By SCOTT FYBUSH

• THE YEAR IN SALES
• THE YEAR IN PROGRAMMING, CALLS AND FORMATS
• YEAR-END RANT
• IN MEMORIAM

Well, that was a year few of us in radio or TV would care to repeat, wasn't it?

It started with some of the most brutal layoffs the industry has ever seen and ended with the bankruptcy of one of radio's biggest players - and somewhere along the way we lost Paul Harvey and Walter Cronkite and Larry Glick and Paul Sidney.

New formats and new talent were in short supply on radio - and no sooner did analog TV go dark in the U.S. than digital TV was being declared outmoded, too.

But maybe someday we'll look back on 2009 and find something of value amidst the rubble...and in any event, we embark on our 15th annual Year in Review as we always do, with our Top Ten Stories of the Year:

1. The economy hits the skids

Choosing this year's top story was an easy call: there was nobody anywhere up and down the broadcasting food chain who ended 2009 without being battered by one of the worst years in recent media history.

None of the big groups escaped the carnage, starting with massive hits on New Year's Eve at CBS Radio's WBZ in Boston and WTIC in Hartford and continuing a few weeks later with a huge reduction in staffing across the region's Clear Channel clusters, eclipsing a smaller (but still painful) set of cutbacks in Citadel markets such as Providence and Buffalo.

Greater Media swung its axe in Boston at the end of January, and smaller groups weren't immune, either, as the month's end found veterans such as Samantha Stevens, late of Cox in Bridgeport, and Steve Cormier, late of Vox in Burlington, out of work.

February dawned just as dark, with cuts at Cumulus clusters around the region - and then the pain moved to TV as consolidation began to wipe out newsrooms on both sides of the border. (More on that in a moment.)

Beyond the immediate impact of the job cuts (the pace of which, thankfully, began to slow down after the first few months of 2009), the lingering economic malaise was being felt by radio's dealmakers, who found it all but impossible to line up the credit that might otherwise have allowed some willing buyers to take advantage of the retreat from the unsustainably high prices that broadcast licenses had been commanding in recent years.

Nassau Broadcasting provided perhaps the year's best case study when it had to abandon its LMA-to-buy deal at WFKB (107.5 Boyertown PA) at the end of March, walking away from the "Frank" classic hits format it had installed and returning the station to its former WBYN-FM calls and religious format. That was just the start of Nassau's troubles in 2009; by year's end, the company's lenders at Goldman Sachs had taken control of what was left of the company, selling off some of its once-prized properties, such as WCRB in Boston, at a steep discount from the prices Nassau had paid for those signals at the top of the market.

Clear Channel went through another round of job cuts in May, replacing local talent in some markets with "Premium Choice" voicetracking - and that, thankfully, proved to be the last of the year's mass layoffs on the U.S. side of the border, though our colleagues in Canada had to live through cuts at several big groups, most notably Astral Media, later in the summer.

As summer turned to fall, the news got a little better, at least for a few smaller owners. In central New York, for instance, James Johnson's new Leatherstocking group entered first Oneida and then the much larger Syracuse market nearby, where Craig Fox and Sam Furco were also able to use the decline in station values to buy back - at a steep discount - the 105.1 signal they sold to Clear Channel eight years ago. Down on Long Island John Caracciolo and Vic Latino found financing for the $2.7 million purchase of two of Jarad Media's stations, parlaying that deal into an approach into the New York City market (more on that in a bit, too.) Connecticut's John Fuller found a bargain in Hartford, picking up Clear Channel's WURH (104.1) for just $8.1 million.

By the time the NAB Radio Show pulled into Philadelphia in late September, the economy had stabilized enough to draw out a surprisingly robust crowd, including a lot of broadcasters who'd gone absent from the big NAB show out west in April.

But "stable" is still a long way from "healthy," as the year's final quarter demonstrated. Cape Cod's Sandab Broadcasting filed for bankruptcy at the end of September, but it was far from the biggest broadcaster to turn to Chapter 11. That dubious honor, of course, went to Citadel, which filed its "pre-packaged" bankruptcy the week before Christmas, handing over much of the group's equity to its lenders, who promised business as usual heading into 2010.

At year's end, the economy was still far from healthy - just ask the eight employees of WPAZ (1370 Pottstown PA) who were abruptly pink-slipped when Great Scott Broadcasting shut down the suburban Philadelphia signal Dec. 10 - but it's hard to imagine 2010 bringing the sort of job loss, bankruptcy and overall economic uncertainty that dominated so much of 2009.

2. The DTV transition looms

The year's other big story played out on TV sets from Presque Isle to Pittsburgh, as the broadcast TV standard that had been a fixture for seven decades faded out, replaced by the fast-changing world of digital television - and, soon, questions about the longevity of the nation's new TV broadcast system.

After years of publicity surrounding "February 17, 2009," the original target date for the sunset of analog TV in the U.S. came and went without much change to the TV dial in most markets, thanks to last-minute Congressional intervention that postponed the analog shutdown to June 12, give or take a few weeks of "nightlight" operation after the end of regular programming. Only a handful of markets, most notably Providence, R.I. and Burlington, Vermont, stuck with the original date, and the relatively smooth transition process in those areas helped ease concerns in other markets as the pace of on-air PSAs and behind-the-scenes engineering work picked up in the spring.

A few more stations shut down analog ahead of the June deadline, some deliberately and others out of necessity as aging transmitters and antenna systems finally gave up the ghost. (Boston's Fox outlet, WFXT, was perhaps the biggest station in that group, fighting valiantly to keep a tiny analog signal on the air as long as possible.)

When the big day finally dawned in June, it brought some surprises, both good and bad. The FCC sent out field agents to make sure at least one station in each remaining analog market stayed up with "nightlight" service, a process that went smoothly in most areas but hit a snag in Scranton, where WNEP (Channel 16) had to be brought back on line with a nightlight signal several hours after it thought it had signed off for good. Call centers were busy for a few days as viewers, predictably, waited until the last minute (and then some) to hook up their new digital tuners, but the flood of calls subsided quickly in most markets. The big exception proved to be large-market stations that were counting on a return to VHF to provide an optimum balance of coverage and power costs. Several, including Philadelphia's WPVI (Channel 6) and Boston's WHDH-TV (Channel 7), soon found that much of their audience was simply unable to receive the VHF signal, sending them scrambling for solutions. In WHDH's case, that meant a return to its "interim" UHF signal - but other stations (including WPVI) weren't able to make that move, instead asking the FCC for power increases, fill-in boosters and other makeshift solutions.

Meanwhile, TV's history was being honored at some stations as they turned off their analog signals - in Erie, for instance, WJET-TV's founder, Myron Jones, was on hand to push the button that shut down analog channel 24. (Our favorite sign-off moment was in Philadelphia, where KYW-TV reached all the way back to its earliest history, pulling out a test pattern from Philco experimental station W3XE as its last analog image.)

