit, Crawford's WLGZ-FM (102.7 Webster) had no choice but to broadcast from a makeshift studio at its transmitter site on the west side of Rochester for several hours. (Speaking of Crawford, the promised format flip to religion on sister station WRCI 990 Rochester has yet to materialize; the AM station remains mostly a simulcast of the FM, though it went dark during the Saturday outage.)

*There's a format change of sorts in NEW JERSEY: As of Friday, Equity Communications has flipped its rhythmic top 40 "Buzz" WZBZ (99.3 Pleasantville)/WSNQ (105.5 Cape May Court House) to mainstream top 40 as "99.3 Kiss FM."

What gives? With Paul Kelly having just departed as PD of Equity's hot-AC-verging-on-mainstream-top-40 WAYV (95.1 Atlantic City), there's speculation that Equity is trying to block Kelly from launching an all-out top-40 war at his new home as one of the partners in the Atlantic group that's buying the former Access.1 stations in the market.

And we caught this addition to WZBZ's Wikipedia entry Friday night: "On June 6, 2008, Popular DJ Big Daddy Michael Ray quit 99.3 due to the format shift and the station's popularity as it continues on a steep decrase in listners (sic) after the shift." Are those axes being ground down by the Jersey Shore? Oh - and is the use of the "Kiss" nickname at the shore sanctioned by Clear Channel, which holds the nationwide trademark? Stay tuned...

*A western PENNSYLVANIA AM station is for sale. 810 Inc., owner of WEDO (810 McKeesport), has listed the station with Illinois-based broker Media Services Group, and we hear the asking price is in the neighborhood of $1.75 million.

Across the state, KYW-TV (Channel 3) has pulled anchor Larry Mendte off its evening newscasts for now. Mendte is under investigation for allegedly snooping in the e-mail of his former co-anchor Alycia Lane; for the moment, former WBZ-TV anchor Chris May is filling in on Mendte's shifts.

On the radio side, Kendra G. is inbound from Chicago to be the new evening co-host at Radio One's WPHI (100.3 Media), alongside 6-10 PM jock Touchtone.

*A RHODE ISLAND morning show is out. Matt St. Peter and Chris Whitten had been together for the past year on morning drive at Hall's WCTK (98.1 New Bedford), and Whitten had been with the station for the past decade. No word yet on a replacement.

Bryant College's WJMF (88.7 Smithfield) has been granted a major power boost. The station will increase from its present 225 watts to 8500 watts, vertical-only, with a directional antenna aiming most of that new power to the southwest.

*Don Imus is returning to the airwaves of VERMONT. As of this morning, he's back on his former affiliates, the "Zone" talk simulcast of WXZO (96.7 Willsboro NY), WEAV (960 Plattsburgh NY) and WTSJ (1320 Randolph), where he replaces the Pittsburgh-based "Quinn and Rose Show" that took his place last year.

*An old partnership has been revived in MAINE. After WGAN (560 Portland) was sold away from the former WGAN-TV (Channel 13, now WGME), the news-talk radio station turned to WCSH (Channel 6) to provide weather forecasts and news audio. Now WGAN is shifting back to its old sister station; as of last week, WGME is once again providing weather and news for WGAN.

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!)

