June 27, 2011

Randy's Back

• MAINE
• NEW HAMPSHIRE
• MASSACHUSETTS
• VERMONT
• RHODE ISLAND
• CONNECTICUT
• NEW YORK
• NEW JERSEY
• PENNSYLVANIA
• CANADA
• CLASSIFIEDS
• FROM THE ARCHIVES
• BASEBALL ON THE RADIO

*Want to make every message-board server in NEW YORK melt down from a deluge of speculative posts? It's easy, really - just spread the word that former Jacor/Clear Channel/Tribune honcho Randy Michaels is coming back into radio in a big way, partnering with an investment firm to take over three of Emmis Communications' biggest stations, including the struggling WRXP (101.9 New York).

That's just what happened last week, of course, and it's a tribute to the IT staffs of the various radio discussion sites that they haven't crashed under the crush of rumor and wishful thinking that's surrounded the first few days of the new Merlin Media LLC, Michaels' partnership with the GTCR private equity firm and Emmis itself, which will continue to hold a minority stake in WRXP and its Chicago sister stations, WLUP (97.9) and WKQX (101.1).

Merlin's not yet saying what it plans to do with the stations, but the speculation (based on domain-name registrations and one of the company's first big hires, former WINS general manager Greg Janoff, now Merlin's executive VP of revenue) is that the rock format in New York is on the way out, to be replaced by some sort of spoken-word format that would provide an FM challenger to CBS Radio's lucrative AM trio of WCBS/WINS/WFAN and Citadel talker WABC. Unless, of course, the rumored new calls, "WYNY," are actually pointing toward a revival of country music in a market where that format has been absent for years.

Or, perhaps, everything we're seeing so far (including a promo that's been making the rounds for an all-news format on what's now WKQX in Chicago) is just a smokescreen, and the canny Michaels and his new Merlin crew are simply doing what Michaels has always done best: getting people talking about him and his stations - and in the process, getting people to pay attention to radio, which the industry desperately needs right now.

So what is in store for WRXP and its sister stations? "We have almost ruled out polka," Michaels tells NERW - but we'll have to stay tuned, of course, to find out what's really in the works.

*While we wait to find out what Michaels is up to, we know a little more this week about the fate of the last open FM channel in the radio market where Michaels' career took off. Way back in 1996, Dick Greene's Culver Communications petitioned the FCC to allocate a class A signal on 92.1 in Lockport. In 1999, the FCC shifted the allocation to the Buffalo suburb of Amherst, and in 2004 it was reserved for noncommercial use. And seven years later, the channel finally has a "tentative selectee" to build and operate it - or rather, a trio of tentative selectees, thanks to current FCC policy that eliminates comparative hearings in favor of a complex and arcane points system that now often results in ties.

And those ties - like the one that the FCC determined now exists among the applications of Medaille College, Calvary Chapel of the Niagara Frontier and the Lockport Seventh-Day Adventist Church - are now resolved by an FCC dictum that the tied selectees should share time on their frequency.

But there's a reason they're called "tentative" selectees: just as broadcasters and their consultants and lawyers have learned how to navigate the points system to yield so many ties, they've also learned that a more detailed examination of the documentation submitted with those applications can often bring about a Commission re-examination of its points decisions, overturning those tentative selections. It's likely that there will be challenges to this three-way share-time, which would result in one of the largest markets served by alternating operators. (And it's not the only share-time decision the FCC handed out this week - we'll have others later in the column, too.)

If the decision isn't challenged or overturned, and if none of the groups drop out, as has happened elsewhere, Buffalo listeners will end up with a decidedly split personality on 92.1: college radio from Medaille for part of the day, preceded and followed by religion from Calvary Chapel (likely to end up, at least partially, as a repeater of the national CSN network) and the Seventh-Day Adventists (likely to end up, at least partially, as a repeater of the national Three Angels network). It's not even clear that all three stations will share a common transmitter and antenna: while Medaille and Calvary proposed use of a site at the WBFO (88.7) tower near the University of Buffalo north campus, the Lockport group applied to use the Time Warner Cable tower on LaSalle Avenue in Buffalo.