Even after the call centers had closed down and the last of those pesky red $40 converter-box coupons had expired, the fight over DTV was far from finished, thanks to wireless carriers' relentless demand for new spectrum. A new administration at the FCC ended the year asking TV broadcasters to justify their use of a big swath of desirable UHF bandwidth for a service that's now used by a relatively small percentage of the TV audience, setting the stage for a fight that's sure to extend into 2010 and beyond.

Meanwhile in Canada, analog TV remained the dominant over-the-air medium (for the tiny minority of viewers not hooked up to cable or satellite) as the CRTC looked to a 2011 digital transition date that may bring an end to any over-the-air TV outside the country's largest markets.

3. FM translators

While it was a rough year for the big guys, 2009 brought land-rush business for anyone lucky (or foresighted) enough to be sitting on a license for a low-power FM translator signal, thanks to a relaxation of FCC rules that allowed translators to function more like stand-alone commercial stations.

The door began opening in 2008, when the FCC quietly began allowing translators to relay subchannels of parent FM HD signals, and it burst wide open in 2009 when the Commission signed off on a rule change that allowed translators to relay AM signals without requiring Special Temporary Authority to do so.

With AM-on-FM translator authority limited to existing translators, that had the immediate effect of boosting prices for translators, and by year's end it was commonplace to see a translator that once might have fetched $5,000 sell for as much as $75,000. The translator boom was most dramatic in the kind of small markets that could easily be covered by a 250-watt translator like the ones that brought 24-hour operation to WIOO in Carlisle, PA or WCFR in Springfield, VT, but big markets weren't immune: at year's end, a new AM-on-FM translator was en route to the heart of the Rochester market for WYSL (1040 Avon), and another new translator had been granted in downtown Brooklyn, beaming into lower Manhattan on 107.1.

Even if there wasn't a translator available in the same town as an AM station that wanted one, there was still a solution, at least with a little ingenuity: an existing translator could be "hopped" from location to location until it reached its destination. No signal moved more in 2009 than the translator that started the year as W243CD on 96.5 in Gloucester. Fourteen hops and four frequencies later, it landed 75 miles away in Fitchburg on 105.3 as a relay for WPKZ (1280).

While small-town AM operators hailed the advent of FM translators as a huge boon to their businesses, bigger operators experimented with those HD-subchannel-on-FM translators. Saga was at the forefront, adding new signals to its existing clusters in Ithaca, Keene and Manchester/Concord, but a few smaller broadcasters were also in the game, including Jeff Andrulonis' new "News-Talk 95.3" in Smethport, PA.

If there was a downside to the translator boom, it was on the low-power FM front, where proponents of community broadcasting watched uneasily as more new translators kept filling up frequencies that could have gone to LPFM. Even for them, the year had a happy ending with House passage of a bill eliminating third-adjacent protection for LPFMs, potentially opening the way for hundreds of new LPFM signals in urban areas where no LPFM signal could fit under current spacing rules.

4. Classical goes noncommercial

It could have been a much worse year for fans of classical music in several big markets. The New York Times Company, beset by its own financial woes, turned to its last broadcast property, commercial classical outlet WQXR (96.3 New York), to help save its bottom line - and in Boston, Nassau's collapse threatened the future of commercial classical WCRB (99.5 Lowell), already a much-diminished shell of itself.

Both stories had a reasonably happy ending thanks to public broadcasters, though the scenarios played out rather differently in each market.

In New York, the Times cashed out on 65 years of ownership of WQXR's big 96.3 signal in a complex trade with Univision Radio. For $33.5 million, Univision took over that valuable class B spot on the New York FM dial, trading its lesser-signalled WCAA (105.9 Newark NJ) to the Times - which unloaded that class B1 signal and WQXR's intellectual property to public broadcaster WNYC for an additional $11.5 million.

The transfer took place on the night of October 8, though another week would pass before Univision fully launched its new 96.3 property (as WXNY, "96X") - and for listeners in or near New York City, the new WQXR on 105.9 tried to maintain something close to status quo, retaining many of the announcers from 96.3 even as it moved to WNYC's studios and transitioned to listener-supported noncommercial status. For listeners more distant from the Empire State Building, the news was not as good, and at year's end WNYC continued to seek new ways to get its classical signal to Long Island, Westchester and other areas out of range of the new 105.9.

In Boston, there were no signal changes, but the December 1 transfer of WCRB to public broadcaster WGBH still came with some static. While WNYC had reduced its own classical programming to just a few evening hours back in 2001, WGBH (89.7) had long staked much of its own identity on its daytime classical broadcasts, so the news that its $14 million purchase of WCRB would consolidate all classical music on "All Classical 99.5," leaving 89.7 with news, talk and evening jazz, was unwelcome to the ears of many classical fans throughout the huge coverage area of the 100 kW WGBH signal, especially in areas south of Boston where the 99.5 signal was hard to receive.

Fans of blues and folk music weren't happy, either, when WGBH announced that those long-running Saturday blocks were going away - and at year's end there were still plenty of questions about how well WGBH would do as a competing news-talk voice against long-established WBUR-FM (90.9).

5. WBCN fades away

Perhaps the year's biggest format change on the commercial dial came in Boston, where CBS Radio stirred things up with the August format shuffle that launched a new all-sports station, WBZ-FM "98.5 the Sports Hub," relocated hot AC "Mix" WBMX from 98.5 to 104.1, and removed the WBCN calls and rock format from the Boston dial after more than four decades of prominence.

While the WBCN that remained in 2009 was a pale shadow of its best years as a freeform pioneer in the late sixties and seventies, the station went out in a blaze of glory and nostalgia. For four days leading up to the August 13 signoff, WBCN veterans came back to the station to spin their favorite tunes and share their stories, and by the time Pink Floyd's "Shine On (You Crazy Diamond)" closed things out, there weren't many dry eyes in the FM audience.

A ghost of WBCN lived on at the HD2 spot on the new WBZ-FM (98.5), making a valiant effort to keep at least a spark of the old station alive, while on the main channel the new "Sports Hub" put on a full-court press against Entercom's sports behemoth WEEI. With the Patriots and Bruins against WEEI's Red Sox and Celtics, and with a lineup of talent that included former WBCN morning team Toucher and Rich and well-known voices Gary Tanguay, Mike Felger and Tony Massarotti, the new 98.5 was easily the most intense challenge WEEI had faced in 18 years as an all-sports station.

While rumors swirled about a WEEI move to FM (never consummated, as Entercom protected its revenue stream from its two existing Boston-market FM properties), the incumbent sports talker fought back on the AM dial, adding ESPN programming after the collapse of "ESPN 890" WAMG and building up its online presence at WEEI.com, as well as expanding its New England-wide network to a new signal on Cape Cod.

At least if early ratings are any judge, the fight will continue to be a fierce one: while WEEI continued to lead the Sports Hub, both stations drew big audiences, especially the younger males who are traditionally hard for radio to reach.

