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March 17,
2003
Harrison To Leave WCBS-FM
By SCOTT FYBUSH
*Forty-four years after his NEW YORK radio
career began, legendary morning man Harry Harrison will make
his last broadcast on WCBS-FM (101.1 New York) this Wednesday
morning, in what's being seen as another sign of big changes
coming on the Big Apple's longtime oldies outlet.
Harrison has been a New York fixture since his days as midday
man on WMCA (570), where he was a "Good Guy" from 1959
until 1968. That year, Harrison replaced Herb Oscar Anderson
in morning drive on WABC (770), where he would remain until 1979.
In 1980, Harrison began 24 years in morning drive on WCBS-FM,
where he'd eventually be joined by other WABC legends including
Dan Ingram and Ron Lundy.
Longtime WCBS-FM listeners have already heard some changes
in the last year or so: the disappearance of most of the pre-Beatles
music from the playlist, the dismissal of morning sports guy
Phil Pepe, and the recent departure of another WABC veteran,
Dan Daniel, from middays - so it's no wonder that the abruptness
of Harrison's departure (he announced for the first time on Friday's
show that this Wednesday's would be his last) is sparking plenty
of discussion on the message boards and beyond.
Harrison says the decision to leave WCBS-FM right now is all
his - and he's not "retiring," leaving the door open
to a return to the dials at some point. WCBS-FM hasn't named
a replacement; Dan Taylor will be doing the shift on an interim
basis after Harrison's final show, which he'll broadcast in front
of a live audience at Manhattan's Museum of Television and Radio.
 Only Harry Harrison
is big enough to keep this next item from being our lead story
this week: more than a year after it launched, the YES network
has finally won carriage on the Cablevision systems serving Long
Island, northern New Jersey, southern Connecticut, the Bronx,
Westchester and Rockland.
A deal reached between Cablevision and YES last week provides
at least a little something to make both sides happy: Cablevision
won't have to make YES available on its basic tier (thus increasing
cable rates for all its subscribers), instead offering it a
la carte for $1.95 or as part of a sports tier with MSG and
Fox Sports NY for $4.95 a month; YES gets the same $2.12 per
subscriber per month from Cablevision that it's been charging
other cable operators. It's a mixed bag for Yankees fans: some
of them had been getting MSG and Fox Sports without an extra
fee (they'll now have to pay for that $4.95 package, though their
basic cable rate will decrease somewhat), and anyone who wants
YES will need a set-top box to descramble the channel.
(Next week: NERW's annual look at major-league baseball
broadcasts across the region, just in time for Opening Day!)
On the DTV front, another signal is finally coming to the
New York City airwaves: WPIX-DT was seen testing last week, albeit
not on its assigned channel 33 spot. With the loss of the World
Trade Center, where most of the city's TV stations had just finished
building DTV facilities on September 11, it's been a scramble
to get digital TV back on the air - and the solution for WPIX
is a low-power (125 watt) transmitter at the Empire State Building,
operating on channel 12 under special temporary authority. We'd
expect WPIX-DT to return to channel 33 whenever permanent DTV
facilities for New York are completed, whether in Bayonne, N.J.
or at the Trade Center site - but it will take a few years.
Heading upstate, there's a full airstaff in place now at Clear
Channel active rocker WWDG (105.1 DeRuyter) - but most of them
aren't at the Dog studios in Syracuse. Morning guy Bob Schmidt
doubles in creative services for sister AM stations WHEN (620)
and WSYR (570); middayer Laura Steele does her shift from WFBQ
in Indianapolis; night guy Chad Erickson is at WMRQ in Hartford,
leaving only afternoon jock Scorch as a full-time WWDG personality.
Up in Watertown, John Shatraw is the latest departure at WWNY
(Channel 7), departing the station instead of trading his noon
anchor shift for weekends, as had been planned. Former WWNY morning
anchor Mark Mason has been filling in on radio for WTOJ (103.1
Carthage) morning host Annette Miller, who's out on maternity
leave.
Where are they now? Former WBEE-FM (92.5 Rochester) PD Coyote
Collins has landed on his feet in beautiful Flint, Michigan,
where he's now programming country station WFBE (95.1).
 *A
station sale in MASSACHUSETTS is all in the family:
Marlin Broadcasting is selling WBOQ (104.9 Gloucester) to Westport
Broadcasting for $5.8 million, but the sale really just shifts
the station from Woody Tanger to his son Doug.
