October 10, 2011

Nassau Awaits Judge's Ruling

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

*The stations owned by NEW JERSEY's Nassau Broadcasting Partners have lived to broadcast for at least another week while the company awaits a judge's decision about how its bankruptcy will be handled.

As we'd been reporting, Nassau's lenders, led by Goldman Sachs, were in court Thursday in Delaware asking Judge Kevin Gross to order the company into immediate Chapter 7 bankruptcy and liquidation - but Nassau management, led by Lou Mercatanti, had a different idea: it asked Judge Gross to convert the involuntary Chapter 7 petition into Chapter 11, which would allow Nassau to keep operating its stations.

Nassau says its stations have positive cash flow right now, and argued that continued operation during an orderly restructuring will allow the stations to keep producing revenue while the lenders look for buyers. (Radio Business Report says Mercatanti even submitted a letter Goldman Sachs had sent in August, asking Nassau to make a voluntary Chapter 11 filing before September 4.)

As of Sunday night, there's been no ruling from Judge Gross, so Nassau operations continue as usual (for some value of "usual," given the company's financial woes) while the company and its lenders await the judge's decision about what the next step will be.

*College Radio Day has deep roots in New Jersey, having been co-founded by Rob Quicke, general manager at William Paterson University's WPSC (88.7 Wayne), and it will boast more than 320 stations participating in the event this Tuesday.

Stations taking part in the event will show off their top programming, feature special guests and present a national show called "College Radio in 2011: Its Past, Present and Future." The event isn't just aimed at listeners - it's also meant to remind college and university officials of the importance of the stations on their campuses.

*It was a slow week indeed in PENNSYLVANIA, so slow that our lead story is a new on-air lineup at Philadelphia's relocated "Hot 107.9" (WPHI Pennsauken NJ). We already knew the station was running the syndicated Rickey Smiley show in morning drive; we now know it has Kendra G in middays, Q Deezy in afternoons and "The Home Team" (Mia, DJ Caesar and DJ Damage) at night.

At the extreme opposite corner of the state, Family Life Network has signed on its newest signal. WCGM (102.7 Wattsburg) rimshots Erie from the southeast; it's the moved-in reincarnation of the former WNAE-FM in Clarendon.

Another set of new call letters: Muncy Hills Broadcasting's new 88.5 in Scandia, near Warren, will be WYYR.

*On TV, traffic reporter Jim Lokay is leaving Pittsburgh's KDKA-TV (Channel 2) for Hearst sister station WCVB (Channel 5) in Boston, MASSACHUSETTS, where he'll anchor weekend editions of the "Eyeopener" morning news and report during the week. Lokay came to WTAE from Syracuse's News 10 Now, now part of Time Warner Cable's statewide YNN local news service.

*RHODE ISLAND's public radio dial completed its transition over the weekend, as WRNI (1290 Providence) consummated its deal with the Wheeler School and the local Latino Public Radio group to swap programming.

As first reported here in NERW, the deal plays out like this: Rhode Island Public Radio is paying Wheeler $75,000 a year plus three percent of increased revenues to shift its NPR lineup from 1290 on the AM dial to Wheeler's recently-upgraded WELH (88.1 Providence). LPR, in turn, goes from leasing 12 hours a day on WELH to 24 hours a day on 1290, giving it the platform it needs to qualify for Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding and continued growth.

There's another piece to the puzzle that emerged late last week, just ahead of the Saturday morning frequency swap: to avoid confusion, Rhode Island Public Radio has dropped the on-air use of the "WRNI" branding; instead, it's now "RI NPR," with a new logo that doubles as a stylized coverage map of its three FM signals: WELH in Providence and the northern parts of the state, WCVY (91.5 Coventry) in west-central Rhode Island and WRNI-FM (102.7 Narragansett Pier) in South County and Newport.

*Eastern CONNECTICUT's Red Wolf Broadcasting is adding another signal to its portfolio: owner John J. Fuller is the principal in "CSI Media Research," the winning bidder on that new class A FM signal on 94.9 just across Long Island Sound in Montauk, New York - and Fuller has now given that new 94.9 signal the "WJJF" calls he originally used on his first station (now WCRI 1180 in Hope Valley, R.I.)

Our friends over at RadioInsight.com note that Fuller recently registered "949News.com" and several similar domain names for the new station, suggesting it will try to fill the talk gap created by the demise of the old WXLM-FM - but they also note that Fuller followed up with a flurry of possible decoy registrations, including "949JohnFM.com" and "EagleCountry949.com."

