Citadel Lands WLNE, Plans Upgrade

TOWER SITE CALENDAR 2011 - NOW ON CLEARANCE!

Maybe you need an extra copy for the wall of your shop. Maybe you gave your first copy away as a gift. Maybe the year just got away from you and you forgot to order your Tower Site Calendar 2011.

Whatever the reason, do we have a deal for you!

We didn't quite sell out of this year's calendar...and so now that it's March, we're offering our remaining supply for just $12 postpaid. (That's a 33% discount from the original list price of $18!)

Tower Site Calendar 2011 features more than a dozen great images of radio and TV broadcast facilities all over the country (and even beyond - this year's edition takes us to Mexico!)

Thrill to a night shot of KFI's new tower! Check out the WAEB Allentown array just after it lost a tower - or enjoy the history at venerable sites like those of KID in Idaho Falls, WCAP in Lowell, KTKT in Tucson and Rochester's Pinnacle Hill.

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

Orders of 20 or more calendars get an even bigger discount. We'll even add a bow or a gift card upon request. But don't wait...supplies are limited, and the calendar will sell out soon!

Order now at the fybush.com Store!

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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.

One Year Ago: March 29, 2010 -

• *The newest talk station in MASSACHUSETTS has named its first local host. Clear Channel's "Rush Radio 1200" (WXKS Newton) launched ahead of schedule a few weeks ago, rushing to the airwaves to keep its namesake talker on the air in Boston after Rush's contract with longtime home WRKO (680) ended. Now WXKS has raided the WRKO talent stable once more, naming Jeff Katz as its 5-9 AM host beginning April 5. Katz is no stranger to Boston talk listeners, having worked as WRKO's evening host in 1997, then as morning co-host (alongside Darlene McCarthy) from December 1997 until September 1999.
• Katz moved around after that, spending time (and stirring controversy) in Las Vegas (at KXNT), Philadelphia (WPHT) and Charlotte (WBT) before landing at his most recent stop, WFTL (850 West Palm Beach) in south Florida, where he's been doing afternoons. Along the way, Katz has also been a frequent fill-in host at WRKO; indeed, he was last heard doing fill-in for Howie Carr just a couple of weeks ago. Will the addition of local talk help Rush Radio make a dent against WRKO and Greater Media's WTKK? No doubt the next few months of ratings will be closely watched to see whether there's room for three conservative talk stations to survive. (NERW wonders, meanwhile, whether a successful Katz show might end up being syndicated to other Clear Channel talkers in neighboring markets such as Providence, Worcester, Manchester and the New Hampshire seacoast, especially given the limited reach of WXKS' own signal...)
• We'll have more "Baseball on the Radio" next week - but this week, a quick bit of "Soccer on the Radio": the New England Revolution opened this season over the weekend on a new home, shifting to CBS' WBZ-FM (98.5) from Entercom's WEEI (850). The move puts Bob Kraft's other team on the same station that's flagship to the New England Patriots, as well as alleviating occasional conflicts between Revolution and Red Sox games that dispatched the soccer play-by-play (simulcast with Comcast SportsNet TV coverage) to WEEI's sister station WRKO.
• On TV, Mary Richardson is leaving WCVB (Channel 5) after three decades, most of it spent as co-host of "Chronicle," where she recently marked her 25th anniversary. Richardson hasn't announced a formal departure date.
• Down the dial at WBZ-TV (Channel 4), chief meteorologist Ken Barlow had no such luxury: he was abruptly sent packing last week, four years after he came to Boston from KARE-TV in Minneapolis. Barlow tells the Herald he came to Boston to look after his mother after his father's death - and that it's been a particularly bad few weeks, since his brother was killed in a car accident recently. Todd Gutner, who's been moving up the ranks from weekends to mornings, takes over from Barlow on the evening newscasts while newcomer Melissa Mack (formerly at Cleveland's WJW) takes over mornings and WBZ veteran Barry Burbank remains on weekend duty.
• One of NEW YORK's longest-running morning personalities is out of a job. John Bell was part of the founding staff at WHTZ (100.3 Newark NJ) when Z100 signed on way back in 1983, and for 27 years he remained a cornerstone of the station's morning show even as its stars and musical directions shifted. As of last Thursday, "John Bell's Stupid News" and other features are history, and while Z100 management initially announced that it had been Bell's decision to leave the Elvis Duran morning show's cast, Bell quickly contradicted that, telling his Facebook fans that he'd in fact been fired. So far, there's no word on where Bell might be headed next; here's hoping that this versatile talent finds a new home on the New York airwaves soon.
• Northeast PENNSYLVANIA's newest talk station debuted last Tuesday. WTRW (94.3 Carbondale) is the former WLNP, now under the ownership of Bold Gold, and it's now "94.3 the Talker," with a lineup that's all-satellite so far: Don Imus, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and so on.