The three-way share in Buffalo won't even be the most complex arrangement on the Empire State dial: for that, we turn to the Hudson Valley, where the FCC points system resulted in a four-way tie among religious broadcasters Birds of a Feather Media, Calvary Chapel of the Hudson Valley, Christian Media Associates and Somos la Llave del Futuro, all of whom will have to share a class A facility on 102.5.

No share-time was needed to resolve a third disputed channel: the gears of the FCC's points system ground out a single tentative selectee for 93.3A in Susquehanna, PA, just over the line from Binghamton: the Broome County Urban League gets that one for a much-needed voice for the black community in Binghamton, which has been lacking a radio outlet since WUCI (91.5) folded many years back.

*There's a third big story in New York this week, and it comes out of Albany. While lawmakers made big headlines with some of their other votes at the end of their legislative session, another bill made it through both the Assembly and State Senate without much attention. "An act to amend the penal law, in relation to unauthorized radio transmissions," aka Bill A326B, makes New York the latest state to criminalize pirate radio at the state level, making it a class A misdemeanor to "knowingly make or cause to be made a radio transmission...on a radio frequency assigned and licensed by the FCC [between 530-1710 kHz AM or 88-108 MHz FM] without authorization or having first obtained a license from the FCC or duly authorized federal agency, in violation of federal law."

We'd expect some celebratory words about the bill's passage (after having passed the Senate, but not the Assembly, during several recent sessions) when the New York State Broadcasters Association holds its annual Executive Conference tonight in Bolton Landing. NERW will be on hand for the event, which will honor NBC's Brian Williams as Broadcaster of the Year. Hall of Fame inductees this year include Regis Philbin, Rod Wood and Carrie Lazarus of Syracuse's WSYR-TV, Buckley Broadcasting owner Rick Buckley, former WHEC-TV Rochester GM Arnold Klinsky, the late William B. Williams of WNEW and retiring NYSBA leader Joseph A. Reilly.

*Radio People on the Move: Dem Jones departs Entercom rocker WBZA (98.9 the Buzz) in Rochester after seven years with the station, the last four as PD and afternoon jock. No replacement has been named yet.

In the Albany area, two of Brian Larson's Northeast Gospel Network FM translators are on the move, both displaced by the move-in of WNYQ (105.7, now WQSH) to Malta: W288BF (105.5 Troy) wants to move to 99.1, while W290CC (105.9 Scotia, actually operating from a site south of Amsterdam) hopes to relocate to 95.1.

Out on Long Island's East End, there's another call change: Hamptons Community Radio just moved the WPKM callsign from 88.7 Montauk to 90.7 Easthampton Village, swapping the WEER calls from 90.7 to 88.7. Now 90.7 is flipping again, becoming WEEG to better match its sister station.

There's an interesting clause in the $1 contract that will transfer unbuilt WYNY (1400 Middletown) from Bud Williamson's Digital Radio Broadcasting to his wife, Juli, extending the life of a construction permit due to expire at the end of August: the deal doesn't include the WYNY calls, which will stay with Digital Radio. Could those calls indeed be heading down the Thruway to Merlin's 101.9 in New York? (See the first four paragraphs of this week's column for our answer...)

And we got news late in the week of a plane hitting a tower in the Buffalo area - but look at the picture before you get too worried about the aftermath. That radio-controlled plane flew into the tower of Dick Greene's WECK (1230 Cheektowaga), somehow wedging itself between the folded unipole antenna and the tower itself; engineer Mark Humphrey, who shared the picture with us, reports that the plane's owner "has made arrangements with a rigger to retrieve it."

*From the obituaries: Ira Kleinman's forte was sales, and he pursued that calling at a series of media jobs that included WABC-TV (Channel 7) and Warner Brothers Television before going into management in the late 1970s as sales manager at WMCA (570). In later years, Kleinman was general manager at Westchester stations WFAS (1230/103.9 White Plains) and WXPS (107.1 Briarcliff Manor). He also hosted several weekend travel and entertainment shows. Kleinman died last Sunday at 74.

