KDKA Turns 90

TOWER SITE CALENDAR 2011 - IT'S HERE!

The production process was a little more complex than usual for Tower Site Calendar 2011, but at long last we're shipping the tenth installment in what's become an annual radio tradition.

The new calendar is now back from the printer, complete with more than a dozen exciting new images including that nifty cover shot of Mount Beacon, N.Y.

And if you order now, you'll have the 2010 calendar in your hands long before the holiday rush!

But wait - there's more! We now have a small supply of the new FM Atlas, 21st edition, as well as a limited supply of Tower Site Calendar 2010 as well - plus the signed, limited-edition version of the 2011 calendar and much more in the fybush.com store!

We've got special discounts for bulk orders, too - they make great gifts for your business colleagues or friends...

We are offering "calendar bouquets" of our old editions. It's a great way to buy a bunch of beautiful tower pinups at once! For just $16, you can get the 2004, 2005, 2008 and 2009 calendars! (Special packaging available on request.)

Order now at the fybush.com Store!

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FOUNDCUTS -- The ultimate weekly 3-hour musical journey spotlights those "oh wow" hits you don't hear anymore from the 80s and beyond. Contact us to see if Foundcuts is available in your market now. E-mail Dave at foundcuts@gmail.com for a demo.

DO IT RIGHT PRODUCTIONS -- Visit our Web site, doitrightproductions.net, to hear our three syndicated shows, Classic Clips, Country Roots and Gospel Doings, produced by longtime country and bluegrass lovers. We also provide demo and duplicating services. Contact Roland (Bruce) Cutler, PO Box 351, Lyons, NY 14489; or dirp650@verizon.net.

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FM GEAR NEEDED -- Seeking two-bay low-power FM antennas (Jampro, PSI, Dielectric or others) at 96.5. Also looking for 1 kW FM transmitter, tube type OK. We pay shipping. Contact Allen, dba Alleo, alleo21@yahoo.com or 770-300-9287 (8 AM-9 PM).

You can have your ad here, for just a few dollars a week! Click here for information on the most economical way to reach tens of thousands of Northeast radio and TV people each week.

Yup, we've been doing this a long time now, and so we're digging back into the vaults for a look at what NERW was covering one, five, ten and - where available - fifteen years ago this week, or thereabouts.

Note that the column appeared on an erratic schedule in its earliest years as "New England Radio Watch," and didn't go to a regular weekly schedule until 1997.