June 11, 2007 -

  • It's been nearly twenty years since General Electric sold off its NBC Radio division, dismantling what had once been arguably the most important radio station group in the country. When Walt Disney hands off the keys to much of ABC Radio to Citadel today, it will mark the end - or at least a major transformation - of a station group that had an equally large impact on American radio.
  • Unlike the NBC sale in 1988, which marked the effective end of the NBC Radio Network as an independent entity and the demise of the WNBC call letters on NEW YORK radio, the sale of ABC Radio will bring with it almost no immediate changes as far as listeners are concerned. In part, that's a reflection of the independence ABC's radio properties long maintained from their sister TV operation. WABC (770) and WPLJ (95.5) operate from studios at 2 Penn Plaza, many blocks from the ABC Radio newsroom at 125 West End Avenue, which is itself a long hike from the Columbus Circle headquarters of ABC television and WABC-TV. (There are some ABC-TV facilities at 125 West End as well, so there will be some unraveling of ties there over the next few years. ABC Radio News will continue to be operated by ABC, which will license its programming to Citadel's ABC Radio Networks for distribution.)
  • As best we can tell, there are no immediate programming or staffing changes in the offing at WABC or WPLJ, the only ABC Radio properties in the northeast, and indeed, the most obvious change for the now-Citadel staffers at those stations is that they've lost the Disney theme park "silver passes" they enjoyed as Disney employees. Disney keeps its Radio Disney and ESPN Radio properties, which means that for the short term, WEPN (1050) and WQEW (1560) will be tenants at the 2 Penn Plaza studios, with completely separate staffs from WABC and WPLJ. We'd expect WEPN and WQEW to move to new studios sooner or later, as will their sister stations in similar situations in Los Angeles and Dallas. There will be no changes at all at other standalone ESPN Radio and Radio Disney stations, including Boston's WMKI (1260), Rhode Island's WDDZ (550 Pawtucket), Connecticut's WDZK (1550 Bloomfield), Philadelphia-market WWJZ (640 Mount Holly) and Pittsburgh's WEAE (1250) and WWCS (540 Canonsburg).
  • Elsewhere in New York, Cumulus has taken the next step toward moving WFAS-FM (103.9) closer to the lucrative New York City market. The station officially changed city of license last week to Bronxville from its longtime home of White Plains. For now, there's no change in the station's facilities - its transmitter remains at its longtime home in Greenburgh, where the station's studios and sister station WFAS (1230 White Plains) are located as well - but we'd expect to see an application filed sooner or later to move 103.9 down to a transmitter site in southern Westchester or the Bronx.
  • We'll make CANADA our next stop, as we assess the fallout of the CRTC's decision to approve CTVglobemedia's acquisition of CHUM Ltd., albeit with one enormous condition. CTV knew it would have to divest some of CHUM's nationwide portfolio of television stations, but it had hoped to keep CHUM's big-market roster of Citytv outlets in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg and to spin the more marginal "A-Channel" stations CHUM owns in Ontario and British Columbia. Combining the City stations with CTV's existing national network was more than the CRTC was willing to countenance under its "one-to-a-market" TV ownership policy, though, and a divided CRTC ruled late last week that if the CTV purchase of CHUM is to go forward, it will have to be without the City stations. CTV can, if it wishes, keep the "A-Channel" stations, the rationale there being that even though A-Channel's CKVR is seen in Toronto and its CIVI is seen in Vancouver, those are actually Barrie and Victoria stations, respectively - and under Canadian regulations, those stations really do provide news and public affairs for the areas where they're licensed.
  • In the wake of the ruling, CTVglobemedia isn't saying yet whether it will follow through with the C$1.4 billion acquisition of CHUM, or with the proposed C$137.5 million spinoff of the A-Channel stations to Rogers. Even without the City stations, the CHUM radio group of 34 stations and its 20 specialty cable services (plus A-Channel, if it were to stay with CTV) would combine with CTV's existing TV, cable and print outlets to create an impressive media behemoth.
  • The big news in MASSACHUSETTS will come today, when WGBH-FM (89.7 Boston) moves its announcers from their longtime home on Western Avenue in Allston to the new broadcast center overlooking the Mass Pike off Market Street. WGBH-TV/WGBX will make the move later this month, and by July, the old Western Avenue facility will be history. Over on the radio side, the playlists for today's inaugural broadcasts were drawn from listener suggestions; the first track played from the new digs at 9 AM will be Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man."