*In Hartford, veteran jock Larry Wells is out at Buckley's WDRC-FM (102.9), where he'd been on the air since 1980. Wells had most recently been working afternoons and some midday shifts at the station, covering many airshifts for another Big D veteran, Floyd Wright, while he was recuperating from illness over the summer. PD Grahame Winters is being heard in middays now.

*On TV, the next chapter in the story of Bridgeport-licensed WSAH-TV (Channel 43) will be decided at a bankruptcy auction. Broker Kalil & Company is handling the auction, with bids due November 7. In recent months, the former Multicultural Television station has been carrying a mix of Retro Television programming and leased-time infomercials.

*We know a little more about NEW HAMPSHIRE's new TV newscast: we weren't familiar with any of the names of the new studio anchors on WBIN (Channel 50), and it turns out there's a good reason for that: they're not in WBIN's Derry studio but rather a thousand miles away in Davenport, Iowa, where the new "WBIN News @10" is being produced at the studios of Independent News Network, marking INN's first use by a station in our region.

INN is an interesting operation indeed: it produces "local" newscasts for a number of smaller stations around the country, using a mix of reporters and photographers in the local market and producers, anchors and studio staff in Davenport to produce a show that's beamed back to the local station by fiber or satellite. WBIN anchor Amanda Decker, for instance, had been anchoring the INN-produced newscasts for WNCF in Montgomery, Alabama and WLTZ in Columbus, Georgia before being reassigned to the WBIN show; WBIN's weatherman Kyle Dennis is still listed among the staff on WNCF's website. (Not for long, though; that low-rated ABC affiliate has entered a shared-services agreement with Montgomery CBS station WAKA that will apparently mean the end of the INN-produced news on WNCF.)

Some stations that use INN are fairly open about the choice, acknowledging that the cost savings from using INN's anchors and producers allows them to afford local reporters back home; WBIN has, understandably, downplayed the outsourcing aspect of its new newscast, which isn't yet listed among the company's clients on the INN webpage, though Binnie included INN among the station's "news partners" in an interview he gave to the New Hampshire Business Review last week.

As for WBIN's set, a comparison between a screenshot of the newscast's first night and the photos on INN's website show that the "New Hampshire" newscast comes from a slightly modified version of the set that INN had been using to produce a nightly newscast for the national Spanish-language Azteca America network.

Can a newscast anchored in eastern Iowa (by an anchor who now lists "Boston" as her location on her Facebook page) compete with the many decades of market domination by ABC affiliate WMUR-TV (Channel 9)? So far, WMUR doesn't seem too concerned...

*When VERMONT's broadcasters will get together November 19 for the Vermont Association of Broadcasters' annual banquet, they'll induct four more members into the group's Hall of Fame. This year's class includes veteran reporter Andy Potter, who recently retired from WCAX-TV (Channel 3) after a long radio career at such stations as WJOY, WDOT and WKDR; Vermont Public TV CEO John King; legendary sportscaster and hockey play-by-play voice George Commo and, perhaps most unusually, the late Rudy Vallee. What's the 1930s radio and movie heartthrob doing in the VAB hall? He was a Vermont native, born up north in Island Pond in 1901. Vallee died in 1986, but his widow Eleanor plans to attend the ceremony next month.

The November dinner will also honor several other Vermont broadcasters who are still active: WJOY (1230 Burlington) morning co-host Ginny McGehee and John Likakis of WBTN (1370 Bennington) will receive Distinguished Service Awards, McGehee for her nearly three decades on the air and Likakis for the work WBTN did to keep the community informed in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene. WJJR (98.1 Rutland) will receive the Alan Noyes Community Service Award for its annual blood drive, with additional awards to WOKO (98.9 Burlington) and WVNY/WFFF in Burlington.

*And we've been remiss in not noting some changes at Vox's Burlington cluster: Chris Villani comes to WCPV (101.3 Essex) as the new program director, University of Vermont basketball announcer and afternoon drive talk co-host. Villani replaces the departed Rob Ryan at the ESPN affiliate, which is also adding a nightly hour of local sports talk, "Champlain Valley Game Night," from 6-7 PM weeknights. Down the hall at WXZO ("Planet 96.7"), the syndicated "Nudge at Night" is gone, replaced by a live local 7-midnight shift hosted by Stevie Beats.

*During a three-decade career, NEW YORK TV news executive Dan Forman has worked at WABC and WNBC, and now he's completing the "Big Three" trifecta with a new gig at WCBS-TV (Channel 2), where he's been named managing editor. Forman comes to WCBS from the Manhattan-based DNAInfo.com local news site; he'd been station manager at WNBC before joining the site in 2008. Forman's resume also includes stops along the way at New Jersey's WWOR, Boston's WNEV, WLNE in Providence and WNYT in Albany.