November 2, 2009 -

• It was a roller-coaster of a week for fans of dance music in NEW YORK City - but as of this morning, the saga of "Pulse 87" appears to have something of a happy ending.
• "Pulse," of course, is (or rather "was") the high-profile not-quite-FM-broadcast-station that launched in January 2008 on the audio carrier of low-power TV station WNYZ-LP (Channel 6), broadcasting at 87.75 MHz from the top of the Citicorp Center building in Queens. Despite the odd dial position, a signal that was sometimes sketchy outside the five boroughs and a near-complete lack of the usual billboards, bus cards and other promotions that launch a new radio station, Pulse 87 built a rabidly loyal following and a respectable (if niche) audience in nearly two years on the air. What Pulse couldn't do, evidently, was to dig its owner, Mega Media, out of a financial hole that the company was apparently in even before launching Pulse. Much of the station's initial airstaff, including the flagship morning team of Star and Buc Wild, disappeared early on, and in recent weeks there was a nonstop drumbeat of rumors suggesting that Mega was falling behind on payments to its creditors - including WNYZ's licensee, Island Broadcasting, which was leasing the 87.7 facility to Mega for "Pulse." Early last week, the Pulse programming disappeared from 87.7 for nearly two days, sparking a flurry of message-board rumors about the imminent end of the format. And while that outage was apparently just a failure of the Verizon fiber circuit from Pulse's Brooklyn studios to the Queens transmitter, it did indeed presage the end of Pulse, which came abruptly on Friday. At 12:15 PM, Mega CEO Alex Shvarts took to the airwaves to announce that the station would shut down at 5 PM, thanking everyone who'd been involved in the project since its launch.
• At 5, Pulse said its farewells, leaving the air to the sounds of the Beatles' "Back in the USSR." Was it a tip-off to a return of the Russian pop format that had been heard on WNYZ before the launch of Pulse? Or perhaps a nod to Shvarts' own Russian heritage? The first theory was quickly dispelled when listeners to 87.7 heard dance music continue on the frequency after a few minutes of silence, albeit at a lower volume and with just an hourly ID. (Meanwhile, Pulse itself kept putting out music and liners on one of its streaming feeds well into Friday night.) As Pulse fans gathered for a farewell party Saturday night, their mourning was turning into celebration as word spread that Long Island's JVC Broadcasting had signed a deal to take over the lease of WNYZ, using the frequency starting Monday morning as a New York City relay of its "Party 105." While "Party" isn't a pure dance station, mixing hip-hop in with the rhythmic tracks, it comes to 87.7 with well-known leadership behind it, including JVC vice president/Party morning man Vic Latino, a popular figure in New York's rhythmic music community. "We are very excited to be broadcasting to the number one market in the world," said JVC CEO John Carraciolo.
• The simulcast comes amidst several other changes for "Party 105": earlier in the week, it changed calls from WDRE to WPTY-FM - and after a simulcast period, it will disappear from one of the Long Island translators that was carrying its signal west. W268AN (101.5 Plainview) will instead flip to a simulcast of JVC's other Long Island signal, Spanish tropical "Fiesta" WBON (98.5 Westhampton), which is already heard on another translator at 96.9 in Manorville. The new "Pulse 87.7" simulcast is expected to launch this morning at 6 with "Vic Latino's Neighborhood."
• In the Hudson Valley, is that another format change on the way to Clear Channel's oft-flipped 99.3 in Ellenville? After just under three years as country WRWC, simulcasting WRWD (107.3 Highland) into the Catskills, it appears that the next step for 99.3 will be a simulcast of news-talk WKIP (1450 Poughkeepsie), at least judging by the newstalk993.com website that showed up last week. (As we go to press Sunday night, 99.3 is still relaying WRWD.)
• There's a format flip coming to NEW HAMPSHIRE's Lakes Region on Wednesday, when classic rock "Hawk" is set to move from WWHQ (101.5 Meredith) to WLKZ (104.9 Wolfeboro). There's no word yet on what's in store for 104.9 as Nassau shuffles its lineup in preparation for shedding several of its Lakes Region and Concord signals.

