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April 28, 2003
Jerry Williams, 1924-2003
By SCOTT FYBUSH
PLEDGE DRIVE UPDATE: Thanks
to the many of you who responded to the semi-annual call for
support that began last week here on NERW! Your financial support
- and even just the kind words from some who were unable to provide
financial support - are most appreciated as we continue to try
to give you the most complete coverage of the broadcast scene
in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada.
As for those of you who are still
reading NERW for "free" - especially those of you with
those fancy nameplates on your desks that say "PD"
or "GM" or "VP" - it's never too late to
do your part. Just click here to see why we need your support, and how easy
it is to make a contribution with Visa, Master Card, Discover
or American Express. Heck, you can even get a free Tower Site
Calendar out of the deal! (Those of you who gave at the $60 level
last week will be receiving your calendars later this week, now
that we have a new shipment just back from the printer.)
Thanks again for supporting NERW...and
on with the week's news!
 *TUESDAY
UPDATE: Just in to NERW
is word that Jerry Williams has died. The dean of Boston talk
radio, Williams came to town in 1957, already a decade into a
career that began in Bristol, Virginia in 1946. At Mac Richmond's
WMEX (1510), Williams' night shift was a sharp departure from
the top 40 the station played the rest of the day. When Williams
took the air at 10 PM, WMEX turned into Boston's first talk station,
as Williams interviewed the newsmakers of the day and took listeners'
phone calls.
In 1965, Williams departed for Chicago's
WBBM, but he was back in town four years later, bringing his
talk show back to the nighttime airwaves at WBZ (1030), where
he stayed until October 1976, when he headed to New York for
a brief stint at WMCA (570), followed by four years at Philadelphia's
WWDB (96.5).
In 1981, Williams was back on the air
again in Boston as part of the original talk lineup at WRKO (680),
the station that was once WMEX's competitor in the waning days
of AM top 40. Williams, now ensconced in an afternoon drive shift,
quickly became the best-known and most controversial talker in
town, using his show as a forum to oppose mandatory seat belt
laws and, most memorably, to support a 1990 tax revolt (launching,
in the process, the political careers of Barbara Anderson of
Citizens for Limited Taxation - not to mention the radio career
of the Herald's Howie Carr, who would later make
that WRKO shift his own).
In 1994, Carr replaced Williams in the
afternoon, with the veteran host moving to mid-mornings on WRKO
(a shift he derided as "The World's Shortest Talk Show");
by January 1997, Williams had been relegated to a weekend slot,
and by 1998 he was gone from WRKO and living in retirement on
the South Shore.
Williams couldn't stay silent for long,
though. In January 2000, he resurfaced as part of an ambitious
talk lineup on the "new" WMEX (1060 Natick), but health
problems got in the way, and he was off the air there within
two months. A stroke in April 2001 further weakened him, but
not enough to keep him from trying a daily show on WROL (950
Boston) last December and even making a return to WRKO to do
some weekend fill-in this past February.
We'll have more on Williams' passing
later this week in NERW.
 *It was October 20, 1927 when the callsign "WEVD"
was first heard on the NEW YORK radio dial, on a
little 500-watt signal way up there at 1220 kilocycles - and
ever since then, those calls have been heard somewhere on the
dial in market number one. But after more than 75 years and three
distinct spots on the dial (the original WEVD, which landed on
1300, then on 1330, and is today's WWRV; WEVD-FM, which lasted
on 97.9 from the fifties until 1988; and the former WHN/WMGM/WHN/WFAN/WUKQ
on 1050, which took the WEVD calls in a trade for the FM signal
in 1988), the initials of famed labor leader Eugene Victor Debs
are about to bow out for good.
It's no surprise, really, that Disney will change the calls
when it formally converts its LMA of WEVD (1050) into a $78 million
purchase that's expected to close within the week; after all,
the WEVD calls have long since ceased to have much relevance
to New York radio listeners, and they've only been heard once
an hour since 1050 flipped to ESPN radio in September 2001.
So "WEPN" it will be at 1050 on the dial...and only
those few of us who feel a deep passion for New York radio history
are likely to spend much time reflecting on the loss of the fifth-oldest
callsign in continuous New York use. (Only WOR, WNYC, WMCA and
WWRL have been around longer.)
*Meanwhile on today's radio scene, the brewing discontent
between AFTRA and Clear Channel's New York cluster was quelled
last week with the announcement of a tentative agreement on a
new contract for AFTRA-represented talent at WKTU, WAXQ, WTJM
and WLTW. (WHTZ's talent are represented under a different contract
but are expected to reach a similar agreement.)
