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October 6, 2003
WEEI's Dennis Suspended
*Call it the "Lonsberry virus,"
if you will - at least, that's what one local radio wag of our
acquaintance has dubbed the unfortunate propensity of late by
talk-show hosts to make remarks with racial overtones in front
of a live mike.
The putative virus' namesake, former WHAM (1180 Rochester)
talk host Bob Lonsberry, is still awaiting word at press time
about his future at his other job, morning host on KNRS (570)
in Salt Lake City. (The latest update to KNRS' Web site suggests
that Lonsberry will be back on the air there soon;
meanwhile, Lonsberry himself is telling visitors to his site
that he expects to be back on the air in Rochester "after
the first of the year.")
But even as the Lonsberry story continued to spark follow-up
after follow-up in the Rochester media, WEEI (850 Boston) morning
co-host John Dennis was trying to explain away a comment last
Monday in which he joked that the gorilla who escaped from Boston's
Franklin Park Zoo was "a METCO gorilla waiting for the bus
to take him to Lexington." And since METCO is the urban-suburban
school desegregation program, and the zoo is in a predominantly
African-American neighborhood, the outcry was predictable.
Dennis, a veteran Boston sportscaster who worked for 21 years
at channel 7 before joining WEEI, apologized on the air Wednesday
and was suspended for Friday's and Monday's show. WEEI says it
will provide public service announcements for METCO and personally
apologize to those who called and complained; several Boston
city councilors and other political leaders are still calling
on the station to fire Dennis.
And in the midst of all that came the national
stories about Rush Limbaugh...but the joy of writing a strictly
regional column is that we can leave the coverage on that front
to the national trades.
*Just a few other notes from MASSACHUSETTS as
we wait for the Sox to take out the A's Monday night and advance
to the ALCS: WJUL (91.5 Lowell) launched its "Lowell Sunrise"
collaboration with the Lowell Sun on Monday, and
we hear it was replete with technical gaffes and production foulups.
What's more, the show originated from WJUL's own student-run
studios instead of from the separate studio the Sun was
to have provided, further fueling discontent among the UMass/Lowell
students who operate WJUL and who feel the "Sunrise"
deal was worked out without their involvement.
And in Worcester, Tom Holt gets the nod as PD of WSRS (96.1),
replacing Steve Peck, who's now PD of Providence's WSNE (93.3
Taunton).
 *Univision
Radio (the former Hispanic Broadcasting) is adding a third station
to its NEW YORK lineup, paying The Morey Organization
(aka Jarad Communications) $60 million for WLIR (92.7 Garden
City).
WLIR has long been the Morey group's flagship, not to mention
the only one of its four stations that can actually be heard
at the group's Nassau County studio location. With a transmitter
site right on the Queens/Nassau line, WLIR has a following in
the city as well as in Nassau, though its modern AC format no
longer achieves anything like the ratings success or critical
acclaim of WLIR's long-gone New Wave days.
The Morey folks say the WLIR calls and format will live on
at another spot on the dial - but it's not clear whether that
means one of the group's existing stations in the Hamptons (WDRE
98.5 Westhampton does active rock as "The Bone," WXXP
105.3 Calverton-Roanoke is dance "Party 105.3" and
WBON 107.1 Hampton Bays simulcasts WLIR) or a new acquisition.
On the Univision side, it looks as though 92.7 may end up simulcasting
Spanish hits "Latino Mix" WCAA (105.9 Newark NJ), whose
signal into Nassau County and southern Connecticut is impaired
by Long Island's WBLI at 106.1. What becomes of WLIR's proposed
Manhattan booster on the Upper West Side? We don't know yet...but
we'll keep you posted.
 Meanwhile at Clear
Channel, the "Radio Chick" is history - Leslie Gold
and her morning crew were shown the door at classic rock "Q104"
WAXQ (104.3 New York), in favor of the return of veteran New
York morning man Jim Kerr (WPIX, WMXV and many other historic
NYC calls).
Kerr's new Q104 morning show, with Shelli Sonstein as sidekick,
begins Tuesday morning and is likely to be a better fit with
the music-intensive station than Gold's show ever managed to
be.
Is it a slap on the wrist or a serious penalty? That's the
question radio people are asking about the FCC's long-awaited
ruling on WNEW (102.7 New York)'s infamous "Opie and Anthony"
broadcast back in August 2002, when the station's "Sex for
Sam" promotion sent contestants out on the streets of New
York to earn points for having sex in specified public places.
You know what happened next - two contestants ended up in the
vestibule of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the show was taken off
the air, "Blink" ensued, and all the rest. Now the
FCC, in a 4-1 decision, says the show "included repeated,
graphic and explicit sexual descriptions designed to shock, pander
and titillate listeners" and thus fell afoul of the Commission's
never-codified indecency standards.
The penalty? $357,500, which represents the $27,500 statutory
maximum multiplied by the 13 stations cited in the ruling. (We
can think of at least two more stations that we believe carried
the show as well, but who are we to argue?)