Another sports battle broke out in the fall in Philadelphia, where Greater Media took on CBS Radio's established player, WIP (610), with an FM sister to its lower-rated ESPN Radio affiliate, WPEN (950). The new "Sports Fanatic" (WPEN-FM 97.5) faced an uphill battle, especially with most of the city's big sports play-by-play franchises locked up on WIP and its sister stations.

6. NBC plays with Leno, flirts with Comcast

The year's most debated TV programming decision, bar none, was NBC's high-stakes move of Jay Leno from his comfortable (and top-rated) perch on the Tonight Show to a new five-nights-a-week block at 10 PM, replacing the increasingly expensive dramas that filled that time slot.

As risky as the move was for NBC itself, the network at least had the guaranteed payoff of much lower production costs for the Leno show. For NBC's beleaguered affiliates, there was no such silver lining - and one of the biggest affiliates, Ed Ansin's WHDH-TV (Channel 7) in Boston, threatened to throw a big wrench in NBC's plans.

In early April, Ansin drew nationwide headlines with his announcement that when Andover native Leno took to the prime-time airwaves in September, he wouldn't be seen in his home market, where Ansin intended instead to run a 95-minute local newscast from 10-11:35 PM, eliminating the risk of a weak late news lead-in and retaining all that ad revenue locally.

Faced with the threat of other defections, NBC took a tough stand against Ansin, filling the trades with strong talk about cutting off Ansin's NBC affiliation entirely if he refused to carry the new Leno show and prompting reams of speculation about where the Peacock might land in Boston if Ansin did lose the affiliation.

NBC's aggressive response to Ansin's threatened defection appeared to scare off other affiliates from following suit, and in the end Ansin himself came around as well, agreeing to clear Leno's show at its scheduled time.

In the end, Leno's ratings were even lower than expected, reshaping the late local news ratings races in several competitive markets around the region. (In Providence, for instance, Leno was at least one factor in NBC affiliate WJAR's fall from its usual perch at the top of the 11 PM ratings.)

And after all the to-do over Leno, NBC ended the year with much bigger issues on its plate: the proposed takeover of the entire network (and its parent, NBC Universal) by cable giant Comcast, in an ongoing story that's sure to be one of the biggest of 2010.

7. Pulse fizzles - but it's a Party instead

Has there ever been a major-market station so consistently threatened with extinction as New York City's dance-music outlet, "Pulse 87"?

The innovative station, actually a leased-time operation using the audio carrier of a channel 6 low-power TV station, WNYZ-LP, entered 2009 having lost its high-profile morning show, Star and Buc Wild, and soon lost another signature personality, afternoon jock Jewelz Lopez.

But that was just the beginning of Pulse's woes, as the little station fought to be included in New York's Arbitron ratings, a battle it won, and struggled against the financial woes of its parent company, Mega Media, which eventually filed for bankruptcy in August, dooming plans to expand "Pulse" to other channel 6 "Franken-FM" outlets in Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Along the way, WNYZ briefly tried to sustain itself on support from its small but fiercely passionate listener base, launching a pledge drive July 20 and then abruptly ending the campaign the next day.

In the end, Mega was unable to make its lease payments to WNYZ's owner, and Pulse signed off October 30 - but the 87.7 frequency soon came back to life with a similar format under better-capitalized ownership, relaying JVC Broadcasting's "Party FM" dance/hip-hop hybrid from WPTY (105.3 Calverton-Roanoke) on Long Island's East End.

8. Leveille rides again

Amidst all the gloomy news that started the year, one of the good guys won: WBZ (1030 Boston) overnight talk host Steve Leveille, ousted from his spot in an ill-conceived cost-cutting attempt to share a common overnight show among several CBS Radio talk stations, returned to the air a month later on a groundswell of listener and advertiser support.

What happened? WBZ's history explains part of it - previous attempts to add syndicated talk content at night, including an ill-fated replacement of the late David Brudnoy with Tom Snyder, had all fallen flat, and Leveille's devoted fan base organized an outpouring of letters and e-mails that helped to give the station's local management the ammunition it needed to reverse what had been a corporate decision in the first place. (It didn't hurt that Leveille's advertisers came forward to put their money behind the local host.)

While Leveille was back in place (and on Groundhog Day, ironically enough), some of his colleagues were less fortunate. Lovell Dyett remained stuck in a weekend-morning public affairs backwater, and infomercials continued to invade the rest of the weekend schedule. And the station lost another long-time voice when Gil Santos, sports director since 1971, retired from his morning shift at the end of January. (Another veteran WBZ sports voice, Tom Cuddy, later returned to the station.)

9. TV news cutbacks

Local TV news was once a solid profit center for even the smallest stations, but the sharp downturn in ad revenue and the cost of the digital conversion put many struggling newsrooms in jeopardy early in the year.

Viewers in Syracuse felt the pinch when they turned on the city's CBS affiliate, Granite's WTVH (Channel 5) on March 2, to find the station's noon newscast missing. The explanation came quickly on the city's other stations: Granite had essentially shut down Syracuse's oldest TV station after 60 years, handing WTVH over to erstwhile competitor WSTM in a shared-services agreement that put more than 40 people out of work and left Syracuse with just two broadcast newsrooms. In June, Binghamton felt the pinch as well, when Newport's WIVT (Channel 34) shut down most of what remained of its news operation, leaving only a skeleton crew to augment a simulcast of news from nearby Elmira and sister station WETM.

In two Pennsylvania markets - Erie and Scranton - once-competing stations were already in shared-services agreements, but 2009 brought a new level of consolidation that came with more job cuts, anyway. Lilly Broadcasting shuttered the studios of Erie's WSEE-TV in late May, moving the station in with NBC affiliate WICU-TV and reducing staffing; in Scranton, newscasts ended entirely at CBS affiliate WYOU-TV. (Down the road in Hazleton, little WYLN closed its news operation at year's end as well, putting eight people out of work.)

The pain was even deeper in some small Canadian markets, where stations in places such as London and Barrie became pawns in a bigger battle between national broadcast groups like CTV and Global and cable and satellite providers like Shaw and Rogers. Claiming that national distribution of big-market signals was cutting into viewership and revenue at small-market stations, the broadcasters launched a public-relations campaign aimed at drawing monthly carriage fees from cable and satellite. Along the way, CTV threatened to shut down some of its smallest stations, including CKNX-TV in Wingham, Ontario and CHWI-TV in Windsor. Those signals survived as relays of London's CFPL-TV, but CTV made deep cuts there and at other "A Network" outlets, eliminating morning newscasts in London and Barrie and cutting out the evening newscasts at CHRO in Ottawa.

In Hamilton, CanWest Global essentially walked away from CHCH (Channel 11), selling the struggling station and its sister operation, CJNT in Montreal, to cable programmer Channel Zero for $12 in cash and assumption of debt. Without Global's programming, CHCH ramped up its local news on a shoestring budget, filling in the gaps with old movies as it tried to make a go of things as a local independent.

(From the "could have been worse" files: several other Canadian stations out west did shut down completely, and CHEK in Victoria, B.C. came within hours of closure before a local ownership group emerged to buy the station from CanWest.)

