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June 8, 2009 -

• It's been more than a decade in the making, turned into a political football and delayed repeatedly, but starting late this Thursday night, one of the biggest transitions in the history of U.S. broadcasting will finally come to fruition, as the remaining full-power analog TV signals begin to blink off all across the country, with the last of them going dark at the stroke of midnight late Friday night.
• According to a list released last week by the FCC, some three dozen small stations around the country won't be coming along for the ride, at least not right away. Those stations will still have to turn off their analog signals by the June 12 deadline, but because their DTV signals aren't up and running - either for financial or technical reasons - they'll be off the air completely, at least temporarily.
• After years of struggling to break out of its longtime role as an also-ran in the Binghamton market, Newport Television's WIVT (Channel 34)/WBGH-CA (Channel 20) has effectively thrown in the towel on local news, leaving broadcast viewers in Binghamton with just one full-time local news option.
• On Friday afternoon, Newport announced that it was replacing WIVT's local newscasts, which were already limited to a morning show, a 5:30-6:30 PM hour and a short update at 11 PM, with simulcasts of the news from sister station WETM (Channel 18) in Elmira, 50 miles (and a separate TV market) to the west. Eleven employees, including veteran anchor Steve Craig, lost their jobs, and the WIVT newsroom at the Oakdale Mall in Johnson City will be closed, leaving only a skeleton staff (including, for now, anchor Peter Quinn and news director Jim Ehmke) back at WIVT's studio/transmitter facility on Ingraham Hill.
• Some history here: Channel 34, an also-ran in local news through most of its existence as WBJA and WMGC, dramatically expanded the size and professionalism of its news operation in the late 1990s, seeking to capitalize on the flip of the market's longtime number-two station, NBC affiliate WICZ (Channel 40), to Fox. While WICZ cut its news presence back to a daily half-hour at 10 PM, new owner Ackerley expanded WIVT's newscasts to mornings and beefed up its staffing for evenings, and for a time WIVT challenged perennial market dominator WBNG (Channel 12) in the quality of its coverage, if not in ratings or revenue. More recently, Ackerley's successors have cut back again on WIVT's news product, effectively ceding news dominance in the market to Granite-owned WBNG even as Granite budget cutbacks have weakened WBNG's own product. (Recall, if you will, the immigration-center shootings earlier this spring, the biggest news story in recent Binghamton history, and one on which none of the Binghamton TV newsrooms really rose to the occasion.)
• Through all those years, though, channel 34 has always provided at least some semblance of a local Binghamton newscast - right up until 6 o'clock last Friday evening, when whatever Binghamton viewers were still looking for local news on WIVT or WBGH saw WETM's news from Elmira, a newscast that station says will continue to be focused on the Elmira market - "Chemung, Steuben and Schuyler counties in New York and Tioga County, Pa," according to WETM general manager Randy Reid. It's hard to imagine that many Binghamton viewers will have much interest in Elmira news (indeed, WETM's news was simulcast in Binghamton once before, when WBGH took over as the market's NBC affiliate back in 1995, with no measurable ratings), and easy to imagine that even the limited amount of Binghamton news presence being sent back to WETM from Ingraham Hill will eventually fade away.
• RHODE ISLAND's ABC affiliate has lost several of its most popular syndicated shows. Global Broadcasting's WLNE (Channel 6) announced Friday that the station has "suspended its programming agreement with King World," removing "Dr. Phil," "Entertainment Tonight" and "Inside Edition" from the station - but we hear that the suspension actually came from the King World end, as WLNE's ongoing financial struggles have reportedly rendered the station unable to keep paying for the shows. In place of "Dr. Phil" at 5, WLNE will carry "Cristina's Court" and "Family Court," while "ET" and "Inside Edition" at 7 and 7:30 will be replaced by a new 7 PM local newscast, the market's first, followed by "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" at 7:30.
• A call change in NEW JERSEY: the former WXKW (97.3 Millville) has become WENJ-FM, now that it's sharing ESPN Radio programming with sister station WENJ (1450 Atlantic City).
• Friday afternoon brought a high-profile format change in CANADA's biggest market: just one day past the sixth anniversary of its 2003 flip from "Kiss" to "Jack FM," CJAQ (92.5 Toronto) returned to its old "Kiss" branding and top-40 format at the stroke of 3 PM. At its end, Toronto's "Jack" had evolved significantly from the early days of the adult hits format, with live jocks in most dayparts and a musical lean toward classic rock. The new "Kiss" is apparently launching jockless, but a new talent roster for the Rogers station is expected to be announced soon.