WBOQ started out in the late eighties as classical "W-Bach,"
the successor to Simon Geller's legendary one-man WVCA operation,
but in recent years it's become a swinging standards station.
Out on Nantucket, a Paul Christensen has asked the FCC to
allocate 97.7 as a new class A frequency. Comments on the proposal
are due May 5 (and we wonder what happened to John Garabedian's
proposal last year to allocate 98.7A out there?)
*We're happy to report that WHOM (94.9 Mount
Washington) is back to broadcasting from NEW HAMPSHIRE's
tallest peak, as of about a week ago. We're hearing that the
WHOM signal is once again booming loudly into Sherbrooke, Quebec,
among other distant points...
*Laura Schlessinger's show is getting bumped
back in MAINE's biggest city: WGAN (560 Portland) had
been running her show from 6-9 PM, but now we hear it's being
moved back to 8-10 PM to clear two hours for a delayed broadcast
of the Bill O'Reilly show from 6-8 PM.
Way down east in Calais, Maine PBS received a license to cover
last week for WMED-DT (Channel 10), which means most of the Pine
Tree State now has DTV service from Maine PBS (and those lucky
Bangorites have DTV service from all of the Big Three networks,
too!)
*Just one little bit of news from PENNSYLVANIA,
and it comes from Pittsburgh: John Poister is leaving his news
director position at Fox affiliate WPGH (Channel 53) to become
program director of talker WPTT (1360 McKeesport).
*Just one little bit of news from CANADA,
too: we hear CISD (107.7) in Iroquois, Ontario is back on the
air after a long absence; NERW North Country correspondent Michael
Roach heard it across the border in Ogdensburg, N. Y., with its
old IDs of "the Storm" and a pretty wide variety of
music...
*That's it for this very quiet news week...we'll be back next
week with more news and the major league baseball list!
 *Have
you ordered your Tower Site Calendar 2003 yet? That spiffy
image of the WBEN transmitter site on Grand Island is this month's
image...and it's accompanied by more than a dozen others (including
Providence's WHJJ; Mount Mansfield, Vermont; KOMA in Oklahoma
City; the legendary WSM, Nashville; WGN, Chicago and many more),
more dates in radio history, a convenient hole for hanging -
and we'll even make sure all the dates fall on the right days!
This year's calendar is currently shipping! Calendars
are in stock, and orders placed now will ship within 24 hours!
And this year, you can order with your Visa, MasterCard, Discover
or American Express by using the handy link below!
Better yet, here's an incentive to make your 2003 NERW subscription
pledge a little early: support NERW/fybush.com at the $60 level
or higher, and you'll get this lovely calendar for free!
How can you go wrong? (Click here
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with a major credit card...)
You can also order by mail; just send a check for $16
per calendar (NYS residents add 8% sales tax), shipping included,
to Scott Fybush, 92 Bonnie Brae Ave., Rochester
NY 14618.
International orders: Calendars are US$18 to Canada,
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*And we're also happy to announce that
our good friends at M Street have released the 11th edition of
the M Street Radio Directory. With the disappearance
of the old Vane Jones log and the declining accuracy of the Broadcasting
Yearbook, the M Street directory is widely regarded as the most
accurate, most comprehensive source of information on the US
and Canadian radio scene - and we're thrilled to be able to offer
it to you at a substantial discount!
The directory includes power, frequency, ownership, key personnel,
formats, ratings and much more information for every radio station
in the U.S. and Canada, and now runs almost 900 pages in an 8.5"
x 11" softcover book. List price is $79 (plus $7 shipping/handling),
but if you order through fybush.com/NorthEast Radio Watch, you
can get this invaluable resource on your shelf for $69 (plus
$7 s/h) - a $10 savings! And your purchase benefits the continued
publication of NERW and Tower Site of the Week, so everybody
wins!
You can order in either of two ways: to order by major credit
card, call 1-800-248-4242, ask for Irene, and tell her
you want the "NorthEast Radio Watch" discount. Or,
send check or money order for $76 ($69 + $7 s/h) to Scott Fybush,
92 Bonnie Brae Ave., Rochester NY 14618. Either way, you'll put
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2003 by Scott Fybush. |