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October 13, 2003
Callahan Joins Dennis on Suspension
*It must be an exciting week for the folks
at Boston's sports talker, WEEI (850) - after all, they're the
flagship station for baseball's next World Champions. (This week's
NERW is being written Sunday night in lieu of the rained-out
Game 4 of the ALCS; we reserve the right to dream and to dream
big, and you Yankees fans can keep it to yourselves.)
 But in the midst
of all that excitement, WEEI will be without its popular morning
team for a while longer, thanks to the continued fallout from
an offhand remark John Dennis and Gerry Callahan made a couple
of weeks ago as they discussed a newspaper photo of a gorilla
that had escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo.
As we reported last week, WEEI initially suspended Dennis
for two days for remarking that the gorilla was a "METCO
(urban-suburban exchange student) gorilla waiting for a bus to
Lexington." That wasn't enough for the coalition of city
officials, religious leaders and other civic groups protesting
the comments, though, and after a meeting with METCO officials
last Tuesday, WEEI suspended Callahan as well, extending the
suspensions for both hosts for two weeks.
It's been a challenging few months up there at 20 Guest Street;
WEEI's sister station WRKO (680 Boston) recently fired morning
host John "Ozone" Osterlind for an intemperate remark
about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and now WRKO - and the
rest of his hundreds of affiliates - will be without the services
of Rush Limbaugh, who's taking 30 days off to enter rehab for
his addiction to painkillers. (While Baltimore's WBAL is using
substitute local hosts in place of Limbaugh, we haven't heard
of any stations in NERW-land that won't be using Rush's designated
national fill-in hosts; should his rehab last longer than planned,
though, the repercussions in the world of talk radio could become
much stronger.)
*Up the dial in MASSACHUSETTS, today's the day Salem
was scheduled to take over Boston's AM 1150, replacing the WBPS
calls and the simulcast of Spanish "Mega" WAMG (890
Dedham) with a conservative talk lineup under the new calls WJTK.
In addition to the usual Salem network fare (Hugh Hewitt, Michael
Medved, Janet Parshall, et al), WJTK will have a local morning
show with Boston Herald columnist Don Feder, who's
been heard in afternoons on sister station WROL (950 Boston).
At press time, we hear WJTK's debut may be delayed a couple of
weeks - stay tuned.
WQSX (93.7 Lawrence) has filled its night vacancy: Marc Clark,
late of WJMN (94.5), joins the crew at rhythmic top 40 "Star,"
reuniting him with Karen Blake, another veteran of WJMN's 94.5
predecessor, WZOU.
 And in Springfield,
TV viewers are about to get something that more closely resembles
a local CBS affiliate. For decades, CBS service to Springfield
and the Pioneer Valley has come from CONNECTICUT's
WFSB (Channel 3) - but now WFSB is getting ready to launch a
separate service to the Massachusetts side of its market. It'll
still be "CBS3" on cable, but WFSB owner Meredith has
bought W67DF (Channel 67) in Springfield from Trinity Broadcasting,
and it will soon move to channel 45 and increase its power from
Mount Tom, selling local ads and increasing WFSB's presence in
Springfield. (WFSB has experimented over the years with local
ad sales and even local news inserts on Springfield cable, but
this will be its first stab at a Springfield broadcast signal.)
 *In
NEW YORK, the rumors are flying again about a sale of
the New York City schools' radio and TV stations, WNYE (91.5)
and WNYE-TV (Channel 25) - and this time it appears they're pretty
close to fruition.
It's no secret at all that public radio WNYC (820/93.9) covets
WNYE's FM facility, with an eye towards expanding its lineup
of talk programming on one FM signal while doing classical music
fulltime on the other, and that the WNET public television empire
seeks to add channel 25 to its existing combo of WNET (Channel
13) and WLIW (Channel 21) - but the New York Times' Joyce
Purnick reported last week that with the elimination of the city's
Board of Education, the decision about selling the stations now
rests with the city's Economic Development Corporation, which
has apparently arranged no-bid deals to transfer the two signals
to WNYC and WNET.
Infinity named new leaders for its all-news WCBS (880 New
York) last week: Crys Quimby, former news director of KFWB (980
Los Angeles) and, more recently, anchor at WINS (1010), becomes
WCBS' program director; joining her as news director is Tim Scheld,
a familiar voice from ABC Radio News, where he's been a national
correspondent.