10. CSB dies, then returns

The venerable Connecticut School of Broadcasting trained a lot of the voices on the air in New England, and even as jobs in the industry became ever more elusive, CSB's campuses continued to churn out a steady stream of hopeful new would-be broadcasters, filling internship spaces and sometimes even finding paid work.

Until March 5, that is - when CSB's expansion-minded owners, Credit Suisse, filed for bankruptcy and locked the doors on the school's 26 campuses around the country, including the school's original site in Farmington, Connecticut and six others around the region.

As students worried about recovering deposits (some of them as much as $12,000) and accessing the demo tapes they'd made at CSB's studios, the school's founder returned to try to save his creation. Dick Robinson bought back many of the school's assets out of bankruptcy in May, restoring its original name and reopening six of the northeastern locations and a handful of others in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida.

The Year in Station Sales

It was a lousy year to be a seller, as station values cratered. (Unless you happened to have a translator to sell, in which case values were sharply up.) It was a lousy year to be a buyer, unless you happened to have cash on hand, in which case it was actually a pretty good year to be a buyer. And it was a lousy year to be a station broker, period.

But even in the worst of economies, stations were bought and sold, and as we do every year, NERW was there to chronicle them:

JANUARY: Just three station sales are filed all month across the region, and all are in northern New England: On the New Hampshire seacoast, Aruba Capital Holdings picks up WGIP (1540 Exeter) from Clear Channel's Aloha spinoff trust for $325,000, later flipping the station to oldies under new calls WXEX. In Maine, national religious broadcaster EMF, one of the few buyers in a frigid sales environment, files to buy WGUY (102.1 Dexter) and WFZX (101.7 Searsport) from a Cumulus spinoff trust for $550,000.

FEBRUARY: The month's big deal comes in Connecticut, where John Fuller's Red Wolf Broadcasting made its biggest purchase yet, picking up WURH (104.1 Waterbury) from Clear Channel's Aloha Radio Trust spinoff for $8 million.

The long soap opera at WKPQ (105.3 Hornell NY) appears to come to an end with a $600,000 deal to sell the station to Phoenix Radio Group, which bought the non-license assets of the station in a foreclosure sale in 2007 and had been LMA'ing WKPQ and WHHO (1320) from licensee Bilbat Radio LLC.

MARCH: James Johnson's Leatherstocking Media Group bursts on the scene with a $950,000 deal to buy WMCR/WMCR-FM (1600/106.3) in Oneida, NY from Vivian Warren. Nearby in Syracuse, Craig Fox and Sam Furco ("Foxfur Communications") pay Clear Channel's Aloha spinoff trust $1.25 million for WWDG (105.1 De Ruyter NY), the same signal Clear Channel bought from Fox for $5 million back in 2000.

In New Hampshire, Andrew Sumereau's Birch Broadcasting strikes a $1 million deal to buy WWHK (102.3 Concord) from Nassau, though the sale was unconsummated at year's end.

In Maine, Bob Bittner sells WWBK (900 Brunswick) to Jim Bleikamp for $35,000.

Family Life Network adds to its network with the $65,000 purchase of WCOP (106.1 Farmington Township PA) from World Radio Link.

APRIL: Ken Barlow and Lori Young-Barlow buy WVTK (92.1 Port Henry NY) from Barlow's Vox group for $550,000.

Jeff Andrulonis' Colonial Broadcasting steps in with a $275,000 deal to buy WFRM-FM (96.7 Coudersport PA) from Cary Simpson's Farm and Home Broadcasting.

On TV, religious broadcaster Daystar buys dark WNGS (Springville/Buffalo NY) and WNYI (Ithaca/Syracuse NY) and five other stations from bankrupt Equity Media Holdings for $7.4 million.

In Canada, Shaw agrees to pay C$1 each to CTV for troubled CKNX-TV in Wingham, Ontario, CHWI-TV in Wheatley/Windsor, Ontario and CKX-TV in Brandon, Ontario, though the deal later falls through.

And in translator news, Central Broadcasting Company pays Radio Assist Ministry $45,000 for translator W243CD (96.5 Gloucester), setting that little translator on a 14-hop, 75-mile odyssey across northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire en route to a new identity, at year's end, as W288CK on 105.3, relaying Central's WPKZ (1280 Fitchburg).

MAY: Lender Goldman Sachs takes control of Nassau Broadcasting, forcing the spinoff of two stations in New Hampshire and one in Maine to stay under ownership caps.

The Seneca Nation becomes a radio owner with the $250,000 purchase of a CP for 105.9 Little Valley NY from Randy Michaels' RadioActive LLC.

On the Jersey shore, Rick Brancadora converts an LMA of WILW (94.3 Avalon) to ownership, with a $1.475 million purchase from Coastal Broadcasting.

Several sales of about-to-expire CPs: Wireless Fidelity of North America gets Dan Priestly's CPs for 1230 Newport ME and 1240 Ellsworth ME, for $22,000 each; Silver Fish Broadcasting gets WTTT (98.7 Stratford NH) from Jackman Holding Co. for $100,000; WMJQ (1330 Ontario NY) from Bud Williamson to 21st Century Broadcasting, for $60,000.

WOMA-LP (93.1 Lebanon PA) goes from defunct Radio Omega to Calvary Chapel Lebanon for $18,000.

In Canada, My Broadcasting picks up CIYN (95.5 Kincardine ON) for C$1,126,520, while Rogers buys the remaining 75% of CIKR (105.7)/CKXC (93.5) in Kingston, Ontario from John Wright and Doug Kirk for C$8.8 million.

JUNE: In Pittsburgh, Believe & Achieve Family Educational Center converts its LMA of WZUM (1590 Carnegie PA) to an $800,000 purchase from Sovereign City Radio Services.

Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa sells WWFP (90.5 Brigantine/Atlantic City NJ) to Hope Christian Church of Marlton for $50,000.

Unbuilt WVVT (670 Essex Junction VT) sells for $1, from Alfred Alonso and Charles Hecht to Hilda Gallant and Paul Salas, to keep the about-to-expire CP alive through January 2011.

On the translator front, Mountaintop Enterprises sells W248AB (97.5 Bolton CT), with Hartford-market coverage, to John Fuller's Red Wolf Broadcasting for $100,000; Horizon Christian Fellowship sells W244CF (96.7 Plymouth MA) to Kingdom Church Inc. (owner of WMSX 1410 Brockton) for $70,000.

JULY: The big headline comes from New York City, where the New York Times Company sells WQXR-FM (96.3) to Univision Radio for $33.5 million plus Univision's WCAA (105.9 Newark NJ) license, which then goes to public broadcaster WNYC, along with the WQXR calls and format, for $11.5 million.

Family Life Ministries picks up WGMF-FM (107.7 Dallas/Scranton PA) from GEOS Communications in a $1 million deal that trades existing Family Life station WCIG (91.3 Carbondale) to Telikoja Educational Broadcasting, controlled by GEOS principals Kevin Fitzgerald and Ben Smith. WGMF-FM becomes WCIG, while 91.3 becomes WFUZ.