Meanwhile, one of the St. Patrick's Cathedral "Sex for
Sam" contestants won't end up facing any charges - the lawyer
for Brian Florence told a judge last week that Florence died
September 25 at the age of 38. The case against Florence's girlfriend,
Loretta Lynn Harper, has been postponed; comedian Paul Mercurio,
who described the St. Pat's activities to Opie and Anthony on
a cellphone, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was sentenced
to seven days of community service.
 Moving up the Hudson Valley, the
oldies disappeared at WBPM (94.3 Kingston), which changed calls
to WKXP and changed format to...Christmas music. A little early?
The station's Web site is promising more details at 9:43 Monday
morning, and we suspect this could be just a weekend stunt while
a new identity is launched at the former "Cool 94.3."
 In Syracuse, Clear
Channel tweaked the format of its urban WPHR (106.9 Auburn),
replacing current hip-hop tracks with R&B oldies and swapping
out the Doug Banks morning show for the older-skewing Tom Joyner
morning show. WPHR PD (and former owner) Butch Charles moves
down the hall to top 40 "Hot" WWHT (107.9 Syracuse),
while former WWHT PD Erin Bristol focuses all her attention on
modern rock WWDG (105.1 DeRuyter).
A couple of TV notes: Buffalo's WKBW (Channel 7) will add
a half-hour of local news on Monday as it replaces defunct soap
"Port Charles" with an expanded hourlong noon newscast.
(Most other ABC affiliates in the region will plug in syndicated
fare at 12:30; Connecticut's WTNH appears to be the only other
station planning an hour of news at noon.) And down in Elmira,
NBC affiliate WETM (Channel 18) is asking the FCC to let it go
digital on channel 33 instead of the planned channel 2. WETM
says it will run 545 kW on channel 33 and avoid signal problems
that may develop on low-band VHF.
*In PENNSYLVANIA, Citadel is spinning
off two more peripheral pieces of its Scranton/Wilkes-Barre cluster,
selling WCWY (107.7 Tunkhannock) and WEMR (1460 Tunkhannock)
to Ben Smith's GEOS Communications for $515,000. The class A
FM has been simulcasting soft AC WMGS (92.9 Scranton), while
the 5000/1000 watt AM has been simulcasting country from WCWI
(94.3 Carbondale), which Citadel is selling to the new Route
81 group. Smith and partner Kevin Fitzgerald have a growing cluster
of stations in the Twin Tiers, including Binghamton's oldies
WCDW (100.5 Susquehanna PA), AC "Cozy" WQZI (103.9
Laporte PA), Elmira's classic rock WMTT (94.7 Tioga PA) and new
sign-on WPHD (96.1 South Waverly PA).
 Across town, Entercom
received FCC approval Friday to move its WAMT (103.1) in from
Freeland to Avoca, which will likely mean an end toWAMT's simulcast
of classic hits "Mountain" WDMT (102.3 Pittston) and
a new format. The move also requires Entercom's top 40 WKRZ (98.5)
to change city of license from Wilkes-Barre to Freeland to make
up for the putative "loss of local service" to Freeland;
in reality, the only thing that will change at WKRZ will be the
top-hour legal ID.
In Johnstown, Forever applies to change the calls of new acquisition
WNTJ (1490) to WSPO, restoring the calls it once used on Johnstown's
AM 850, now country oldies WLYE, and lending support to the idea
that 1490 will go sports when the purchase from Clear Channel
closes.
In Philadelphia, Karen Warrington is out as afternoon talk
host on WHAT (1340), where she had been splitting her time with
her duties as spokesperson for Rep. Bob Brady; replacing her
is Thera Martin-Connolly, who returns to WHAT after a decade
at crosstown WDAS.
Pittsburgh's "Kiss" WKST-FM (96.1) is looking for
a new PD now that Jason Kidd has headed back to his old stomping
grounds of Baltimore to program smooth jazz WSMJ (104.3); meanwhile,
KDKA (1020) has named former talk host Steve Hansen as its new
PD. And over at Renda, WPTT (1360 McKeesport) will begin simulcasting
the morning news from WTAE-TV (Channel 4) on Monday, replacing
the last hour of George Noory and the one hour of Doug Stephan
it had been running from 5-7 AM.
(And just over the state line in Conneaut, OHIO, little
WWOW on 1360 changed hands this week; James Embrescia, who also
owns WJTN-WWSE in Jamestown NY, is selling the station to Lawrence
Weiss' "Developing Radio II" for $270,000.)
*In CONNECTICUT, the WMRQ calls are
history on 104.1 in Waterbury; mark down "WPHH" as
the new calls for Clear Channel's "Power 104.1." And
down in New London, mark down Yo Sunny Joe as the new morning
man on "Mix 102" WXLM (102.3 Stonington); he arrives
from New York's WKTU.