June 6, 2005 -

• Fans of NEW YORK's WCBS-FM (101.1) have been bemoaning the station's decline for years, from the removal of pre-Beatles music from the playlist to the gradual retirement of legendary jocks like Harry Harrison, Dan Ingram and Dan Daniel to last year's ouster of longtime PD Joe McCoy. But it didn't make them any less stunned when the station pulled the plug on oldies Friday afternoon at 5 (with less than an hour's warning to most station staff, reportedly) and flipped to "Jack FM," bringing the "adult hits" format to the number-one market in much the same way it's appeared everywhere: no DJs, no newscasters, no commercials at first, just music and attitude-filled liners. (The first song, for the record: the Beastie Boys' "Fight For Your Right (To Party)," certainly the first time that group's ever been heard at 101.1 on the dial.)
• The flip means the end of Micky Dolenz' morning show, which debuted a few months ago to lukewarm reviews. PD Dave Logan, who succeeded McCoy last year, is also gone, and it appears that the rest of the jock lineup - including veterans Bob Shannon, Don K. Reed and Bill Brown - is out as well. The oldies will continue as a Web-only stream, albeit apparently without the personalities who were so critical to making CBS-FM what it was. (Station management has been unclear on this point, and for now the stream is running jockless.)
• The fallout: Infinity's move changes the landscape in New York in several ways. First, it puts an end to the lengthy speculation about which station would take the leap into the adult-hits format. While nothing's impossible at this point, it's hard to imagine any of the other major FMs in the market challenging WCBS-FM with a knockoff "Bob" or "Max" or what have you. (That said, ABC's WPLJ was clearly testing the waters with its many "Flush the Format" weekends of late.)
• Upstate, Media One closed on its $4.5 million deal to add Vox's WKSN (1340 Jamestown), WHUG (101.9 Jamestown) and WQFX (103.1 Russell PA) to its existing Jamestown duo of WJTN (1240) and WWSE (93.3). The deal gives Jim Embrescia's company a near-lock on the radio market there.
• In Corning, Route 81's getting ready to move its cluster out of their cramped studios at the WCBA (1350) transmitter site on Davis Road and into a nice new storefront studio on Corning's bustling Market Street. NERW was in town last week, and we note that the call changes for which Route 81's applied there (WCLI 1450 to WENI, and the call swap of WGMM 97.7 and WCBA-FM 98.7) has not yet taken place on the air.
• The eyes of the radio community will be squarely on the NEW JERSEY Palisades next Saturday (June 10), as the historic Armstrong tower in Alpine hosts a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Major Armstrong's pioneering FM broadcasts. The broadcast, which starts at noon, will include recordings of Armstrong's broadcasts from the 1940s and early 50s, as well as the radio documentary "Empire of the Air." It'll be heard on experimental station WA2XMN, operating from the Armstrong tower over a Phasitron transmitter lovingly hand-built by Philadelphia engineer Steve Hemphill and transmitting at Armstrong's original 42.8 MHz frequency. (If you have a scanner that tunes that band, you'll want to check to see if it can operate in wide FM mode - like the original W2XMN, this broadcast will utilize 75 kHz deviation; the best bet, says Hemphill, is to find a vintage 42-50 MHz FM radio.)
• VERMONT's new entries in the adult hits game are WLKC (103.3 Waterbury) and WXAL (93.7 Addison), which dropped their modern AC "Alice" simulcast on Wednesday and flipped to adult hits as "MP 103." (Get it? It's like an MP3, but at 10...never mind.) NERW's monitoring of the new MP103 found the stations running jockless, and at ID time, WLKC was sporting new calls of WWMP - with no ID at all for the 93.7 half of the simulcast.