*There was big news out of the NEW JERSEY legislature, too, as lawmakers in the state assembly voted, 45-30, to reject Governor Chris Christie's plan to hand over management of the NJN public television system, along with about $2 million in income from federal subsidies and tower rental, to New York's WNET and political broadcaster Steve Adubato Jr.

"Giving NJN to New York makes no sense," assemblyman Patrick Diegnan told the Star-Ledger before the vote.

The 15-day period during which lawmakers can stop the deal ends on Tuesday, and the state Senate could vote today to join the Assembly in quashing the deal. It's not clear exactly what would happen to NJN if the deal isn't consummated: the state employees now operating NJN from its Trenton headquarters have already been notified that their jobs will end on Thursday, and state treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff told lawmakers that those layoffs will go ahead as planned, essentially causing NJN to "cease to exist."

But that doesn't mean the network would actually go off the air: the state has committed to meeting the minimum FCC requirements to keep the licenses alive, and some of the Democratic lawmakers behind the vote to defeat the Christie plan say there's actually money in the state budget that could be used to keep NJN operating - at least on television. (The sale of NJN's nine radio stations to New York's WNYC and Philadelphia's WHYY is moving through the legislature without opposition, and it's expected to be complete next week.)

*More big Garden State news: one of the best-known broadcast teams from "New Jersey 101.5" (WKXW-FM Trenton) is coming back to the Millennium Radio talk station. Jeff Deminski and Bill Doyle made big headlines during their 1993-1999 run as the afternoon team before departing for Detroit and CBS Radio's WKRK (97.1, now WXYT-FM) and then Greater Media's WCSX (94.7), where they did mornings until 2010. Deminski and Doyle have been doing fill-in shifts on talk stations including Philadelphia's WPHT (1210), and last week they announced they'll be back on the air in afternoons at New Jersey 101.5 on July 5.

That, in turn, means "The Jersey Guys" are out of a job as their contracts go unrenewed. Ray Rossi had been part of the team since its debut in 1999; after his co-host Craig Carton moved to New York's WFAN, Rossi was co-hosting wth Casey Bartholomew.

*Our New England news this week starts in Providence, RHODE ISLAND, where the state's proximity to MASSACHUSETTS still doesn't translate into immediate acceptance of air talent from the much larger Boston market less than an hour away.

Clear Channel found that out last week when it pulled the plug on its two-year carriage of the "Matty in the Morning" show on WSNE (93.3 Taunton MA). "Coast 93.3" hadn't exactly been simulcasting Matt Siegel and his crew from their home base at Boston's "Kiss 108" (WXKS-FM 107.9 Medford), swapping in its own AC playlist for the top-40 of Kiss, but it was hardly a local morning show in a market that treasures its local personalities.

Of course, Matty's replacement on WSNE is even less local: he's Toby Knapp, afternoon jock at Clear Channel's WIHT (99.5) in Washington, DC and a prolific voicetracker who's heard on many of the company's stations around the country. Combined with Ryan Seacrest in the afternoon, that leaves Coast with only one "local" airshift, and Kristin Lessard's midday shift on WSNE is tracked after her live morning gig down the hall at sister station WWBB.

*Boston, of course, is big on its own local personalities and stories, and there have been few stories as long-lasting as the hunt for fugitive South Boston mob boss "Whitey" Bulger, which came to an end at just about the worst possible time for any news operation. The news of Bulger's capture in California broke a few minutes after midnight on Thursday, after the early editions of the morning newspapers were already put to bed and the TV newscasts had signed off.

But while the Globe and Herald hurriedly remade their front pages, at least one local media outlet was live and local. If the powers that be at WBZ (1030) still had any doubts about the wisdom of returning Steve LeVeille to his overnight talk slot after the brief "Overnight America" experiment in 2008-2009, the broadcast more than proved its value early Thursday morning as LeVeille provided ongoing updates of the breaking news from the west coast, aided immeasurably by Dan Rea, the 8 PM-midnight WBZ radio host who was a WBZ-TV reporter during the Bulger era. By about 2:30, morning news anchor Joe Mathieu was in place as well, replacing the pre-recorded (and pre-Bulger-news) local news updates that ran at 1 AM and 2 AM.