October 31, 2005 -

• While it may strike terror into the souls of classical music aficionados across Eastern New England, the news that Charles River Broadcasting has put its station group up for sale is anything but a Halloween prank.
• On Thursday, the company's board of directors agreed to hire Media Services Group to explore the sale of some or all of its five stations - classical outlets WCRB (102.5 Waltham), WFCC (107.5 Chatham) and WCRI (95.9 Block Island RI), as well as rocker WKPE (104.7 Orleans) and all-news WCNX (1180 Hope Valley RI). The board also brought in veteran manager Herb McCord (former head of the Granum group) to manage the stations while CEO Bill Campbell is on medical leave; McCord was already a member of the Charles River board.
• At least where WCRB is concerned, the move appeared at first glance to contradict the wishes of Theodore Jones, the station's founder. At the time of his death in 1991, it was widely reported that he'd created a trust structure to ensure that WCRB would remain classical for the next 99 years, leading many in the business to believe that the station (with one of only a dozen or so truly full-market Boston FM signals) would never go up for sale.
• Charles River, however, sees things differently. Company officials say it's become impossible to operate as a small group in the era of consolidation and clusters, and they tell the Boston Globe that when Jones died, the trust he created stated that it was his "wish" that WCRB remain classical - but not a binding order. The board believes it can honor that wish by mandating that anyone buying WCRB maintain the classical format on an HD Radio subchannel, but leaving them free to program whatever they'd like on the main channel.
• If that's the case (and we have no reason to believe otherwise), it could put WCRB - and Boston - in the same boat as so many other communities where commercial classical radio has either disappeared completely in the last decade (Philadelphia, Miami, Detroit) or has been relegated to a lower-power FM or even an AM signal (Cleveland, Kansas City, San Diego, Albuquerque). Based on the 100000watts.com/M Street database, we now list only 27 commercial classical stations in the U.S., including the three Charles River owns. That list, in turn, includes a number of stations owned by nonprofit organizations (KFUO-FM St. Louis, KING-FM Seattle), by municipalities (WRR-FM Dallas) or by companies as concerned with the PR value of the station as with profit (the New York Times Co.'s WQXR-FM New York). Only three commercial broadcast groups of any substantial size own commercial classical outlets in large markets: Bonneville, with WGMS in Washington and KDFC in San Francisco; Entercom, with KXTR(AM) in Kansas City; and Saga, with WFMR in Milwaukee. (WFMR, which we visited over the summer, has New England native Steve Murphy at the programming helm and seems to be doing quite well for itself; WGMS and KDFC are perennial ratings successes in their markets; KXTR is a shell of what was once a thriving FM classical outlet, now relegated to a mostly-automated expanded-band AM - ironically, using WCRB programming for most of the day.)
• So who'd be in line to spend the likely $70-80 million - perhaps even more - that the WCRB signal would fetch on the open market? While Infinity and Greater Media are at their market ownership limits already, two other big groups already in Boston - Clear Channel and Entercom - still have room under the caps to take on an additional FM signal. To that list, we'd also add Radio One and Salem, both of which have footholds in the Boston market and which have been acquisitive elsewhere.
• And we can't leave out Marlin Broadcasting, which has deep Boston roots (in the person of principal Woody Tanger), deep classical roots (it owned - then sold - classical FMs in Philadelphia, Miami and Detroit, and it still owns classical webcaster beethoven.com and WTMI 1290 in West Hartford, Connecticut), and which wasted no time at week's end making it known that it's actively attempting to buy the Charles River stations.
• Or - and this is purely speculative, we'd emphasize - could some sort of nonprofit ownership coalesce to preserve WCRB's format? The Boston Symphony Orchestra is already a part-owner of Charles River. (Its counterpart in Seattle is a key player in the nonprofit that owns KING-FM.) Then there's WGBH, which continues to have a committment to classical music even as it tries to balance other programming on its FM outlet. Was the $4 million that 'GBH just spent on a new Cape Cod FM merely an appetizer for something much bigger in Boston?
• What about the other Charles River outlets? Nassau's just begun to make inroads on Cape Cod, and it's flush with cash (or soon will be) from the sale of its Lehigh Valley cluster in Pennsylvania, so it's not hard to imagine that two more big FMs would make an appealing investment for the growing company. We're not even going to try to speculate about the little signals in southern Rhode Island, where anything could happen, and probably will.
• WCRB's only one big headline in eastern MASSACHUSETTS this week, though. Up in Burlington, things got awfully quiet Thursday at WWZN (1510 Boston), where Sporting News Radio abruptly pulled the plug on the local programming it was originating at "1510 the Zone."
• At the end, that meant two shows for the struggling station: "The Diehards" and Eddie Andelman's afternoon show. The paid programming that was running on the weekends and some evenings (including high school football) will continue, as will three WWZN staffers, including Diehards Anthony Pepe and Jon Anik.
• A few moments of class marked the station's end: former GM Mike Winn, who's now with "ESPN Boston" WAMG/WLLH, was allowed to come back to WWZN for the last day there. And Andelman, whose history on Boston radio goes back 36 years, will get to do a farewell show Thursday (Nov. 3) from 2-4 PM.
• After that, it's anyone's guess - there's pretty credible word that Sporting News Radio itself is struggling, raising questions about whether even the network sports feed will continue on what's now the number-three sports outlet in the market.
• There's still another format change to note in the Boston market: no sooner did Radio One flip WILD (1090 Boston) to a black gospel format than it announced the impending debut - sometime in early 2006 - of a national talk network aimed at black listeners. WILD will be an affiliate of the network, of course, which means Boston listeners will get to hear the new Al Sharpton show from 1-4 PM, as well as "Two Live Stews" (a fast-growing sports talk show from Atlanta) from 4 until sunset, a yet-to-be-named national host from 10 AM-1 PM, and a yet-to-be-named local host in the mornings. We'd bet the black gospel continues on weekends.
• Then there's Howard Stern, who took away whatever suspense still surrounded the question of his replacement on Tuesday, when he introduced David Lee Roth as his successor, starting January 3, 2006, on most of his East Coast Infinity-owned affiliates.
• In Boston, that means Roth will replace Stern on WBCN (104.1), but WBCN's rock format will continue for the rest of the day. That's not going to be the case on several other Stern stations - in particular, NEW YORK, where the end of the Stern show will also mean the end of "K-Rock" at WXRK (92.3). Stern has been a part of K-Rock since just a few months after it signed on in 1985. After he signs off in December 16, the rock will go as well - at least during the day - to replaced by the "Free FM" brand of talk that Infinity's launching in other big markets. So far, the only host confirmed for WXRK (besides Roth) is comedian/magician Penn Jillette.
• The Roth show won't be heard in upstate New York. Instead, WZNE (94.1 Brighton) will bring "Rover's Morning Glory" to the Rochester market. Rover is the "nom de chien" (thanks to Ohio Media Watch for that one!) of Shane French, who's been doing mornings on WXTM in Cleveland. His show will now be based at "Free FM" Midwest hub WCKG in Chicago, where it will feed WXTM, WZNE and affiliates in Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit and Memphis.
• Back to Stern, then - and perhaps the biggest news, at least in our region, comes from eastern PENNSYLVANIA, where the end of the Stern show Tuesday was followed with the launch of "94.1 Free FM" on WYSP (94.1 Philadelphia).
• The new format had clearly been in the works for a while, since it launched with a relatively comprehensive schedule. The most notable addition is market veteran Paul Barsky, who resurfaces as the 10 AM-3 PM host (with former sidekick Vinnie the Crumb alongside him again.) Kidd Chris, already on WYSP, remains in afternoon drive. After 7 at night, the station will still be a rocker, with Couzin Ed moving to 7-10 PM and Matt and Huggy from 10-2.
• WYSP also brings a familiar Infinity face back to the market: Tom Bigby, who moved from WIP to KRLD in Dallas last year, returns as OM of "94.1 Free FM." Gil Edwards moves up from APD to PD.
• The rock will live on - albeit jockless - at WYSP.com; we'd sort of expect it to show up as an HD Radio multicast eventually, too.
• At the other end of the state, we've heard that Infinity was all set to flip WRKZ (93.7 Pittsburgh) to "Jack" - after all, the station was created out of the ashes of the old B94 specifically to carry Stern last year - but instead, it's sticking with "K-Rock" on the frequency, at least for now. David Lee Roth will be the morning man there, as well as at WYSP.
• In CONNECTICUT, Marlin's WCCC (106.9 Hartford) apparently isn't impressed with the Roth offering. They're bringing some fellow named "Lance Christian" to the airwaves - and if that name sounds unfamiliar, perhaps you might recognize his alter ego, "Sebastian," as a fixture at WCCC and other Hartford stations in the 30 years since "Lance Christian" was last heard on WPOP. (And that's it for our Stern coverage this week - we promise!)

