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 December
8, 2003 (updated
Dec. 11)
WMGX's Tower Collapses
*THURSDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE - The 528-foot tower of WMGX (93.1 Portland ME)
and WYNZ (100.9 Westbrook ME), a landmark for drivers entering
Portland on I-295, collapsed Thursday afternoon about 1:30, apparently
because a guy wire snapped. WYNZ was able to return to the air
from an auxiliary site, but WMGX is off the air at press time.
Nobody was hurt in the collapse, but WCSH
(Channel 6) reports several cars were
damaged in the parking lot next to the tower. Many more details
in Monday's NERW...
*One of the oldest callsigns in NEW YORK has
returned home to the facility it called home for decades. Buckley
Broadcasting took over operations of Syracuse's AM 1390 last
Monday (Dec. 1), changing its call letters from WDCW back to
WFBL. Those sequentially-assigned calls first saw use in Syracuse
in 1922 on the station that would become 1390, and remained in
place there until September 1993, when Crawford Broadcasting
bought the station and changed the calls to reflect owner Donald
Crawford's initials (and to match Crawford's other religious
outlets across upstate New York, too.)
 When
the WFBL calls went away in 1993, Buckley grabbed them - and
the standards format that had been in use on 1390 - and placed
them on what had been WSEN (1050), and there they remained, even
as AM 1050 dropped standards for talk in May 2002. As of last
week, though, the talk programming has moved to the higher-power
(5000 watts day and night, versus 2500 watts day/19 watts night
on 1050) operation on 1390 - and 1050, too, is back to its heritage
calls of WSEN. It'll be simulcasting oldies WSEN-FM (92.1 Baldwinsville)
eventually, we're told, though it was still simulcasting talk
with 1390 this past weekend.
 *Downstate, the news
is all about Radio People on the Move: Pat St. John, the veteran
jock who's called stations such as CKLW, WRIF, WNEW-FM and WPLJ
home, now has a new address on the New York dial. After doing
weekends and fill-ins on Infinity's WCBS-FM (101.1) for the last
few years, Pat kicked off his new gig as Saturday morning host
on Clear Channel classic rocker WAXQ (104.3) this past weekend.
Meanwhile, Q104's sister station WLTW (106.7) signed midday host
Valerie Smaldone to another long-term contract last week. She's
been part of Lite 106.7 since the station flipped from country
to AC more than twenty years ago - quite a record of longevity
in the turbulent New York radio world! On the engineering side,
Glynn Walden has joined Infinity as VP/Engineering. Walden worked
for two of Infinity's predecessors, CBS and Westinghouse, in
the same position before joining Ibiquity Digital Radio, where
his job was eliminated a few months ago. And out on Long Island,
veteran DJ Scott Miller lands at WALK-FM (97.5 Patchogue) to
do middays, replacing the departed Rick Martini. Miller was last
heard on WKJY (98.3 Hempstead).
Speaking of Long Island, it was a bad week for WBAB (102.3
Babylon) morning man John Parise - he built up his audience for
a "big announcement" Monday morning, which turned out
to be the revelation (we're all adults here, right) that there
is no Santa Claus, thus proving that not all publicity is, in
fact, good publicity. WBAB was still apologizing to a
horde of angry parents at press time...
Mars Hill Network signed on its newest station last week:
WMHQ (90.1 Malone) applied for its license to cover, and CKUT's
International Radio Review on Sunday morning says
it's already being heard west of Montreal.
Meanwhile on the translator/LPFM front, WAPP-LP (100.3) in
Westhampton and WIHR-LP (94.1) in Jamestown both applied for
licenses to cover. Both are religious stations, the former licensed
to "Aquila Broadcasting," the latter to "Advent
Radio Ministry Corp." And EMF Broadcasting (the K-Love folks)
and Family First Foundation are both one step closer to getting
new translators. EMF's 101.3 application in Sherburne (south
of Hamilton) and FFF's for 98.7 in Jamestown were both posted
by the FCC last week, starting the 15-day window for petitions
to deny to be filed before those applications are granted.
And up on the shores of Lake Champlain, Bill O'Neill has signed
on to consult WIPS (1250 Ticonderoga), a nifty little community
full-service station that serves the southern end of the lake.
Bill's been out of the game for the last few years, but your
editor still fondly remembers sitting across the glass from him
on Saturday mornings at WCAP (980) in Lowell, Mass., where he
did talk and yours truly did news...
*A shakeup in northern New England - Jim
Herron is out after just over a year in charge of Clear Channel's
MAINE radio clusters in Bangor and Augusta. No word yet
on a replacement.
Up the coast, WIDE (1400 Biddeford) officially changed calls
to WVAE last week. Meanwhile, Edgewater Broadcasting (one of
the big translator applicants in the most recent window, believed
to be a Calvary Satellite Network front) had its application
for a 102.5 translator in Biddeford posted last week by the FCC,
giving any WCRB distant listeners in that area 15 days to make
their objections known. And Bangor Baptist Church was granted
a 100.5 translator in Vassalboro. W263AS to relay WHMX (105.7
Lincoln).