June 9, 2000 -

• How much does it cost to move a Big Mattress 6000 miles west? Expect a MASSACHUSETTS moving company to get a phone call soon, as veteran Boston morning man Charles Laquidara gets ready to leave the Hub and join his wife and family in Maui. Laquidara is still best known for nearly a quarter-century at WBCN (104.1), where he all but defined "underground" FM radio, then rode the station to establishment success hosting 'BCN's "Big Mattress" morning show (and filling in at times as alter ego Duane Glasscock). In 1996 (ironically, on April Fools' Day), Laquidara's show moved to Infinity sister station WZLX (100.7), replaced by Howard Stern in a sign of WBCN's move towards a mix of modern rock and talk.
• Laquidara, 62, says he's making the move out of Boston to be closer to his wife, who's recovered from a bout with cancer last year. Replacing him sometime this fall on WZLX will be comedian Steve Sweeney and "Tai" (aka Tom Irwin), who faced off against Laquidara in the early '90s as morning host at WFNX, then spent a few years at WRKO (680) before losing that gig last year.
• Elsewhere in the Bay State, it's a new format for Citadel's WORC-FM (98.9 Webster), which ditched classic rock May 26 to become "Oldies 98.9," thus returning to a format it had used for four years as WXXW. The move gets 98.9 out of the way of Citadel's other classic rocker, WWFX (100.1 Southbridge) in the Worcester market. Speaking of that market, we're reminded that WESO (970 Southbridge), WWFX's former sister station, flipped from oldies to (mostly satellite) country late last year.
• Last week, NERW was first to report that Clear Channel wouldn't be allowed to buy four of the upstate NEW YORK properties it had hoped to acquire from Straus Media. Now we can tell you where they're going instead. Concord Media, which has stepped in to buy other "over-the-cap" properties spun off from Clear Channel deals, will get WCKL (560) and WCTW (98.5) in Catskill and WHUC (1230) and WTHK (93.5) in Hudson. Clear Channel couldn't take those four because they're considered part of the Albany market, where the company's already at the limit (and in fact had to spin WTRY (980 Troy) to Concord a few months back). Clear Channel is still pushing forward with the remaining six stations in the Straus group (WELV-WTHN Ellenville, WKIP-WRNQ-WTND Poughkeepsie, and WRKW Saugerties), and now we're hearing a rumor that CC is also sniffing around the Roberts Radio properties in Poughkeepsie and Kingston for future acquisitions...
• From CANADA this week: The CRTC has granted the CBC's applications in Sudbury, allowing construction to start on 90.1 (CBC Radio Two) and 90.9 (La chaîne culturelle). We wonder whether the CBC will reuse the call signs that were assigned to those construction permits the first time around, before CBC budget cuts killed the project circa 1986. If so, CBBS would be on 90.1, CBOS on 90.9.

New England Radio Watch, June 4, 1995

• At long last, months after they started using the calls informally, AM 890 in the Boston area can officially call itself WBPS without nit-pickers like me getting testy. As of this morning (6/1), the old "WBMA Dedham/Boston" legals are gone -- replaced by the new WBPS calls. This is the last part of the huge switch that saw WBIV-1060 Natick go dark, its assets get transferred to the WBMA-890 CP, the whole mess get sold to Douglas Broadcasting, the format get changed from leased ethnic to Prime Sports talk, and now finally the 890 call change. Why the holdup? Seems they got confused over which license was getting the call change -- and accidentally applied for the WBPS calls for now-dark WBIV-1060...and then had to straighten out the mess.
• You may have seen the news coverage of the Great Barrington, Mass. tornado, which claimed 3 lives and did as much as $25 million in damage. It's nice to see local radio out there responded well. The "Berkshire Eagle" of Pittsfield, Mass. reported on Thursday that WSBS Great Barrington, an 860 kHz ex-daytimer that has not been using its pipsqueak night allocation, stayed on well past its 7pm signoff time (presumably at full 2700 watts) to provide emergency information as the twister hit at 7:15pm. Coverage was simulcast on co-owned WNAW(AM)/WMNB(FM) North Adams, at the other end of the county.
• Newspeople Mark Schane-Lydon, Tom Jay, Dick Lindsay, and morning host Nick Diller all pitched in to help with coverage. (And a special thanks to Mark for allowing WBZ reporter Carl Stevens to assemble and feed his reports from the WSBS studios on Tuesday and Wednesday!) 15 miles away in Pittsfield, WBEC AM-FM, WBRK AM-WRCZ FM, and WUPE FM all expanded their news coverage as well. Public radio WAMC-FM in Albany has a satellite in Great Barrington, WAMQ-FM 105.1. This is the old WBBS-FM, which was WSBS's FM station from the late 80s until about 2 years ago. WAMC/WAMQ ran expanded newscasts, according to the Eagle's Clarence Fanto -- but I have to wonder whether WAMQ was on. Their transmitter is atop the Butternut Ski Area in South Egremont -- which took some of the worst damage. Even if 105.1 was off, WAMC's main signal on 90.3 from Mount Greylock gets down to the affected area very well, so I'm sure it was being heard one way or another.