The sticking point had been Clear Channel's intent to use
voicetracking for certain overnight and weekend dayparts, an
issue that AFTRA had hoped to raise during a planned public rally
at Bryant Square in midtown Manhattan. The rally - and AFTRA's
Web site attacking voicetracking - disappeared suddenly Wednesday
when the deal was announced. Details of the agreement have yet
to be revealed, and NERW suspects we've yet to hear the end of
this issue - if not with Clear Channel, then with other big-market
players...
 Downtown at Emmis,
WQHT (97.1 New York) morning co-host Star was back on the air
last week after a two-week suspension. It wasn't the first time
Star had been de-aired, and neither the hip-hop jock nor Hot
97 is saying what the latest incident was all about - only that
he's apologized to the sales department.
Up in Westchester, WFAS (1230 White Plains) quietly segued
from "Westchester's Familiar and Sentimental" to "Westchester's
Soft Favorites," adding some more seventies AC to its standards
playlist; over on the FM side (WFAS-FM 103.9 White Plains and
WFAF 106.3 Mount Kisco), Pat Marino's old "Love Songs at
Night" shift will give way to John Tesh's syndicated show
tonight; the shift had been voicetracked since Marino left the
station April 13.
What's a class A signal in Briarcliff Manor worth? $20.3 million,
at least if you're Pamal; that's the reported sale price for
the erstwhile WYNY, now WXPK (107.1).
 In Albany, WHTR
(1400) broke from the simulcast with modern rocker WKRD (93.7
Scotia) this week to begin simulcasting public radio WAMC (90.3
Albany), which is paying $500,000 for the signal. WAMC just filed
to change its calls to WAMC-FM, so we'd expect 1400 to begin
ID'ing as WAMC pretty much any day now.
West of town, Sound of Life's religious WPGL (90.7 Pattersonville)
was knocked off the air a week ago by a fire that gutted its
transmitter site on Crawford Road in Rotterdam. Some quick engineering
work and loaned equipment helped the station get its 30-watt
signal back on the air right away; we're told the fire started
in a generator building, reminiscent of the much bigger blaze
on Mount Washington a few months back.
In Utica, country WRBY (102.5 Rome) has dropped the syndicated
"Lia" show at night in favor of a local airshift. Mark
Weston, who does production for Bob 102.5 and oversees the "Sports
Star" network of AM stations (WRNY 1350 Rome, WLFH 1230
Little Falls, WUTQ 1550 Utica and WADR 1480 Remsen), will take
on that night shift as well.
Syracuse's ambitious "DestiNY" project, the expansion
of the Carousel Center into a mammoth regional shopping/amusement/entertainment/lodging
facility, has a new partner: Clear Channel Entertainment signed
on last week to manage the entertainment aspects of the project,
including a 40,000 seat arena/stadium and an indoor performing
arts center. No doubt there'll be plenty of synergy opportunities
for Clear Channel's broadcast operations in Syracuse, which include
WIXT-TV (Channel 9), WSYR (570), WYYY (94.5) and WWHT (107.9).
Speaking of Syracuse, oldies WSEN (92.1 Baldwinsville) has
added Jeff Moulton to its weekend staff. The veteran Utica jock
was last on the air here in Rochester, doing Saturday nights
on WBBF (93.3 Fairport).
 *In
MASSACHUSETTS, the airshifts have been, well, shifting
at AAA WXRV (92.5 Haverhill) to make room for the arrival of
new PD Nicole Sandler, who'll be operating from WXRV's Haverhill
base instead of sister station WNCS up in Montpelier, VERMONT.
She's now handling the 3-7 PM shift, sending former afternoon
host Bob Stuart to middays and the shift formerly occupied by
Sandler's predecessor as PD, Joanne Doody, who's now out of 30
How Street. At night, Bill Hickey joins the staff, replacing
Perry Persoff, who's now heard on Sunday afternoons.
Worcester talker WORC (1310) has a new host for its "Left
of Center" liberal talk show. After auditioning dozens of
candidates from Worcester County, WORC picked Paul Healy to kick
off the show, which launches this Friday (May 2) and will be
heard every Friday at 9 AM.
 We dipped into the
NERW photo archives to show you this one - veteran WBZ-TV (Channel
4) anchor Jack Williams waving goodbye to your editor as he departed
1170 Soldiers Field Road - but only because Jack is back in the
news this week, reunited with his longtime partner Liz Walker.
"Jack and Liz" were one of the two legendary Boston
anchor teams of the eighties and nineties, rivaled only by WCVB's
real-life couple of Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson. While "Chet
and Nat" broke up both on TV and behind the scenes, Williams
and Walker were split up by management in 1998 in an attempt
to boost ratings. Williams was exiled to weekends for a while,
then came back to early evenings; Walker left evenings in 2000
to do the noon show and have more time with her family. But as
of this week, "Jack and Liz" are back together on WBZ's
noon newscast (Williams keeps the 5 PM anchor chair as well),
and somehow everything just feels a little more right with the
world again...