*There's a nifty VERMONT connection
to a documentary airing Monday night on PBS. Ken Burns' new film
"Horatio: America's First Road Trip" chronicles a 1903
cross-country car trip by one Horatio Nelson Jackson, which was
plenty to excite your editor's inner roadgeek by itself. But
then we learned that after that trip, Jackson ended up back in
his native Vermont, where he ended up as the owner of the Burlington
Daily News and, yes, WCAX radio, the forerunner of today's
WVMT (620). So you can bet we'll have the VCR set for this one...
Meanwhile on the call-letter front: Vermont Public Radio's
new classical outlet on 88.1 in Norwich won't sign on as WVPC
after all - it's now pried its preferred calls of WNCH loose
from the Coast Guard, and that's what 88.1 will be when it signs
on in the next few months.
And whatever respect we still had for Radio Free Brattleboro
(which wasn't much) was pretty well drained away after we read
about the unlicensed station's public meeting last week, at which
the Brattleboro Reformer quoted station founder David
Longsmith as saying that RFB never applied for an LPFM license
because the process was "long and arduous."
NERW wonders how that statement struck the folks at "Vermont
Earth Works, Inc." and "Citizens to Educate Brattleboro,"
who are nearing the end of their own "long and arduous"
process that will result in a legal LPFM service in town. (Earth
Works' application for 107.7 and Citizens' application for 107.9
in Brattleboro were among hundreds of mutually exclusive LPFM
applications for which a settlement window was opened last week
by the FCC. If the two groups can reach a settlement, which could
involve a frequency change by one or a share-time agreement,
they'll be ready to get a construction permit - and we wonder
what RFB's reaction will be when another community station signs
on at its 107.9 frequency with legitimate "authority to
broadcast," not just an Internet petition supporting a legally
specious claim about authority granted by the people.)
*NEW HAMPSHIRE Public Radio now has
calls for its new 88.3 in Nashua; it'll be WEVS, joining WEVO,
WEVN, WEVH and WEVC in the family when it signs on.
 *Up
in CANADA, the CRTC granted CHCD (106.7 Simcoe) a move
to 98.9 and a power increase from 3.42 kW to 14.37 kW. The CRTC
also granted CKWR (98.5 Waterloo) a power boost from 2.4 kW to
15.2 kW.
Both moves are meant to alleviate interference from older
FM allocations in Buffalo; CHCD has been plagued by adjacent-channel
interference from WYRK (106.5 Buffalo) ever since it moved to
FM from its old CHNR 1600 facility, while CKWR takes a beating
from co-channel WKSE (98.5 Niagara Falls) as close in as Cambridge.
(And does the CRTC learn? If it did, there wouldn't be new stations
in Kitchener-Waterloo primed to come on the air at 99.5, co-channel
to 110 kW WDCX in Buffalo, and on 93.7, co-channel to WBLK in
Depew.)
Milkman UnLimited reports that Bob Laine is retiring
from Toronto's CHUM after 45 years with the company, first as
CHUM's overnight jock, then midday man, then rising through the
ranks to become the vice president of the CHUM Radio Network.
Milky also reports a changing of the guards at CHUM Ottawa, where
Steve Winogreen is stepping down as news director of CHRO-TV
to become assistant PD at CFRA (580).
And we're sorry to have to report the death of CHIN radio
engineer Amarjit Dhanjal, who was crushed to death Saturday as
he left a remote appearance at a Toronto car dealership. The
Toronto Sun reports that Dhanjal failed to lower
the mast on the remote truck, which hit a concrete overpass on
the Gardiner Expressway west of Parliament Street, detached from
the floor of the van and pinned Dhanjal to the windshield. Dhanjal
was 31, a ten-year veteran of CHIN who leaves behind a wife and
three children.
 *The 2004
Tower Site Calendar is now available for ordering! Just as
in past years, the calendar features a dozen spiffy 8.5-by-11
inch full-color images of tower sites from across the nation
- everything from Washington's WTEM to New York's WCBS/WFAN to
Los Angeles' KHJ to WCTM in Eaton, Ohio. Unlike last year, this
year's calendar will feaure heavier paper (no more curling!)
and will be shipped shrink-wrapped on a cardboard backing to
make sure it arrives in pristine condition.
We'll be going to press soon, and hope to be shipping calendars
in time for Thanksgiving - but why wait? Order now and help support
NERW and Tower Site of the Week. Better yet, place your subscription
for 2004 at the $60 level by using the handy buttons below, and
you'll get your 2004 Tower Site Calendar absolutely FREE. What
more could you want? (Live overnight jocks, maybe?)
Don't want to order by credit card? You know the drill by
now - make those checks payable to "Scott Fybush,"
be sure to include sales tax for New York state calendar orders,
and send them along to 92 Bonnie Brae Avenue, Rochester NY 14618.
Thanks for your support!
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2003 by Scott Fybush. |