In Harrisburg, One Heart Ministries converts its LMA of WKBO (1230) into a purchase from Clear Channel, for $385,000.

South of Erie, WCTL (106.3 Union City) picks up WTMV (88.5 Youngsville) for no cash consideration.

Utica's WRUN (1150) goes to Digital Radio Broadcasting, which gets the AM station and $20,000 from Albany's WAMC in exchange for translator W247BM (97.3 Cooperstown).

In Canada, Evanov adds to its growing group with the acquisition of CKPC (1380) and CKPC-FM (92.1) in Brantford, Ontario from Telephone City Broadcast Ltd.; in Peterborough, Andy McNabb buys silent CKKK (90.5) from King's Kids Promotions Outreach Ministries.

AUGUST: On Long Island, John Caracciolo and Vic Latino's new JVC group reworks its deal to buy WBON (98.5 Westhampton) and now WDRE (105.3 Calverton-Roanoke) from Jarad Broadcasting for a total of $2.7 million - $1 million for WBON and $1.7 million for WDRE.

In the month's other big deal, Buckley sells WSEN/WSEN-FM (1050/92.1 Baldwinsville NY) and WFBL (1390 Syracuse) to James Johnson's Leatherstocking for $2.1 million.

EMF Broadcasting announces a purchase of WOGI (98.3 Duquesne/Pittsburgh PA) from Keymarket, though no sale agreement is filed at the FCC by year's end.

Calvary Chapel of Twin Falls sells WREQ (96.9 Ridgebury PA/Elmira NY) to Europa Communications for $275,000. Over in the Scranton market, Lex Sloot buys WAZL (1490 Hazleton PA) from WS2K.

Jimmy Swaggart's Family Worship Center Church buys new WYRR (88.9 Lakewood/Jamestown NY) from Muncy Hills Broadcasting for $10,000.

In Canada, Canwest Global sheds Hamilton's CHCH (Channel 11) and Montreal's CJNT (Channel 62) to cable programmer Channel Zero, for C$12 and assumption of liabilities.

SEPTEMBER: Boston's WGBH steals the month's headlines with its $14 million purchase of Nassau's classical WCRB (99.5 Lowell), but there's other news from Nassau as well: Jeff Shapiro's Great Eastern Radio adds two more New Hampshire signals, WNNH (99.1 Henniker) and WWHQ (101.5 Meredith), in a $700,000 purchase.

On the translator front, Saga pays Clear Channel $45,000 for W252AA (98.3 Ithaca), which moves to 98.7 as W254BF, "98.7 the Vine," with a AAA format from Saga's WYXL-97.3HD3.

OCTOBER: Peconic Public Broadcasting agrees to a $2.425 million deal (only $800,000 of it in cash) for Long Island University's WLIU (88.3 Southampton NY).

Bold Gold Media Group expands in Scranton, with a $500,000 deal to buy WLNP (94.3 Nanticoke), WNAK (730 Nanticoke) and WCDL (1440 Carbondale) from WS2K.

On the Jersey Shore, a $375,000 deal sends WEHA (88.7 Port Republic) from Vin-Lor Broadcasting to Spreading the Gospel.

NOVEMBER: In Massachusetts' Merrimack Valley, Gois Broadcasting enters an LMA (with eventual purchase) of J Sports' WLLH (1400 Lowell and Lawrence MA).

Don Crawford, Jr.'s DJRA Broadcasting LLC pays dad Don Crawford, Sr.'s Kimtron Inc. $350,000 for Rochester-market WLGZ (102.7 Webster NY).

Tri-State Public Communications pays Willpower Radio $235,000 for WHDD (1020 Sharon CT). Finger Lakes Radio Group files to transfer WSFW (1110 Seneca Falls NY) to Calvary Chapel of Twin Falls, in a trade for translator W214BR (90.7 Geneva).

DECEMBER: Bruce Collier and Joseph Green (Trustworthy Radio) file to convert their LMA of WHYL (960 Carlisle PA) to a purchase, for $300,000, in the month's only significant deal.

The Year in Programming, People and Calls

JANUARY: Job cuts are the month's headline, over and over again, starting with the (temporary) ouster of Steve Leveille and Tom Cuddy at Boston's WBZ and the more permanent dismissal of several of their colleagues there and at Hartford's WTIC. Then comes the first of the big group-wide cuts: 1850 in all at Clear Channel, including dozens of good radio people across the northeast, some of them long-serving veterans like Rochester newsman Bill Lowe. Citadel cuts in Providence, Springfield and Buffalo, too, dismissing good people like WHTT's Jim Pastrick, and there are cuts at Rochester's Stephens Media cluster as well.

Chris Booker returns - yet again - to New York's "K-Rock," though not for long, and down on the Jersey shore, Press dumps "G-Rock Radio" in favor of top-40 "Hits 106" at WHTG-FM (106.3 Eatontown NJ) and WBBO (106.5 Bass River Township NJ).

In Maine, WLVP (870 Gorham) and WLAM (1470 Lewiston) flip from ESPN Radio to oldies. Blueberry's WKCG (101.3 Augusta) drops "Star" AC (shifted over to WCME 96.7 Boothbay Harbor) and soon trades its old calls for WVQM, reflecting its new simulcast with Bangor-market news-talker WVOM (103.9 Howland).

Saga launches more new HD2-on-translator "stations" in New Hampshire: in Keene, it's oldies "Cool 103.1" on WKNE-FM-103.7HD3 and W276CB (103.1) and classic rock on WKNE-FM's HD2 and W281AU (104.1), later moving to a new translator on 99.1 - and a week later, it puts "Hot Hits 94.1/103.1" on Manchester's WZID-95.7HD2 and on W231BR (94.1 Manchester) and W276BJ (103.1 Concord).

In New York's Southern Tier, late-2008 format changes caught by NERW in early 2009 include WABH (1380 Bath) from oldies to ESPN and WHHO (1320 Hornell) from oldies to Fox Sports. Fox Sports also replaces oldies on WJST (1280 New Castle PA). In Smethport PA, WXMT (106.3) flips to classic rock as "The Mountain," and in Laporte PA, WCOZ (103.9) becomes WNKZ, flipping from "Gem FM" oldies to "KZ104" hot AC.

Astral's "Virgin Radio" brand comes to Ottawa, on the rocker formerly known as "The Bear" (CKQB 106.9) and to Montreal, on the AC station formerly known as "Mix 96" (CJFM 95.9).

New calls: WPMW (88.5 Bayview MA), WYRR (88.9 Lakewood NY), WVWA (90.3 Auburn NY), WRPB (89.3 Benedicta ME), WHPF (88.1 Pittston Farm ME), WMHU (91.1 Cold Spring NY), WFWO (89.7 Medina NY), WCOZ (90.5 Laceyville PA).