*In Jamestown, longtime station manager Merrill Rosen stepped down a week ago, ending a remarkable 51-year career with WJTN (1240) and what became a five-station cluster now owned by Media One Group. Rosen started out doing sales at WJTN in 1960, becoming sales manager and then general manager by the mid-1970s, adding the GM title at additional stations as the cluster grew to include WWSE (93.3), WQFX (100.1) and former competitors WKSN (1340) and WHUG (101.9). Rosen was inducted into the New York State Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2010. Replacing Rosen at the helm of the Jamestown cluster is Jeffrey Storey, who moves north from the Panama City, Florida/Dothan, Alabama markets.

*Another veteran broadcast manager was honored in New York City last Monday: alumni of the old Capital Cities Broadcasting gathered at the Manhattan Club to honor the company's founder, Tom Murphy. The event was organized by longtime Cap Cities executive Phil Beuth, who was Murphy's first hire at the company in 1955. Attendees signed a souvenir book that was presented to Murphy as a gift, and the list of speakers included many former Cap Cities managers, as well as one of the company's most recognizable air talents, longtime WKBW anchor Irv Weinstein.

*Despite the plea we wrote about in last week's NERW, there was no last-minute savior for Long Island community station WEER (88.7 Montauk), and so the signal has gone silent for now. It's not clear what will become of that facility, which Barbara Barri's Hamptons Community Radio had acquired - but not finished paying off - from community station WPKN in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It's also still not clear what will become of the two unbuilt CPs HCR held, the part-time WEEG (90.7 East Hampton) and WEEW (89.1 Westhampton).

*Buffalo's WGR (550) has a new program director to replace the departed Andy Roth, who's now at the helm of CBS Radio's "92.3 the Fan" in Cleveland. Filling Roth's shoes is Allan Davis, a veteran Canadian programmer (CJCL "FAN 590" in Toronto, CFGO "Team 1200" in Ottawa) who's most recently been working at the Genesis sports stations in central Florida.

We didn't make it to Buffalo Tuesday night for the listener forum on the impending merger of WBFO (88.7) into former public radio rival WNED, but we heard from some readers who did, and there were no big surprises: among the fairly small audience (50 or so listeners in a room that had been readied for more than 200), there was strong support for WBFO's weekend blues programming and a call for a bigger emphasis on jazz, once a WBFO staple but now heard mainly late at night on 88.7. WNED still hasn't said exactly what it's planning for a program schedule on the new 88.7, but it appears station officials are hoping the FM signal will give them more of a radio reach into Canada, where WNED-TV draws much of its support. If that's indeed the case, they may be in for a surprise: WBFO's directional antenna and the presence of strong adjacent-channel CIRV (88.9) combine to make 88.7 essentially nonexistent in most of the Greater Toronto Area. (That's an area that does get a signal from WNED's 970 AM facility, which may end up being sold as part of the changes.)

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*Perhaps the least surprising news out of CANADA in some time comes from Montreal, where Bellmedia's CKGM (990) is rebranding from "The Team" to "TSN Radio."

It's a move that was widely anticipated when sister station CHUM (1050 Toronto) launched the "TSN Radio" brand earlier this year - and, yes, the TSN brand is being rolled out nationally, with CFRW (1290 Winnipeg) flipping from "Team" to "TSN" right away and every reason to believe that Ottawa's CFGO ("Team 1200") will follow suit eventually.

There's some new programming on the TSN Radio flagship in Toronto, too: Dan Lovranski, Jason Agnew and John Pollock of "Live Audio Wrestling" bring their show, "The LAW," from podcast-only to air starting early this morning. They'll be heard every Sunday night/Monday morning from midnight until 2 AM.

*In Toronto, Fitzroy Gordon's CKFG (98.7) has an identity now: it's "G 98.7," using the founder's initials not just in its callsign but its nickname.

There's no airstaff yet for the new Afro-Caribbean station; that will come in November, when the station ends its testing period and launches its full program lineup and website. (For now, it's just a teaser and live streaming at g987fm.com.)

*Out east, Pritchard Broadcasting has been denied a power increase for CJRP (103.5 Saint John NB). On the air only since 2003, the station has been through several owners, formats and callsigns in an attempt to make it viable, but it's been hampered by a 50-watt low-power signal. Owner Bob Pritchard hoped to move the classic hits station down the dial to 96.3 and boost power to 3,950 watts, but the CRTC says he failed to make the case that the station was unable to cover its own community of license. In the ruling, the agency said CJRP's application would amount to a change of station class that more closely resembles a new full-power station and should trigger a call for other new applicants for the 96.3 channel.