October 30, 2000 -

• A former MASSACHUSETTS broadcaster is making some awfully loud noises against Clear Channel as his U.S. Senate campaign in Florida heads for the finish line.
• Here at NERW Central, we were paying only a little attention to the charges independent candidate Andy Martin was making about Clear Channel's contests. If you haven't been reading the national trades all week, they boil down to this: not only is Clear Channel trying to pass off national contests as local ones, but the company is also rigging those contests to favor certain markets. Florida's attorney general already reached a settlement with Clear Channel on the former allegation, of course, but Martin claims the company isn't running the required disclaimers as promised. Clear Channel, of course, denies the allegations. But in doing so, the company mentioned in passing that "Andy Martin" is also known as...Anthony Martin-Trigona.
• That's a name we do recognize: Martin-Trigona bought WHET (1330 Waltham) in the late 1970s and flipped it to country as WDLW, the calls it would use for more than a decade (and which calls supposedly refer to the initials of an ex-girlfriend of Martin-Trigona's!) By whichever name you call him, it seems Martin-Trigona has had a colorful career since selling WDLW in the early 80s, including real estate deals and politics in Illinois, and several run-ins with the Florida court system for filing frivolous lawsuits and such.
• Martin's official campaign website makes no mention of WDLW or of the "-Trigona" part of the name, but it certainly appears that we have an interesting answer to at least one Boston radio "where are they now" question.
• Not much else happening this week in the Bay State -- unless you count WMKI (1260 Boston)'s application to move its towers 20 miles out in the ocean off Martha's Vineyard! No, it's not April Fool's Day yet, but it was apparently typo time somewhere at the FCC as the station applied to go non-directional during daytime hours. The "42 degrees" in WMKI's day coordinates appeared in the application as "41" instead (and were dutifully repeated as such in M Street and elsewhere), which would put the ND tower somewhere way out in the Atlantic. We trust that the ND operation will actually take place from the current site on Riverside Drive in Milton, thanks...
• The big news in the Big Apple this week was the death of Frankie Crocker at age 63. Crocker spent almost two decades as program director and afternoon jock at WBLS (107.5), in two separate stints at the station. His resume also included stops at WWRL and WMCA, and most recently at WRKS. Crocker died last Saturday (10/21) in Miami.

New England Radio Watch, November 2, 1995

• (no issue)