And of course the capture of Bulger was big news for another Boston AM station as well: WRKO (680) afternoon talker Howie Carr literally wrote the book on the story ("The Brothers Bulger," published in 2006), and in addition to his own shows on Thursday and Friday, Carr was ubiquitous on national TV in the days following the arrest.

*We're still learning about the extent of the damage to broadcast facilities in western Massachusetts from the June 1 tornadoes that ripped across the region, and while most of the region's commercial stations survived largely unscathed, one college station wasn't as lucky. Springfield College took an intense hit from one tornado, and Mike Fitzpatrick of NECRAT.us stopped by the WSCB (89.9) facility over the weekend and shared his photos of the damage atop International Hall with us. WSCB remains off the air, and it's not clear when it might be able to return to the air, since the building itself also suffered heavy damage, losing most of its windows to the storm.

*A new noncommercial channel on Martha's Vineyard will be shared by two religious broadcasters if the FCC's tentative selection holds: Calvary Chapel of Cape Cod and Cape Cod Catholic Radio will share the class A 104.3 signal at West Tisbury; among the applicants they beat out were the operators of low-power community station WVVY (93.7) on the Vineyard, who'd sought a larger signal.

While we're out in the Cape and Islands, we note that WCIB (101.9 Falmouth) now has a translator to better serve the Lower Cape. W264BA (100.7 Harwich) is operating with 80 watts and has an application pending to increase its power to 220 watts. (The translator is owned by Jeff Shapiro's Nantucket Public Radio and was relaying WNCK from Nantucket, which is itself now a relay of Boston's WCRB.)

*A call change in NEW HAMPSHIRE: WCNH-LP (94.7 Concord) becomes WNHN-LP; its classical format and calls are in the process of migrating down the dial to the new WCNH (91.5 Bow), and the LPFM will go to new owners.

*On the MAINE coast, Light of Life Ministries is transferring the construction permit for WJVH (91.5 Belfast) to the Word Radio Educational Foundation, thus buying more time for the 50 kW CP that was due to expire in August.

POSITIONS WANTED I love small town radio. And I'd like to work for your station. I enjoy being a part of the community and engaging listeners. I can literally do almost everything: I do a daily air shift, read the news, produced commercials. I've even plunged toilets and mowed the lawns. (Think how much you'll save in plumbing and landscaping!) I'd love to do all of that and play music at your station. broadcastpro@grapesoda.com 7/3 EQUIPMENT WANTED 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.

*Your NERW editorial team spent the weekend in western PENNSYLVANIA, and while we'd like to say that the lead story from the area was daughter Ariel's appearance Saturday morning on the "Saturday Light Brigade" show heard on WRCT (88.3 Pittsburgh) and other fine noncommercial outlets around the region, the real story is happening just up the dial at 90.5.

That's where Duquesne University will transfer operation of WDUQ to Essential Public Media at the end of the day on Thursday, amidst lots of questions about what comes next.

Here's what we know for sure: while all but two of the more than 20 employees at the current WDUQ will lose their Duquesne jobs when the LMA (and eventual sale) to Essential takes effect Friday morning, 11 of them will be working, either as paid staffers or on-air volunteers, for the new 90.5 operation. Jazz hosts Bob Studebaker and Helen Wigger will host the jazz format that will be heard on 90.5's HD2 channel, with Wigger also serving as operations director. Larkin Page-Jacobs will continue as "All Things Considered" local host and as a news reporter, and much of the rest of the news staff (excepting "Morning Edition" local host Alexandria Chaklos) will be making the move as well. Two of WDUQ's specialty shows, "Music from India" and the syndicated "Rhythm Sweet & Hot," will continue as well; Dr. Vijay Bahl and Harish Saluja were already volunteers, and "Rhythm" host Mike Plaskett, who'd been membership manager at WDUQ, will keep the show going at the new 90.5 as a volunteer, alongside co-host Bob Abraham.

But other key players in the existing WDUQ won't be moving across the river to the South Side studios of WYEP (91.3), which is partnering with Essential Public Media to operate the new 90.5. WDUQ general manager Scott Hanley, who led the unsuccessful Pittsburgh Public Media bid to buy the signal from Duquesne, has already departed for a new nonprofit job, and the station's director of engineering and IT, Chuck Leavens, was among the WDUQ staffers not offered a job at the new 90.5. (Fear not: he'll continue to run the Pubtech and Pubradio listservs that have become essential parts of the public radio universe.)