June 9, 2003 -

  • By itself, the news that WQDY (1230) in Calais, MAINE signed off for good and returned its license to the FCC at the end of May would be an interesting but not terribly unusual event. After all, the past two decades have seen a long parade of Maine AM stations move from graveyard channels to the radio graveyard. Fort Kent, Madawaska, Presque Isle, Houlton, Machias, Brewer, Belfast, Lincoln, Dover-Foxcroft, Auburn - the list goes on.
  • What makes this particular AM shutdown interesting, though, is the reason why it had to happen, what it says about the ownership-limit rules that were just tweaked by the FCC a week ago - and the fact that it puts one owner in control of pretty much every daily advertising opportunity in Washington County.
  • There's a back story here, of course, and it goes like this: back in March, Citadel, owner of WCRQ (102.9 Dennysville), applied to the FCC to sell the station to William McVicar (for $185,000, which has to be a record low for a full class C FM facility!) McVicar already owned WQDY, WQDY-FM (92.7 Calais) and a half-interest in WALZ (95.3 Machias), the other three commercial stations in Washington County. (There are two noncomms as well: Maine Public Radio's WMED 89.7 in Calais and high school station WSHD 91.7 in Eastport.) Under the FCC's interim market concentration rules, an owner in a small market like Calais was allowed to have an attributable interest in no more than half the stations in the market. In the transfer application for WCRQ, Citadel and McVicar told the Commission that there were six stations in the Calais market: WCRQ, WQDY, WQDY-FM and WALZ, as well as CHTD (98.1 St. Stephen NB) just across the water from Calais and CHSJ (700 Saint John NB), whose signal reaches down the Straits of Fundy from 100 or so miles away. By agreeing to put WQDY(AM) up for sale, McVicar claimed, his new cluster of WCRQ, WQDY-FM and WALZ would make up only three of six stations in the market.
  • There were just two problems with this scenario. First, no buyer turned up for WQDY(AM), which was no great surprise; would you want to compete with what promises to be such a dominant FM cluster, armed with only a pipsqueak AM signal? Second, as alert NERW readers may recall, is that CHSJ in Saint John hasn't been on the air at AM 700 for more than five years. The CHSJ calls and country format live on - but at 94.1 FM, on a signal that can just be heard in Calais and can't possibly count against any conceivable market definition there. (The duopoly map submitted with the application even acknowledged, with respect to CHSJ(AM), "FCC unsure of operational status." Too bad they don't read NERW - or at least admit that they do!)
  • So instead of McVicar's threesome making up half of a six-station market, they make up three of a four-station market - and that's being generous and including CHTD, which is aimed almost exclusively at the Canadian side of the border. And unlike the much-cited case of Minot, North Dakota, where Clear Channel took advantage of loopholes in the ownership rules to end up with six commercial radio stations (albeit with a daily newspaper, several TV stations, two commercially-licensed religious stations and a public radio outlet as competition), advertisers in Calais have no daily newspaper or local TV stations to use as leverage should the rates get too high at WQDY/WALZ/WCRQ.
  • Now, the saving grace here is that McVicar's not a bad owner. In fact, he's a very good owner. WQDY has long been one of the best small-town operations in NERW-land, with excellent coverage of local events and support of local causes. WCRQ, by contrast, was voicetracked from Citadel in Syracuse, and will no doubt become a much more local station under its new ownership. And if you go back less than a decade, there was no WCRQ (or CHTD), so the only option for Calais advertisers was...WQDY. (What's more, the new FCC market-definition rules will include noncommercial signals, so McVicar's stations really will become three of six, against CHTD, WMED and WSHD.)
  • What does it all prove? To quote one of the most experienced industry sages we know, "Radio is full of so many different sizes and types of stations and markets that it is impossible to come up with a truly fair and consistent set of rules to govern it."
  • As first hinted here on NERW a few months ago, there's an allocations shift in the works for upstate NEW YORK, and it involves WMJQ (105.5 Brockport). Right now, George Kimble's station is operating at low power with a directional antenna from one tower of WASB (1590 Brockport), whose religious and Spanish programming has been simulcast on the FM for a few years now. A CP to move to a taller tower a few miles north in the town of Hamlin has been stalled by local opposition. Now WMJQ has a new plan: an application to move down the dial to 104.9 and to move its transmitter site eastward, toward Rochester. From the new site in Ogden, alongside route 531, 104.9 would use 4900 watts at 111 meters above average terrain, which should put a much more respectable signal over the city than 105.5 currently does.
  • In Syracuse, WSTM (Channel 3/DTV 54) is becoming a duopoly, sort of: owner Raycom is buying WAWA-LP (Channel 14), the market's UPN affiliate. Expect WAWA to finally get Time Warner cable carriage as a result, replacing Boston's WSBK.
  • "Kiss" today goodbye in CANADA: Rogers made an abrupt format flip on CISS (92.5 Toronto) at 4 PM last Wednesday, ditching the dance top 40 of "Kiss 92.5" and replacing it with the latest hot format north of the border, the mixture of classic hits and current hot AC tunes known as "Jack FM." Already on the air at Rogers stations in Vancouver and Calgary, "Jack" has an interesting history that begins south of the border - Long Island, to be exact, where the format was conceived as a Webcast by New York air talents Bob "Cadillac Jack Garrett" Perry and Russ "Famous Amos!" DiBello. The format they created at www.jack.fm (where you can still hear it as a nice-sounding Webcast) was, shall we say, "borrowed" up north - but it's all legitimate now, and the Jack gang are looking to market their format to U.S. broadcasters as well.