(And look carefully behind Jack - that's WBZ radio's own Jay
McQuaide looking up and wondering what the heck Jack is waving
at.)
*In MAINE, Fox affiliate WPFO (Channel
23) in Waterville finally turned off the test pattern and launched
for real this week. (Its sister station, channel 15 in Charlotte
Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands, just changed calls - it dropped
the WPXO Pax calls and picked up the old Massachusetts callsign
of WCAV!)
*In RHODE ISLAND, Tim Schiavelli is
departing the PD chair at WBRU (95.5 Providence) after 11 years
at the Brown University student-run modern rocker. Brown alumnus
Seth Resler, who started at WBRU, worked in Boston at WBCN and
then went to Seattle's KNDD (107.7) as music director, will take
over from Schiavelli this summer.
*NEW JERSEY's newest radio station
is now on the air with its real format. WIBF-FM (88.7 Port Republic)
is now simulcasting the contemporary Christian music of WXHL
(89.1 Christiana DE).
Up in Monmouth County, Mike Sauter is moving on from his PD
job at WBJB (90.5 Lincroft), but not from the AAA format; he's
moving to PENNSYLVANIA and the PD chair
of WYEP (91.3 Pittsburgh), where he replaces Chris Griffin, who's
leaving to join the staff of syndicated AAA show "E-Town."
*The big news in the Keystone State this week was out of Philadelphia,
where it's anyone's guess whether veteran WIP (610) programmer
Tom Bigby is still running the show at the sports-talk station.
Bigby, who founded the sports format at WIP, was reportedly told
last week that he'll now report to WYSP (94.1) operations manager
Tim Sabean. The Philadelphia Daily News says Bigby
didn't take the news well, and was sent home for the weekend
to cool down. He's supposed to be back at WIP later this week,
but given all the other change there (GM Cecil Forster departed
earlier in the year, and former hosts Mike Missanelli and Joe
Conklin are now across town doing mornings at WMMR), it's anyone's
guess what will actually happen. Stay tuned...
On the TV side, KYW-TV (Channel 3) has some change in the
works, too: it's reportedly trying to lure WCAU (Channel 10)
anchor Larry Mendte over to Independence Mall to anchor its early-evening
newscasts. (The Daily News reports that KYW also may replace
its 5 PM news with Dr. Phil, moving its first newscast
to 4 PM.) Mendte has been off the air on WCAU's 6 and 11 PM newscasts,
though he's still anchoring at 4 PM.
 Meanwhile in Pittsburgh, Sinclair's
WPGH (Channel 53) is the latest guinea pig in the company's "News
Central" experiment, in which local news staffs are cut
and large portions of the news are produced out of a central
facility in Hunt Valley, Maryland. At WPGH, that will mean ten
jobs will be cut after May 27, when the local "Ten O'Clock
News" is replaced by two "News Central" shows,
an hour at 10 and a half-hour at 11, the Fox affiliate's first
attempt at direct competition against Pittsburgh's Big Three
affiliates. Sheila Hyland will stay with WPGH as the sole evening
anchor.
And if you've been wondering what legendary DJ/programmer
Clarke Ingram has been up to, we can report that he's been glued
to WZUM (1590 Carnegie) all week waiting for some sign of the
new Catholic programming there. At press time, Clarke tells NERW,
the same long loops of music are still playing, with just a couple
of weekend leased-time shows to break the monotony. (Have something
better for Clarke to do than listening to 1590? Drop
him a line, won't you...)
*In CANADA, the CRTC approved the
C$9 million sale of CKGE (94.9) and CKDO (1350) in Oshawa, Ontario
from Corus to Doug Kirk and Rae Roe, who own CJKX (95.9 Ajax)
in the same Durham Region market east of Toronto - not to mention
smooth jazz CIWV (94.7 Hamilton) just down the dial and across
the lake.
And Monday morning marks the return to Toronto of native Bob
Dearborn, who made a name for himself in Chicago, where he was
a jock on legendary stations like WCFL and WJJD. Dearborn left
an afternoon shift at oldies WJMK (104.3 Chicago) to head home
to T.O., where he's the new morning host on standards CHWO (740).
We'll be rolling tape...
 *Have
you ordered your Tower Site Calendar 2003 yet? That spiffy
image of the WBEN transmitter site on Grand Island is just one
of a dozen exciting images...and it's accompanied by many 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
to visit our Support page, where you can make your NERW contribution
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,
US$20 to the rest of the world, postage included. Send checks/international
money orders (in US dollars) to the address above, or e-mail
for credit-card ordering information.
*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
the most trusted, accurate information about the radio industry
in print today on your bookshelf.
NorthEast Radio Watch is made possible by the generous
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2003 by Scott Fybush. |