New to the air: WXLQ (90.5 Bristol VT), part of the North Country Public Radio network; WYPM (93.3 Chambersburg PA), the relocated WROG 102.9 Cumberland MD, with public radio from WITF in Harrisburg at 10 AM on Jan. 9; WUMM (91.7 Machias ME), in late December 2008; CKKW-FM (99.5 Kitchener ON), at 3 PM Jan. 6.

Gone for good: CKKW (1090 Kitchener ON), on Jan. 16.

FEBRUARY: Amidst the ongoing sea of layoffs, with Cumulus cutting across most of its markets, comes some interesting engineering news: the long, complex move of three AM stations to the site in Newton once occupied solely by WUNR (1600) begins to wrap up, as WRCA (1330) and WKOX (1200) receive their licenses to broadcast from the site.

WKOX's usual simulcast partner, WXKS (1430), breaks away for a few weeks to carry a nonstop loop of the new album from Ernie and the Automatics, the (pretty good, actually) band led by car dealer Ernie Boch, Jr.

Veteran New York programmer Tom Cuddy departs New York's WPLJ, though it will be the end of the year before we start hearing the back story of the turmoil inside Citadel that drives him out after 19 years. Across the market, CBS Radio begins to move the first of its staffers into new cluster studios downtown on Hudson Street, a process that will continue through the fall as four studio locations are combined into one.

A new signal debuts in the Watertown, N.Y. market February 9, as Community Broadcasters' WEFX (94.1 Calcium) signs on with a simulcast of "Real Rock" WOTT (100.7 Henderson), then swaps calls with the older station two days later, putting "Real Rock" on the new 94.1 and launching classic hits "The Fox" on WEFX 100.7.

In Maine, Bangor's WABI (910) drops its venerable calls for WAEI, matching sister FM WAEI-FM (97.1). Speaking of sports, ESPN Radio comes to Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts with the flip of Hall's WLKW (1450 West Warwick RI) and WNBH (1340 New Bedford MA) from standards.

Lawrence's WNNW (800) gains an FM translator, W221CH (92.1), moved down from New Hampshire.

Call changes: WJSM (1110 Martinsburg PA) to WWBJ, KCBE (sic) 90.7 Napeague NY to WEGB.

New calls: WWLN (90.5 Lincoln ME), WJVH (91.5 Belfast ME), WTWT (90.5 Bradford PA), WLNJ (91.7 Lakehurst NJ), WVWA (90.3 Auburn NY), WINO (89.9 Odessa NY).

New to the air: WDNJ (88.1 Hopatcong NJ), with Spanish-language religion.

Back on the air: CKRZ (100.3 Ohsweken ON), Feb. 12 after a two-week shutdown that threatened to take the station dark for good.

MARCH: One of the biggest format changes of the year - and certainly the biggest so far - is the March 11 flip of CBS Radio's New York "K-Rock" (WXRK 92.3) to top-40 "92.3 Now FM," touching off a format battle with Clear Channel's "Z100" (WHTZ 100.3) that closely parallels another CBS/CC top-40 fight on the opposite coast, where CBS newcomer "97.1 AMP FM" (KAMP-FM, formerly FM talker KLSX) takes on venerable KIIS-FM (102.7) in Los Angeles. Newcomers Tik Tak (from Detroit) and Lisa Paige (from Philadelphia) fill afternoons and middays, but it will be nearly the end of the year before a morning show (radio newcomer Nick Cannon) is be announced. Across town at Emmis, Jeff Foxx is out after a few years in morning drive - and all over town, radio people are stunned by the brutal murder of WABC newsman George Weber and the subsequent arrest of a 16-year-old suspect in the killing.

The month's other big format news comes from Canada, where March 26 brings the end of oldies on CHUM (1050 Toronto), replaced with a nearly-unlistenable (and nearly un-listened-to) simulcast of CTV's CP24 TV news channel.

On Cape Cod, the WEEI sports network expands to the former WRZE (96.3 Dennis), which flips from top-40 "Rose" to new identity WEII on March 25.

In Maine, Saga moves "hot talk" from WZAN (970 Portland) to WBAE (1490 Portland)/WVAE (1400 Biddeford), displacing "The Bay" standards from that simulcast and sending 970 over to a conservative talk format. Up north, Stephen King begins simulcasting sports WZON (620) on WDME (103.1 Dover-Foxcroft) and Blueberry flips WCME (96.7 Boothbay Harbor) from "Star" AC (the former WKCG 101.3 Augusta format) to a simulcast of rocker WTOS (105.1 Skowhegan).

On the Jersey shore, WTAA (1490 Pleasantville/Atlantic City) flips from satellite-fed "La Gran D" Spanish AC to "La Fiesta" from Long Island's WBON.

At month's end, the end of Nassau's LMA (and unconsummated purchase) of WFKB (107.5 Boyertown) flips the station from classic hits "Frank FM" back to contemporary Christian "Alive FM," WBYN-FM.

Down the road in Philadelphia, Jerry Lee takes a stand against high fees by cutting off streaming at his WBEB (101.1), which remains a dominant station in the market nonetheless.

In Quebec, Corus drops French-language news and talk from its network of signals in Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivieres, Saguenay and Gatineau-Ottawa, in favor of "Souvenirs Garantis" French classic hits/oldies.

Call changes: WCRR (107.3 South Bristol Township NY) to WROO; WJJZ (90.1 North Salem NY) to WJZZ; WFYN (101.5 Waynesboro PA) to WBHB-FM; WANB-FM (103.1 Waynesburg) to WKVE-FM.

New calls: WSVP (88.7 Connellsville PA), WCOP (106.1 Farmington Township PA), WGXC (90.7 Acra NY), WNGB (91.3 Petersham MA), WNGF (89.9 Swanton VT).

New to the air: WGMY (88.1 Montgomery NY), with religion; CHSB (99.3 Bedford NS), also with religion; CFEP (105.9 Eastern Passage NS), on March 13, with a much better metro Halifax signal for "Seaside FM" than its old low-power 94.7 signal.

Gone for good: Aboriginal Voices Broadcasting's CKAV-FM-10 (106.7 Montreal) and never-built CKAV-FM-8 (102.5 Kitchener ON).

APRIL: While the TV industry wraps itself up in questions about Jay Leno and WHDH, a familiar story once again surfaces from New York City's noncommercial airwaves: yet another in the seemingly annual series of leadership struggles at Pacifica's WBAI, this time complete with a change of locks at the station's Empire State Building transmitter site.

A venerable callsign disappears from western Massachusetts April 6, as WMAS (1450 Springfield) becomes WHLL, "The Hall," dropping True Oldies Channel oldies for ESPN sports from its new studio home in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

"True Oldies" also vanishes from Providence a week later, when Citadel's WPRV (790) flips to a mix of talk and business. In southern Maine, WGEI (95.5 Topsham) flips from WEEI-network sports to talk as WLOB-FM, returning that format to the FM dial a year after it retreated to AM. Talk comes to the FM dial on the New Hampshire seacoast as well April 1, when Clear Channel flips WQSO (96.7 Rochester) from oldies to a mostly-simulcast of sister station WGIN (930 Rochester).

