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May 5, 2003
Another New Albany FM?
By SCOTT FYBUSH
PLEDGE DRIVE UPDATE: Thanks
to the many of you who responded to the semi-annual call for
support that began two weeks ago 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
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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!
 *It's not as though the state
capital of NEW YORK doesn't have enough FM signals
- between the 80-90 drop-ins of recent years and a slew of move-ins
from the surrounding countryside, the Albany market now encompasses
some 21 commercial FMs. But if a proposal now before the FCC
is accepted, there will soon be a 22nd: the station that's now
WNYQ (105.7 Queensbury), an hour north of Albany in the Glens
Falls market.
Vox Radio is asking the FCC to change
WNYQ's allocation from 105.7B1 in Queensbury (where WNYQ now
runs 1570 watts at 1273 feet above average terrain) to 105.7A
in Malta, a town of about 2000 people along I-87 near the Saratoga-Schenectady
county line, well within the Albany radio market.
 Since
the move would leave Queensbury without "first local service"
(never mind that it can easily pick up nearly a dozen local Glens
Falls stations, not to mention most of Albany), Vox would then
change the allocation of WCQL (95.9 Glens Falls) to Queensbury
- and just for good measure, create a new "first" service
on 105.9A at Indian Lake, where routes 28 and 30 meet high in
the Adirondacks between North Creek and Blue Mountain Lake.
This isn't the first such move in the
Glens Falls area; in fact, it was just a couple of years ago
that WHTR moved from 93.5 Corinth to 93.7 Scotia (just outside
Schenectady), sending WFFG (107.1) from Hudson Falls to Corinth
to compensate. And it wasn't all that long ago, for that matter,
that Saratoga Springs' 102.3 moved south to Ballston Spa to become
the Albany-market station that's now "Kiss" WKKF. And
the allocations beat goes on...
 *New
York City lost a veteran TV reporter last week. Chris Borgen
died on April 25 in Ridgewood, N.J. Borgen was a New York City
police detective before moving into broadcasting in the mid-sixties
at WINS (1010) in its music days and WNCN (104.3). He switched
over to TV in 1966 at CBS, becoming a police reporter at WCBS-TV
(Channel 2), where he remained until his retirement in 1995.
Borgen was 76.
The former "Jukebox Radio"
translators, W232AL (94.3 Pomona NY) and W276AQ (103.1 Fort Lee
NJ) are getting a new life: owner Gerry Turro has filed to sell
them to "Bridgelight Corp.", the company that bought
WPDQ (89.7 Freehold Township NJ) last year and turned it into
a religious station. W232AL has been silent since the Jukebox
feed from WJUX (99.7 Monticello) ended; W276AQ has been relaying
WKHL (96.7 Stamford CT), except when the atmosphere has offered
up other signals instead...and as we post this from our downstate
"alternate" base Sunday night, both translators are
on the air with WKHL's audio. (And we checked WJUX on the way
down; it's still running infomercials mixed with occasional bits
of oldies - and still ID'ing and promoting itself as though it's
being heard in New Jersey...)
The FCC has turned thumbs down on WKCR
(89.9 New York)'s plans to move to the mast atop Riverside Church
in upper Manhattan. The Columbia University station, you'll recall,
transmitted from the World Trade Center until September 11; since
then, it's been running at low power from a Columbia campus rooftop,
losing much of the extensive coverage it enjoyed before the attacks.
Seton Hall's WSOU (89.5 South Orange
NJ) and Harlem Community College's WHCR (90.3 New York) both
objected to WKCR's plans to move to the Riverside site (the former
home of WRVR 106.7, now WLTW and long since moved to the Empire
State Building), and the FCC upheld those objections, denying
WKCR's application.
(Riverside is also soon to be the home
of a new on-channel booster for Fordham University's WFUV 90.7,
the target of objections from WHCR and from WFMU 91.1 over in
East Orange, N.J. NERW admires and supports both WFUV and WFMU,
and we'd note that extensive driving over the last few days in
WFUV's home borough of the Bronx, as well as Manhattan and even
Queens, well beyond WFMU's protected contour, suggests to us
that WFMU, which has used the "threat" of WFUV interference
as a fundraising tactic, is making much ado about nothing - especially
since the areas it's worried about in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn
already have a much stronger second-adjacent signal in WNYE 91.5.
And if you're going to look at the WNYE tower in Brooklym, we
highly recommend doing so from Junior's restaurant on Flatbush
Avenue. Try the cheesecake - but we digress...)
 The
call change that led last week's NERW is now reality: we heard
a "WEPN" ID on 1050 New York for the first time over
the weekend. On the way down, we also heard the new top-hour
ID on WAMC-FM (90.3 Albany)'s ever-growing network - including
an ID for "WAMC-AM 1400 Albany." It's interesting to
us on two counts: first, like almost every public radio AM station
we've ever heard, it incorrectly inserts "-AM" as part
of the legal callsign; second, because we haven't seen the call
change from WHTR reflected in any FCC filings yet.
Out on Long Island, we hear WFTU (1570
Riverhead) has returned to the air after spending most of the
winter silent; programming is the same automated oldies that
were being run before WFTU went dark, we're told...