Arthur Liu is adding two more New York-market signals to his
portfolio - though they're both actually across the river in
NEW JERSEY. Liu's Multicultural Broadcasting
is spending $150 million to acquire Radio Unica's 15-station
group, which includes WWRU (1660 Jersey City) and WJDM (1530
Elizabeth). WWRU already shares the tower site of Liu's WKDM
(1380 New York) on Paterson Plank Road in East Rutherford; we
expect it will drop Unica's Spanish news-talk programming in
favor of the same leased time fare that already runs on Liu's
WPAT (930 Paterson), WKDM, WNSW (1430 Newark) and WZRC (1480
New York).
 We've been sharing
pictures of the construction at 4 Times Square with you all summer
- and now John Lyons checks in to report that the erection of
the new antennas and mast atop the building has wrapped up.
That's the last antenna section being readied for hoisting
a week ago, complete with top beacon. In all, the new tower atop
the building is 385 feet tall, thus topping the building out
at 1168 feet, 9 inches above ground, 1207 feet above sea level.
We're looking forward to getting back there ourselves (perhaps
as early as this week if we can get our hands on some Yankees-Red
Sox tickets and can then get out of the Bronx alive), and we'll
do a new Tower Site of the Week installment on the new 4 Times
Square very soon now.
Heading north from New York City, Kingston's WRNN-DT (Channel
48) started testing last week from its site on Mount Beacon,
a good 35 miles south of its analog parent, WRNN-TV (Channel
62).
 Meanwhile on the
radio dial, the all-Christmas stunting on WKXP (94.3 Kingston)
ended at 9:43 last Monday morning, as Cumulus relaunched the
former oldies station (ex-WBPM) as "Kicks 94.3," playing
country and competing with Clear Channel's WRWD (107.3 Highland).
Former WBPM morning guy Nick Robbins moves over to sister station
WKNY (1490 Kingston), while middayer Laura Smith and afternooner
Chris Lucas are out. Replacing them are Buzz Stephens (from former
country outlet WUSX in Huntsville, Alabama) in mornings and Beth
Christy (from WKXP sister station WCZX) as PD/afternoon drive.
Filling the Hudson Valley oldies void - sort of - is WGNY
(1220 Newburgh), which dropped its AP all-news format last week
and went to satellite oldies.
In Albany, WGY (810 Schenectady) has filled the void created
when afternoon talker Scott Allen Miller decamped for Boston's
WRKO. WGY picks up Sean Hannity from 3-5 PM and Andrew Wilkow
from 5-7 PM. Wilkow did afternoons on the former WMRQ in Hartford
and has been doing weekend talk on New York's WABC.
And up in Ogdensburg, WBDB (92.7) spent last week simulcasting
oldies sister WGIX (95.3 Gouverneur) and was set to flip to a
simulcast of top 40 "Border" WBDI (106.7 Copenhagen)/WBDR
(102.7 Cape Vincent) at press time.
*In PENNSYLVANIA, Lehigh Valley Broadcasting
Associates is selling Spanish-language WHOL (1600 Allentown)
to former Philadelphia radio sales guy Matthew Braccili for a
reported $940,000. WHOL runs 500 watts by day and 56 watts at
night and was once the big country voice of the Lehigh Valley.
 *The
big story from CANADA was the death Tuesday (Oct. 7) of
media mogul Israel "Izzy" Asper.
Asper was a Manitoba banker in the early seventies when he
acquired the physical assets of a tiny TV station on the North
Dakota/Manitoba border and won a license from the CRTC to put
it on the air in Winnipeg. KCND (Channel 12) in Pembina, N.D.
thus went dark, with its tower and transmitter being trucked
across the border to reappear as CKND (Channel 9), the cornerstone
of what would become a media empire.
Asper went on to acquire an interest in the new Global network
in Ontario, then bought Global outright and eventually built
it into Canada's third national network. Meanwhile, his CanWest
Global was buying newspapers - from the Montreal Gazette to
the Vancouver Sun and Province to the startup
of the National Post - not to mention TV interests
in Australia and New Zealand and, recently, several radio stations
in Canada.
Asper was 71 when he died; though he was still CanWest Global's
chairman, he'd ceded most of his power to his children last year.
Just a few other notes from north of the border this week:
the CBC has turned on its new English-language Radio 1 transmitter
in Cowansville, Quebec. CBMG (101.9) covers the Eastern Townships
(Estrie) region, and gets into northern Vermont pretty well,
too, according to a couple of readers up that way. And in Trois-Rivieres,
Radio-Canada's premiere chaine transmitter, CBF-FM-8, has moved
from 88.1 to 96.5.
 *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.
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2003 by Scott Fybush. |