A strange tabloid saga surrounds former WNTK (99.7 New London NH) morning man Aaron Aldridge, who vanishes with his teenage daughter. She eventually turns up in Florida, but he's not caught for a few more days, while news emerges that he's wanted on child porn charges. Coincidentally, he turns up in California, not far from the NAB Show underway in Las Vegas - and WNTK hires a different morning man.

In the Hudson Valley, WGHQ (920 Kingston NY), WBNR (1260 Beacon NY) and WLNA (1420 Peekskill NY) all flip from standards to talk as the "Hudson Valley Talk Radio Network." In Binghamton, radio shines and short-staffed TV newsrooms struggle to cover a mass shooting that makes national headlines. And in New York City, Len Berman is out after many years at WNBC (Channel 4) as that station reconfigures its news offerings.

On the Jersey shore, WILW (94.3 Avalon NJ) flips to "Wibbage-FM," still with oldies.

Altoona's WBXQ (94.3) flips from classic rock to "True Country 94.3".

And at month's end, Clear Channel cuts another 600 or so staffers around the country, including a number of programmers, news people and jocks across the NERW region - while at Citadel's WABC, the (apparently final) "Rewound" nostalgia-fest is relegated to a podcast with the departure of PD Phil Boyce.

Call changes: WEIM (1280 Fitchburg MA) to WPKZ, "The Heart of New England's Pulse"; WELX (107.1 Dannemora NY) to WNMR, as the station ends its WCLX (102.9 Westport NY) simulcast and goes silent for most of the rest of the year; WDBA (107.3 Du Bois PA) to WCOH.

New calls: WCIJ (90.9 Laporte PA), WMWR (89.5 Lincoln ME).

New to the air: WZDB (95.9 Sykesville/Du Bois PA), with classic rock.

Back from the dead: WARM (590 Scranton PA), on April 23, after an absence of several weeks.

MAY: Boston talker Jay Severin spends most of the month in the headlines after making controversial comments about Mexicans and the swine flu; he'll serve a three-week suspension before returning to the air June 2. Over at WBZ, Tom Cuddy returns to afternoon-drive sports, relieving the news anchors of that duty.

In Pittsburgh, fans of urban WAMO-FM (106.7) and its AM sister stations protest after owner Sheridan announces it's pulling the plug and selling the signals to a Catholic broadcaster; later in the year, veteran 'Burgh broadcaster Eddie Edwards will attempt to bring back urban radio on an AM signal, but his planned purchase of WPYT (660) is derailed, he says, by health problems.

On the HD Radio dial, Clear Channel's WXDX (105.9) announces a subchannel dedicated, 24/7, to the Penguins; it will launch in the fall when hockey season begins.

Across the state in Philadelphia, public broadcaster WHYY cuts jobs and announces the impending end of its Wilmington, Delaware studio facility and nightly newscast, a move Delaware officials try to thwart with a license challenge at year's end.

Hartford-market WURH (104.1 Waterbury) returns to its old "Radio 104" modern rock format and WMRQ calls under new owner John Fuller, while in Providence, WSNE (93.3) listeners get Boston-based "Matty in the Morning" (also now heard in New Hampshire) in place of their local morning show.

In Syracuse, Craig Fox and Sam Furco flip new purchase WWDG (105.1 DeRuyter) from hot AC "Nova" (silent on May 1) back to its old "Love FM" religious format under its old calls WVOA-FM; the former WVOA-FM (103.9 Mexico NY) becomes WVOU, though it will later return to the WVOA-FM calls when 105.1 flips again. Over in Utica, a well-publicized "format change" stunt brings morning man Eric Thomas from Michigan to Roser's "Kiss FM" simulcast (WSKS/WSKU); Thomas lasts only a few weeks on the job and later disclaims all responsibility for the stunt.

In the Hudson Valley, Clear Channel's "Lite 98.5" WCTW Catskill returns to hot AC as "The Cat." And in Rochester, veteran WXXI-FM morning man Simon Pontin learns to sleep late, retiring after 33 years of wakeup duty.

In eastern Massachusetts, WWZN (1510 Boston) adds more progressive talk, under a leased-time deal with Jeff Santos' Revolution Radio, while WNEB (1230 Worcester) returns to the air with Spanish talk as "Radio Sol."

On TV, WMFP (Channel 62) in the Boston market adds Retro TV programming.

New calls: WZME (1120 Richmond ME), WNGG (90.9 Gloversville NY), WGSS (89.3 Copiague NY), WPHH (91.1 Conway NH), WLEK (101.1 Machias ME).

Call changes: WXHD (90.1 Mount Hope NY) to WMFU, matching simulcast parent WFMU 91.1 East Orange NJ; WFZX (101.7 Searsport ME) to WKVV, WGUY (102.1 Dexter ME) to WKVZ; unbuilt WRMR (89.7 Lindenhurst NY) to WOBH; WWBK (900 Brunswick ME) to WCME; WCME (96.7 Boothbay Harbor ME) to WTQX.

Back from the dead: WCKL (560 Catskill NY), making a longer-than-usual return to keep its license alive.

New to the air: WIGV-LP (96.5 Providence), on May 18.

Gone for good: CHLT (630 Sherbrooke QC) and CJRC (1150 Gatineau QC/Ottawa ON), on May 1.

JUNE: It's all about TV for most of the month, as analog signals fade away, digital signals boost power to compensate, and your editor runs himself ragged trying to document all the history.

In a curious bit of news that's not directly related to the transition, troubled WLNE (Channel 6) in the Providence market loses its top syndicated shows, including Dr. Phil and Inside Edition, when it's unable to pay syndicator King World. Meanwhile on cable, Comcast buys out Hearst's half of New England Cable News, sending founder/GM/president Charlie Kravetz packing.

But there's news on radio as well: "Kiss FM" returns to Toronto June 5, as Rogers pulls the plug on "Jack FM" CJAQ (92.5), taking it back to top-40 with new calls CKIS. In New York, Billy the Kidd leaves the night shift at Z100, while Matt Pinfield takes a temporary leave from the WRXP morning show to enter rehab.

ESPN Radio moves to FM in south Jersey, as WXKW (97.3 Millville) drops its "New Jersey 101.5" simulcast and becomes WENJ-FM; WENJ (1450 Atlantic City) segues from English ESPN to Spanish ESPN Deportes.

An odd story from upstate New York finds neighbors complaining about interference and health problems from the relocated transmitter of WOKR (93.5 Remsen); after several months of testing, the FCC finds nothing out of the ordinary and the neighbors eventually move home. Meanwhile in Rochester, the last of Clear Channel's stations leaves now-vacant Midtown Plaza for new digs across the street.

An even odder story from New Jersey finds PMCM, a company co-owned with Press Communications, applying to move two small VHF stations from Nevada and Wyoming to New Jersey and Delaware - or rather, to New York City and Philadelphia. At year's end, the FCC will deny the moves, but an appeal is pending.