Five Years Ago: March 27, 2006 -

• BOSTON - We're back in the ancestral stomping grounds of NERW for a long weekend (for those of you who haven't been on board since the beginning, this column began way back in 1994 as "New England Radio Watch," back when our home base was in Waltham, Mass.) - and we're just in time for a format change.
• Out at the edge of MASSACHUSETTS, on Cape Cod, radio changes very slowly. Nearly all the stations on the Cape (and there are a lot of them) are still running the same formats they had when we pulled up stakes almost a decade ago and decamped to upstate New York. Even here, though, change comes eventually, and when Nassau scooped up the three stations (WDVT 93.5 Harwich Port/WTWV 101.1 Mashpee and WPXC 102.9 Hyannis) left over from last year's sale of Boch Broadcasting to Qantum, a format change certainly seemed likely, at least at the oldies pair of WDVT/WTWV. That change indeed came around last Tuesday, when the oldies went away, replaced, as at so many Nassau stations these days, by "Frank FM." But unlike the other "Frank" stations in Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, the new Cape Cod Frank is more than just a classic hits outlet with a catchy name and limited live talent. This pair of "Frank"s is much more of a variety hits format, similar to "Mike" and "Jack" elsewhere in the region. New calls are on the way as well - WFQR for 93.5, WFRQ for 101.1.
• As rumors continue to swirl about the fate of the Red Sox broadcast rights after this season, all the players on the Boston sports radio scene are trying to position themselves for whatever comes next - and in the case of "ESPN Radio Boston" (WAMG 890 Dedham/WLLH 1400 Lowell), that means a new program director. Founding PD Doug Tribou was shown the door last week (to the consternation of many staffers, we hear), replaced by former WGN (720 Chicago) PD Len Weiner.
• The next step in CANADA's move away from AM radio is coming - an entire province with no AM signals. That would be Prince Edward Island, where the CRTC last week approved applications from Maritime Broadcasting System to move CFCY (630 Charlottetown) to 95.1 with 73 kW, and from Newcap to move CHTN (720 Charlottetown) to 100.3 with 33 kW. Newcap was also granted a second FM, but not on the 89.9 frequency it requested. It will have to propose an alternate frequency for the rock/classic rock station, to be known as "The Island." With PEI's third AM station, CJRW (1240 Summerside), having moved to 102.1 a few years ago, these moves will put all of PEI's radio on FM, save for two very low power tourist information signals.
• For almost 82 years, NEW YORK's WNYC has made its home at the city's Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street. The station's transmitters moved long ago (the AM to Greenpoint, then to the WMCA site in Kearny, New Jersey; the FM to the Empire State Building, then World Trade Center, then back to Empire), and now the studios are following suit. Within a few months, WNYC will vacate its 51,000-square foot space in the Municipal Building for more than 75,000 square feet at 160-170 Varick Street, including a ground-floor performance studio. The move will cut the last ties between the station and its former licensee, the city of New York.