*And with all of NERW-land's baseball teams now out of the playoff picture, we turn our attention to Hockey on the Radio for 2011-2012.

Not much has changed across the NHL landscape this year: the Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins raised their banner last week on the same station that broadcast their big win in the spring, "Sports Hub" WBZ-FM (98.5). A few new stations have jumped on the network bandwagon: the spoked-Bs are heard this year on WCPV (101.3) in the Burlington market and WXTK (95.1) on Cape Cod in addition to nearly a dozen other returning affiliates around New England.

With the end of sports on CKAC (730), the Montreal Canadiens shift to FM this year for their French-language broadcasts, now heard on CHMP (98.5); English-language Habs play-by-play airs this year on what's now "TSN Radio," CKGM (990), moving from its longtime home on CJAD (800).

The Ottawa Senators extend their run on "Team 1200" CFGO in English; in French, they're still on 104.7, but it has flipped from "Souvenirs Garantis" CJRC to "CKOY" under new calls CKOF.

The Toronto Maple Leafs remain on CFMJ (640).

Back on the US side of the border, the Buffalo Sabres have extended their deal with WGR (550) for four more years. Downstate, the New York Islanders enter their second season on Hofstra University's WRHU (88.7), having reached a deal just as the season was getting underway.

MSG has radio rights to the other two metro-area teams and buys time for the broadcasts, with the New York Rangers mainly on WEPN (1050) and the New Jersey Devils on WFAN (660).

The Philadelphia Flyers join the FM movement this year, now that flagship WIP (610) has added an FM simulcast, WIP-FM (94.1), and across the state, the Pittsburgh Penguins continue their long relationship with Clear Channel's WXDX (105.9).

*How about the minors? In the AHL, The Portland Pirates play on WPPI (95.5) and WPEI (95.9) this year; the Manchester Monarchs remain on WGAM (1250) and WGHM (900 Nashua); the Worcester IceSharks stay put on WTAG (580); the Springfield Falcons play on WHYN (560); the Providence Bruins lack a local flagship but are heard in outlying areas on WNRI (1380 Woonsocket) and WBLQ (1230 Westerly); and the Connecticut Whale have both a new name and a new radio home, WCCC-FM (106.9 Hartford), with occasional Sunday conflicts with the Patriots resulting in the hockey games airing on delay. The Bridgeport Sound Tigers don't appear to have an over-the-air broadcast outlet this year.

The Albany Devils stay put on WTMM (104.5); the Adirondack Phantoms remain on Glens Falls' WNYQ (101.7); the Syracuse Crunch enter their second year on WSKO (1260); the Rochester Amerks return to WHTK (1280/107.3); and the defending Calder Cup champion Binghamton Senators stick with Clear Channel, but move from the AM dial (WINR 680/WENE 1430) to WBBI (Big 107.5), which will broadcast all 76 games this year.

The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins are on Entercom's WDMT (102.3) this year, while their former lead broadcaster Scott Stuccio moves down the road to the rival Hershey Bears, heard on an extensive radio network based at WQIC (100.1 Lebanon) and covering much of central Pennsylvania.

On the Canadian side, the Hamilton Bulldogs are in year two of a three-year deal with CHAM (820), while the Toronto Marlies are webcast-only. And out in Newfoundland, the former Manitoba Moose, displaced by the return of the NHL Winnipeg Jets, have become the St. John's IceCaps, heard on CJYQ (930).

*And in the massively-misnamed East Coast Hockey League (ECHL), the Elmira Jackals have a new radio deal with WOKN (99.5) and Bath's WVIN-FM (98.3); the Reading Royals are back on WIOV (1240) after a few years on crosstown WRAW (1340), and the Trenton Titans play on Rider College's WRRC (107.7).

*We'd offer a Basketball on the Radio listing, too...but that appears to be on hold for now. (If the season falls victim to the labor dispute, that's very bad news indeed to Entercom's WEEI in Boston, which was depending on the Celtics to compete against CBS Radio's Sports Hub/WBZ-FM lineup of Bruins hockey and Patriots football this winter; elsewhere, no changes were in the offing for the rest of the NBA lineup - Knicks on WEPN, Nets on WFAN, 76ers on WIP (and now WIP-FM) and Raptors on CJCL (Sportsnet 590).

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