And back home in upstate New York, we
won't be able to watch WGRZ's Buffalo news on WPXJ (Channel 51)
in Batavia anymore. The 10 PM newscast came to an abrupt end
last week, leaving the WIVB-produced 10 PM show on WNLO (Channel
23) as the only entry at that hour - but not for long. Sinclair
says it will launch "News Central" on its WB affiliate,
WNYO (Channel 49), late this year - we can't wait to sit in NERW
Central and watch the same Baltimore-produced content on 49 and
Rochester's WUHF (Channel 31) at the same time!
 *A format change in western
PENNSYLVANIA started off the month of May - so far
west, in fact, that it's really the Youngstown, Ohio market.
We never really understood why WLLF
(96.7 Mercer) was running smooth jazz to begin with, but now
we can stop wondering - Cumulus pulled that format last Thursday
and replaced it with oldies as "Oldies 96.7."
 The
oldies, in turn, came off sister station WWIZ (103.9 Mercer),
which stunted with construction noises before flipping to rock
as "Rock 104."
In Philadelphia, there's a new addition
to the Comcast cable system in and around the city: WWAC from
Atlantic City, NEW
JERSEY. You may recall that
WWAC shut down its analog channel 53 transmitter, which operated
with low power and never covered much beyond Atlantic City and
vicinity, and went DTV-only on channel 44 from Waterford Works,
N.J., where it now covers the Philadelphia market with a signal
that merits cable must-carry.
 And down
in Chambersburg, Dame Broadcasting flipped WCHA (800) from news/talk
to Jones' Music of Your Life format on May 1. The new format
is being simulcast across the Maryland line on Dame's WHAG (1410
Halfway MD).
*So
the studios of the Clear Channel cluster in Hartford, CONNECTICUT are
more than just a hole in the wall, it's true - but they had a
hole in the wall Friday morning! A car crashed into the first
floor of the "candy cane" building at 10 Columbus Blvd.,
home to WKSS, WMRQ and the rest of the group; luckily, nobody
was injured.
Meanwhile at the Infinity stations,
Bruce Stevens is moving from mid-mornings to afternoon drive
on WTIC (1080 Hartford), where he'll be co-hosting with Colin
McEnroe. Financial advisor Jim Vicevich, formerly with WFSB-TV,
WVIT-TV and Connecticut Public TV, will take over the 10-noon
shift effective today.
*We'll go next to RHODE
ISLAND, where former WOR program director David Bernstein
has found a new gig. He'll take over as OM/PD of Citadel's WPRO
(630 Providence), WSKO (790 Providence) and WSKO-FM (99.7 Wakefield-Peace
Dale). That move will free Ron St. Pierre to focus on his on-air
duties as host of WPRO's morning show. (Bernstein's no stranger
to New England; before heading down to WOR, he was program director
at Boston's WBZ.)
Meanwhile, over at Clear Channel, All
Access reports that WHJY (94.1) GM Bud Paras resigned on
April 25. No word yet on a replacement.
And we're sorry to report the death
on April 25 of Gus Parmet, veteran sports announcer whose accomplishments
included creating "Calling All Sports," the weekend
sports show Guy Mainelli would later make famous on WBZ. Parmet
was 83.
*MASSACHUSETTS is
getting a new morning show. Boston's WFXT (Channel 25) is advertising
to fill 36 new positions being created for its new morning news,
expected to debut late this summer.
 Meanwhile
on cable, next Monday marks the debut of "CN8 New England,"
Comcast's replacement for "ATT3," the local-origination
channel its predecessor AT&T Broadband had offered. CN8 will
begin with a hefty dose of simulcasts from its sister CN8 channel
in the mid-Atlantic region, with not much left over from the
ATT3 schedule, from the looks of it.
*From NEW HAMPSHIRE
comes word that New Hampshire Public TV's WEKW (Channel 52) in
Keene is pushing ahead on the construction of its new tower,
to accomodate the antenna for WEKW-DT (Channel 49); you can see
some exciting construction pictures at www.ccdx.org/scrapbook/WEKW/WEKW.htm.
*And the big news
from CANADA is the retirement of the legendary Moses Znaimer
from his post as president of CHUM Television. Znaimer was one
of the founders of CITY-TV (originally channel 79, now channel
57) in Toronto in 1972, breaking the staid mold of most TV to
create a multicultural, interactive, high-energy TV station that
really seemed to be, as its slogan claimed, "Everywhere."
(Any time you see a TV anchor or host moving around a working
newsroom instead of sitting behind a desk, that's Znaimer you
should be thanking.)
Znaimer will remain in charge of a group
of educational TV channels partially owned by CHUM, and he'll
continue working on his "MZTV" television museum...and
it's safe to say we haven't heard the last of him any time yet.
Over at the CRTC, they're looking into
a complaint that the programming on CKEY (101.1 Fort Erie) is
actually coming from across the border in the U.S. It probably
doesn't help that "Wild 101" identifies itself as "Buffalo's
Party Station" and lists directions to its "Buffalo
Studio" on its Web site, but what do we know?
 *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.
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2003 by Scott Fybush. |