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May 12, 2003
Kingston Focuses on Blink
By SCOTT FYBUSH
 *How
important is NEW YORK's "Blink" (WNEW 102.7)
to Infinity right now? Enough to take the full attention of operations
manager Steve Kingston, at the very least; he's giving up the
programming reins at sister rock outlet WXRK (92.3) to concentrate
completely on the launch of the top 40-80s-90s-pop-entertainment-talk-Jennifer
Lopez hybrid (did we miss anything?) format up the dial. Robert
Cross heads to New York from Infinity's KROQ (106.7 Pasadena)
in Los Angeles to handle programming at K-Rock.
Over at Clear Channel, Frankie Blue
is out as PD of dance-CHR WKTU (103.5 Lake Success), seven years
after launching the format. Assistant music director Jeff Z.
is handling interim PD duties, with help from cluster manager
Tom Poleman.
Down on the AM dial, Peter Noel has
left the WWRL (1600 New York) morning show, just six months after
launching the talk program with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Noel,
a former writer for the Village Voice, is returning to
the world of print. WEPN (1050), meanwhile, has a new host to
go with its new calls: it's now carrying Jim Rome on tape delay
from 7-10 weeknights.
Three pirates are facing $10,000 notices
of apparent liability: Rawlins Charles was running a 96.7 transmitter
in Brooklyn, Fernando Alejandro was running on 95.1 in the Bronx,
and Emmanuel Frederic was operating on 89.7 and 87.9 in Brooklyn.
(NERW spent the week in New York, and we heard a very strong
religious pirate on 87.9 in the Bronx Sunday morning...)
 On
the tower front, we stopped up at 4 Times Square to see how things
are coming along with the construction of the new 385-foot mast
up on the roof, which will provide enough space for auxiliary
service from all the city's FM and TV broadcasters once it's
completed.
There's a new temporary one-bay Shively
FM antenna (left) mounted on the east side of the building
(atop the giant "4" sign), and some big cranes (above)
are now poised to haul the pieces of the new tower up to
the roof. We'll keep you posted!
Out on Long Island, Gary Cee has resigned
as PD of WLIR (92.7 Garden City); no replacement has been named
yet, and John Daniels (PD of sister WDRE 98.5) and Andre Serro
(PD of sister WXXP 105.3) are handling interim duties.
Way
out on Long Island, we're now told the automated format on WFTU
(1570 Riverhead) is not oldies, but a mix of classic and hard
rock and new hits.
And it was a quiet, quiet week back
upstate - but we can report that WHTR (1400 Albany) has legally
changed calls to WAMC now.
*The big news out of
MASSACHUSETTS was the sale of WAMG (1150 Boston);
Mega Communications, which paid $5 million for then-WNFT in 1998,
will get $8.6 million from Salem for the station when the deal
closes later this year.
 The
sale of WAMG will trigger a few other changes around the dial:
for Salem, it will likely mean a reshuffling of programming from
WROL (950) and WEZE (590) as 1150 adopts a conservative secular
talk format under new calls; for Mega, it means moving the Spanish
tropical "Mega" format and WAMG calls down the dial
to Dedham-licensed WBPS (890), which Mega has been leasing out
to a talk programmer.
It was a bad week for the Boston
Globe's Bob Ryan, who put his foot in his mouth with a comment
about basketball player Jason Kidd on Bob Lobel's WBZ-TV (Channel
4) "Sports Final" show last weekend, and ended up suspended
from the paper for a month.
It was a pretty good week for WINQ (97.7
Winchendon), which applied to move its transmitter a few miles
north across the NEW
HAMPSHIRE state line. WINQ wants
to run 6 kilowatts at 100 meters from a tower on route 12 just
north of Fitzwilliam, better serving its new target market of
Keene, where it's now part of the Saga cluster.
It was a very good week for the Lowell
Spinners, whose games can finally be heard on the radio after
dark at their home field. After several seasons on WCCM (on 800
in Lawrence, and now on 1490 in distant Haverhill), the Spinners
reached a deal last week to move their games to Lowell-licensed
WCAP (980). Play-by-play man Bob Ellis won't make the move; instead,
WCAP PD (and Lowell hockey voice) Ryan Johnston will call the
games.
 And
it was a sad week indeed for fans of old-time top 40 radio in
Springfield. Tom Ferrazzano, known on air as "Bud Stone,"
died Wednesday (May 7) in Southwick. Stone was a fixture on Springfield's
WHYN (560) in the sixties, returning in the eighties to do a
Saturday night oldies show on WHYN-FM (93.1); he was also active
with the Connecticut School of Broadcasting.
*Just a few bits of
VERMONT news: WXAL (93.7 Addison) has applied to
move from its tower site just outside Middlebury (the old 100.9
site, before that frequency moved to Berlin as WWFY) - and plans
to head all the way across Lake Champlain! WXAL wants to run
21 kilowatts at 108 meters, from a directional antenna, on Ainger
Hill north of Westport, N.Y.
On the DTV front, WVNY (Channel 22)
has been granted a change of DTV channel: instead of showing
up on channel 16, the ABC affiliate gets a prime spot on channel
13.
 *The future of NEW JERSEY's
104.9 got a little clearer last week: new owner Nassau stopped
the repeating loop on WEMG-FM (104.9 Egg Harbor City) and replaced
it with a simulcast of WPST (97.5 Trenton), in what may turn
out to be a permanent move.
WYGG (88.1 Asbury Park) was nailed with
a $13,000 fine from the FCC for violations of EAS rules and "failure
to operate under the terms of its license." Could that have
to do with the persistent rumors that WYGG was operating a transmitter
way over in Brooklyn?
And we're sorry to report the passing
of Hank Behre, one of the founders of WERA (1590 Plainfield);
Behre, who died May 8, was 80.
*We can't figure out
what Citadel is up to in northeast PENNSYLVANIA:
we passed through Scranton on the way home from New York, and
had a chance to listen to WCWI (94.3 Carbondale) and WEMR (1460
Tunkhannock) for a bit.
 Alert
NERW readers will recall that WCWI and WEMR had been simulcasting
"Cat Country 96," WCTO (96.1 Easton) from over in the
Allentown market - but on this trip, we heard WCTO doing a triple
legal ID with WCWI/WEMR...but the programming wasn't being simulcast
on the Scranton-area signals. Instead, WCWI and WEMR were doing
their own country format, but still using "Cat Country 96"
liners. Huh?
And down in Pittsburgh, WZUM (1590 Carnegie)
finally flipped to Starboard's Catholic programming last week.
*A veteran programmer
is retiring in CANADA: after 37 years at CKOC (1150 Hamilton),
PD Nevin Grant will retire at the beginning of November. In recent
years, Grant had also programmed Standard sister station CHAM
(820 Hamilton).
"Sound of Faith" has been
granted a new station in Woodstock, Ontario: the 50-watt religious
outlet will operate on 94.3.
And Eric Gruner is headed home; after
a few years in Toronto programming jazz CJRT (91.1), he's back
here in Rochester, where he used to run jazz WGMC (90.1 Greece),
and where he's now running a local cable access station.
*Stay tuned for next week's NERW...in
which you'll hear all about our ride around Manhattan in Ibiquity's
IBOC test van!
 *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
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You can also order by mail; just send a check for $16
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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
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