June 11, 1998-

  • Just minutes after NERW went to press last week, CBS finally completed its $2.6 billion takeover of American Radio Systems, adding ARS' clusters in Buffalo (WLCE, WBLK, WJYE, WYRK, WECK), Rochester (WZNE, WCMF, WPXY, WRMM), Hartford (WTIC AM-FM, WZMX, WRCH) and Boston's WBMX (98.5) to its existing Northeast presence in Boston (WBZ, WZLX, WODS, WBCN, WBZ-TV) and New York City (WCBS AM-FM, WINS, WNEW, WXRK, WFAN). To satisfy FCC ownership limits, Boston's WNFT is in a trust awaiting sale; CBS is still required under a separate agreement with the Justice Department to sell WRKO, WEEI, WAAF, and WEGQ within six months. Despite persistent rumors of a Jacor Boston buy, there's no oficial announcement of a buyer so far. NERW notes that ARS' Rochester stations had the new "CBS" IDs on the air as early as 6:00 last Thursday night.
  • WBPS (890 Dedham) won't be Salem Media's newest property after all. Salem subsidiary New England Continental Media asked the FCC this week to dismiss its proposed purchase of the station.
  • News from the noncomms: WBIM (91.5 Bridgewater) and WSHL (91.3 Easton) will both stay on the air 24 hours a day again this summer, relaying the Talking Information Center's reading service for the blind. And WRPS (88.3) at Rockland High School is also going 24 hours, running an automated hot AC format when no students are around. WRPS is also now in stereo for the first time.
  • Mike Adams is leaving One-on-One Sports' WNRB (1510), ending his partnership with Jack Farrell. The former New England Cable News sports host is heading to WEEI (850).
  • Former WAAF (107.3 Worcester) afternoon jocks Opie & Anthony have found a new home, two months after they were fired for their April Fools' Day claim that the mayor of Boston was dead. Their new home, according to published reports? CBS's WNEW (102.7) in New York, where they'll do afternoon drive.
  • Less than a year after fire destroyed his radio station, WVIP (Mount Kisco) founder Martin Stone has died. Stone was hospitalized after watching AM 1310 burn to the ground last fall. He was 83 years old. The WVIP license remains active, but there's no sign that the station will return to the air.
  • Buffalo sports legend Van Miller did his last regular sportscast for WIVB (Channel 4) Friday night. Miller was with Channel 4 for an amazing 43 years; he stays on as the voice of the Buffalo Bills.

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