10 Years Ago: March 26, 2001 -

• Is public radio more responsive to the people it serves than commercial radio? Ask the people of MAINE and they'll probably say yes. After several months of listener protests, Maine Public Radio changed its mind this week about some of the controversial programming changes it made last fall. Of particular concern, at least in outlying regions of the state where the commercial "W-Bach" network doesn't reach, was MPB's decision to discontinue Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. The good news for opera fans in Calais, Houlton and Fort Kent: the Met is back for the rest of the season, along with other opera programming filling non-Met Saturday afternoons and a Monday evening "Opera League of Maine" broadcast. The bad news, at least for Boston's WBUR, is that the new Maine Public Radio schedule doesn't include the Chris Lydon-less version of "The Connection" still being offered to the public radio system. Instead, Maine listeners will get more music during the day, including a new daily hour of music in the afternoon. (Is the removal of "The Connection" a sign of future defections in the public radio family?)
• Some big changes at Vox's Concord group will take effect at month's end. Saturday (3/31) will be Dick Osborne's 35th anniversary at WKXL (1450 Concord/107.7 Hillsborough), but it will also be his last day at the stations, as his post of station manager gets eliminated. Also out at WKXL and WOTX (102.3 Concord) is sales manager Hope Lindsay Matthews. Whoever's left at the stations will report to a different boss, since WKXL/WOTX general manager Jim Whedon is being reassigned to Vox's WZSH (101.5 Marlborough) and WWSH (95.3 White River Junction) to be GM there. Britt Johnson, already GM at Vox's WJYY/WNHI in Concord, will add WKXL and WOTX to his duties. Meanwhile, we hear Osborne is looking for new work, and we wish the best of luck to this Granite State radio veteran.
• While those Vox stations are shedding personnel, Ernie Boch's cluster in MASSACHUSETTS added some key management this week. Rodney Rainey, who's been GM of Houston's KTJM, is moving to Cape Cod to become president of Boch Broadcasting. Dan Endom, general sales manager at Hartford's WTIC(AM), will be Boch's new VP for sales, while Dale Pierce comes up from Clear Channel in Austin to be Boch's VP for marketing and promotion and Troy Smith makes the move from Boston (where he was music and production director at WFNX) to be operations manager and PD at the group. Boch is also making some call and format changes at two of the stations, flipping oldies WYST (93.5 Harwich Port) to alternative as WDVT "The Vault" and classic rock WWKJ (101.1 Mashpee) to hot AC as WTWV "the Wave."
• One of CONNECTICUT's finest little community AM stations is being sold. Michael Gerardi's Gerardi Broadcasting gets $2 million for WINY (1350 Putnam), the lone station in its small-town market in the northeast corner of the state. Gary Osbrey's Osbrey Broadcasting is the buyer. Osbrey is the longtime morning host at WINY.
• Across the line in NEW YORK -- well, actually NEW JERSEY -- the Sporting News folks are installing new calls on their Big Apple affiliate. WJWR (620 Newark) will become WSNR for "Sporting News Radio," matching the new name for the former "One on One Sports."

15 Years Ago: New England Radio Watch, March 29, 1996

• WFFF-TV 44 in Burlington VT has been granted permission to move its transmitter. The transmitter for the not-yet-on-air station was to have been in New York state. Now it will join the market's other UHFs, WVNY 22 and WETK 33, atop Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest point. (2011 update: WFFF never made the move during the analog era, and eventually signed on from the New York side. With the coming of DTV, WFFF finally migrated to Mansfield more than a decade later.)
• The FCC's latest expanded-band plan does little for New England. The last plan had just one New England station moving, WNSW 1200 Brewer (Bangor), Maine. The new plan has just one New England station moving, WZNN 930 Rochester NH, to 1700. Just over the New England line, WTRY 980 Troy NY would still move, to 1640. Oddly, WESO 970 Southbridge MA placed very high on the FCC's list of stations qualified to move (they were 21st), yet the station did not receive an expanded-band allocation. (2011 update: Neither WZNN nor WTRY ever built on their expanded-band allocations.)
• Now that Infinity has purchased WBOS 92.9 Brookline-Boston, the station is undergoing a subtle shift away from AAA. The new tagline is "Rock of the 80s and 90s," and a new series of TV ads contrast 'BOS with the stations that play "Hard Rock" (presumably a stab at WAAF) and "Old Rock" (apparently a stab at Infinity stablemate WZLX).