Tony Mowod, the signature voice of jazz on WDUQ and its syndicated JazzWorks service (and of jazz in Pittsburgh in general), tells the Post-Gazette he was offered a job with JazzWorks at its new home, but chose not to accept the offer, instead staying at Duquesne as an adjunct music professor and working with his own Pittsburgh Jazz Society to keep the music alive.

It's still not clear where 90.5 will be operating from on Friday morning, nor who'll be hosting "Morning Edition"; the station will eventually move to WYEP's "Community Broadcast Center" on the South Side, but it seems likely that the studios will remain at their temporary Duquesne University home for at least the start of the LMA period. And we're told the WDUQ calls will stay in place as well, at least until the LMA is converted to a $6 million sale to Essential Public Media.

*On our way back home from Pittsburgh, we caught something that will soon be history: the triple ID on K-Love outlet WLVX (107.1 Greenville). When the former WEXC was sold to EMF Broadcasting last year, the "K-Love" company said it really wanted only the FM signal and would put its two AM sisters, WLOA (1470 Farrell) and WGRP (940 Greenville) up for sale - and now the two little AMs have sold.

As Ohio Media Watch reports, the new owner is no big surprise: it's Joe Vilkie's Vilkie Communications, which had leased the WGRP signal a while back to simulcast Meadville-market oldies signal WMVL (101.7 Linesville). Vilkie is paying EMF $50,000 for WGRP and Youngstown rimshot WLOA, and OMW speculates that both stations will end up running the same "Cool" oldies now heard on WMVL. Pittsburgh-based broker Ray Rosenblum handled the sale of the AMs.

*In addition to the Susquehanna-licensed, Binghamton-market 93.3 we mentioned earlier, there's one other Keystone State noncommercial FM signal on the FCC's latest list of tentative selectees: north of Williamsport, a new class A allocation on 107.5 goes to Williamsport Guardian, Inc., the alternative-newspaper publisher that just put WXPI (88.5 Jersey Shore) on the air. The Guardian group prevailed over an application from Scranton's WVIA public radio and several religious broadcasters.

*The Montreal Canadiens weren't even the most successful hockey team in CANADA this past season (not that Lord Stanley's cup is hanging out in Vancouver at the moment, either) - but the Habs will have a new English-language radio home as they make another run for the trophy this fall. After many years on CJAD (800), the team has signed a seven-year deal with Bell Media's CKGM (Team 990), starting this fall.

More moves among Montreal institutions: Terry DiMonte, a veteran of CJAD, CHOM (97.7) and (briefly) CFQR (92.5) is coming back to the city after more than three years of wakeups at CFGQ in Calgary. DiMonte will be back on the air doing mornings at CHOM once a contract issue with current employer Corus is worked out, reports the Montreal Gazette.

*More Radio People on the Move in Ontario: After less than a year at CJCL (The Fan 590) in Toronto, Andrew Krystal is off the air, replaced in early afternoons by Eric Smith; he's reportedly being reassigned to other duties with station owner Rogers. In Ottawa, Milkman UnLimited reports Neil Headly is out as morning man at CJOT (EZ Rock 99.7).

And on TV, CTV wants a stronger signal in Hamilton and on the Niagara peninsula when it relaunches the "A" stations as "CTV2" this fall.

It's applying for digital relays of Barrie-licensed CKVR (Channel 3) on RF channel 35 in Hamilton, on the CHCH-TV tower, and on RF channel 42 in Fonthill, on a Bell wireless tower. CTV says it will continue to not sell local ad time in the Toronto/Golden Horseshoe market, but by being on the air in Hamilton and Niagara it can force cable companies to "simsub" the CKVR/CTV2 signal, complete with regional and national ads, over Buffalo stations that are carrying the same shows.

NorthEast Radio Watch is made possible by the generous contributions of our regular readers. If you enjoy NERW, please click here to learn how you can help make continued publication possible. NERW is copyright 2011 by Scott Fybush.