 *Just
short of the decade mark at WJYY (105.5 Concord) in NEW HAMPSHIRE's
capital city, Harry Kozlowski has resigned his job as PD there
(and at Vox sister station WNHI as well.) He's staying in the
market and focusing his efforts on running new LPFM WCNH-LP (94.7
Concord), which hopes to be on the air with a 24/7 classical
music format sometime in January. No replacement has been named
yet at WJYY/WNHI - and NERW wishes Harry all the best in his
efforts to show what LPFM was really meant to do.
The upcoming New Hampshire presidential primary was enough
to keep northern New England from seeing NBC's Saturday Night
Live this past weekend. WHDH-TV (Channel 7) in Boston,
WCSH (Channel 6) in Portland, WLBZ (Channel 2) in Bangor, WNNE
(Channel 31) in Hartford, VERMONT and
WPTZ (Channel 5) in Plattsburgh, N.Y. all pre-empted the show
with Rev. Al Sharpton hosting, out of concerns that it might
trigger equal-time claims from his Democratic opponents. The
show did air on WWLP (Channel 22) in Springfield, WJAR (Channel
10) in Providence and WVIT (Channel 30) New Britain-Hartford;
the others carried a "best of" Steve Martin rerun,
which we hear was quite a bit funnier than the Sharpton show
anyway.
*In MASSACHUSETTS, Radio One's WBOT
(97.7 Brockton) is still on the hook for that $8,000 fine assessed
against it for EAS, local phone number, logging and other violations.
Radio One asked the FCC to lower the fine, claiming it was out
of proportion to other fines for similar offenses, but the Commission
says the $8,000 amount will stand.
Justin Louis is out at WHYN-FM (93.1 Springfield), where he
had been doing nights - "budget cuts" are the stated
reason there.
 WFNX's Cruze (aka
Daniel Behring) is heading south for his next challenge. After
serving as the FNX network's executive director of programming
(and morning host for a while, too), he's headed down to Greater
Media in Philadelphia to be PD of classic hits WMGK (102.9).
Meanwhile, his former FNX colleagues Storm and Kenny Z are
also heading south - all the way to Charleston, S.C., where they'll
be the new morning show on modern rock WAVF (96.1 Hanahan SC).
On the Christmas music beat: WORC-FM (98.9 Spencer) didn't
go all-Christmas, as we erroneously reported last week - but
WCRN (830 Worcester)'s been heavy on the ho-ho-ho, we're told.
*In CONNECTICUT, Matt Zako returns
to WEFX (95.9 Norwalk) after six years away. He's leaving Sirius
satellite radio to do afternoons on Cox's classic rocker.
*The impending arrival of a new talk station
in western PENNSYLVANIA is having a wide-reaching
impact. When Jim Quinn moves from WRRK (96.9 Braddock) to Clear
Channel's WJJJ (104.7 Pittsburgh), his show will be simulcast
on WWVA (1170) over in Wheeling, W.V. - and that means WWVA morning
host (and Boston radio alumnus) Jim Harrington is out of a job
there.
Over at Renda's Pittsburgh cluster (WJAS/WPTT/WSHH), Tony
Renda Jr. is the new GM. He comes home from Jacksonville, where
he was running the family's stations there.
Just across the state line in Youngstown, Ohio, WGFT (1500
Youngstown) and WASN (1330 Campbell) swap call letters.
Altoona's WRTA (1240) is changing hands: David Wolf's Altoona
Trans-Audio Corporation has applied to sell the station to Handsome
Brothers, Inc., owned by David Barger, who also has an interest
in WBXQ (94.7 Cresson)/WBRX (94.3 Patton) nearby. Mark down $500,000
as the sale price for the talk station, which puts up a good
fight against the much larger Forever cluster in town.
WAMT (103.1 Freeland) has filed its application to move to
Avoca, right in the heart of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre market.
The Entercom station wants to share an antenna with sister station
WDMT (102.3 Pittston), right across Route 315 from the cluster's
studios; it would run 6000 watts at 22 meters above average terrain.
 *In CANADA,
the CRTC approved a power boost and a height decrease for multilingual
CJLL (97.9 Ottawa). The capital's outlet for the CHIN radio group
was to have used 800 watts from the Camp Fortune mountaintop
site in Quebec, but is instead using 6770 watts from tower C
of Ottawa's Place de Ville complex.
A Corus shuffle in Toronto: Dave Farough moves from PD of
CFNY (102.1 the Edge) to PD of sister "Q107" (CILQ
107.1).
And more all-Christmas stations: add CHRE (EZ Rock 105.7)
in St. Catharines and CIQM (EZ Rock 97.5) in London to the list.
 *The 2004
Tower Site Calendar will be back from the printer this
week - so don't wait to place your order! 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 shipping calendars in just a few days, so 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. |