Budget woes hit Erie's WQLN, which cuts the jobs of five staffers, including its program director and chief engineer, and cuts the pay of those remaining.

Canadian linguistic politics lead the government to overturn the award of two new radio licenses in Ottawa to Astral and Frank Torres; after tests identify a third available frequency that can be used for a French-language frequency, both licenses (and a third in French) are re-granted later in the year.

And at month's end, the death of Michael Jackson reminds radio of a time when it still brought everyone together musically.

Call changes: WGMY (88.1 Montgomery NY) to WNYX, WBUD (1310 Asbury Park NJ) back to WADB, WJZI (107.1 Livingston Manor NY) to WBZX, moving to Hancock NY; WEMR (1460 Tunkhannock PA) to WGMF.

New calls: WRGY (90.5 Rangeley ME), WPVH (90.7 Plymouth NH), WPFG (91.3 Carlisle PA), WOPG (89.9 Esperance NY), WTMI (88.7 Fleming NY), WGUY (1230 Newport ME), WEMR (88.7 Dushore PA), CIYM (100.9 Brighton ON), CKWD (99.1 Wallaceburg ON), CJHK (100.7 Bridgewater NS).

New to the air: CKRU-FM (100.5 Peterborough ON), June 15; WHHN (88.1 Hollidaysburg/Altoona PA).

JULY: It's a bad month for two public TV stations near the Canadian border, as Canadian cable giant Rogers threatens to drop Erie's WQLN from systems in London, Ontario and Watertown's WPBS from its systems in Ottawa. With much of their membership base about to be cut off, both stations sign deals to transmit their signals across the border by fiber to alleviate Rogers' concerns about picture quality.

In commercial TV news, Multicultural's New York-market WSAH (Channel 43) picks up Retro TV programming, but soon drops it, citing programming and cost issues. Young Broadcasting goes up for sale, without finding a buyer, though Gray Broadcasting signs on to manage many of the bankrupt company's stations, including WTEN (Channel 10) in Albany. In West Hartford, NBC's WVIT (Channel 30) moves next door to a state-of-the-art new building, leaving behind its 1953-vintage building.

ESPN Radio's WEPN (1050 New York) flips the switch on its new transmitter site near the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel, ending a long struggle to move away from a huge construction project that disrupted the station's old site nearby.

WGSM (107.1 Greensburg PA) ditches adult hits "Sam FM" for classic hits as "G-107."

In eastern Canada, CFQM (103.9 Moncton NB) flips from AC "Magic 104" to classic hits "Max FM 103.9" at month's end.

Call changes: WFRM-FM (96.7 Coudersport PA) to WLMY, moving to Portville/Olean NY.

New calls: WHVM (91.9 Owego NY, replacing WLJM); WDMY, then WHNM (91.9 Stockbridge MA); WWRN (91.5 Rockport MA), WFYB (91.5 Fryeburg ME), WRNM (91.7 Ellsworth ME).

New to the air: CKXM (90.5 Exeter ON), testing, with official launch Aug. 31; WBZX (107.1 Hancock NY), relaying Scranton's "Rock 107" WEZX.

Gone for good: CFDR (780 Dartmouth NS), at 10 AM July 27, replaced by CKLT 92.9.

AUGUST: While plenty of attention is focused on 104.1 in Boston, where WBCN is breathing its last, Citadel's "Mix 104.1" (WHTT-FM Buffalo) very quietly returns from AC to classic hits.

In Syracuse, Craig Fox and Sam Furco flip their new acquisition WVOA-FM (105.1 DeRuyter) to country as WOLF-FM, challenging Clear Channel's established "B104.7" (WBBS Fulton).

Clear Channel responds to its new "Wolf Country" competition by flipping urban "Power 106.9" WPHR (newly moved from Auburn to Solvay) to "Young Country" for just a weekend, then returns the station to urban.

News-talk comes to FM in State College Aug. 3 with the flip of "Qwik Rock" WQWK (103.1) to talk WRSC-FM; WRSC (1390) goes to progressive talk and sports WMAJ (1450) picks up the WQWK calls.

Up in Bradford, PA and nearby Olean, NY, WLMI (103.9 Kane PA) flips to country "Bob FM," as does WBYB (96.7 Portville NY).

North of Boston, Keating Willcox's WNSH (1570 Beverly) drops talk for a simulcast of Spanish religion WESX (1230 Nahant), but that simulcast will end at year's end, replaced once again by talk on 1570.

In Toronto, CHUM-FM (104.5) quietly vacates 1331 Yonge Street after half a century at that famed address, moving to a new studio at 250 Richmond Street West.

Call changes: WILW (94.3 Avalon NJ) to WIBG-FM, WDME (103.1 Dover-Foxcroft ME) to WZON-FM, now simulcasting sports WZON (620 Bangor). WLMY (96.7 Portville NY) to WBYB; WRVH (107.9 Williamsport PA) to WLMY. WGXM (88.7 Port Republic NJ) to WEHA.

New calls: WJNF (91.7 Dalton MA), WFGP (91.1 Greene ME), WTBP (89.7 Bath ME), WWTP (88.5 Augusta ME), WVVC (88.5 Dolgeville NY).

Back on the air: WDCR (1340 Hanover NH), temporarily, to keep its license alive.

New to the air: CIGM-FM (93.5 Sudbury ON), stunting as "Kung Pao Radio" before launching as "Hot 93.5" Aug. 25 at noon; WKDR (1490 Berlin NH), simulcasting WXXS (102.3 Lancaster NH).

Gone (for good?): WGAJ (91.7 Deerfield MA).

SEPTEMBER: Allentown's WAEB (790) stays on the air despite Labor Day weekend vandalism, when someone (still unidentified at year's end) takes down the northernmost of the station's five towers in Whitehall Township, PA. A few weeks later, broadcasters gather in Philadelphia for the NAB Radio Show, looking for signs of hope amidst a gloomy year.

ESPN Radio vanishes from the Boston airwaves when J Sports takes WAMG (890 Dedham) and WLLH (1400 Lowell and Lawrence) dark Sept. 14 after losing the affiliation. WLLH soon returns with a Spanish-language format under an LMA; meanwhile, Clear Channel flips Spanish tropical WXKS (1430 Everett MA) to Spanish AC "Mia," leaving the tropical "Rumba" on WKOX (1200 Newton). And on the unlicensed front, high-profile pirate "WBOT" moves from 97.5 to 87.7, where it's just one of many high-powered stations operating more or less in the open, with little effective enforcement action from an understaffed FCC.

Urban listeners in Pittsburgh are left without a station as Sheridan pulls the plug on its three signals Sept. 8 at 5 PM. WAMO-FM (106.7 Beaver Falls), WAMO (860 Millvale) and WPGR (1510 Monroeville) will eventually end up in the hands of St. Joseph Missions, though they remained silent at year's end, save for some testing on the FM in late December.

In Rochester, Clear Channel's "Country 107.3" (WROO South Bristol Township) goes sports on Sept. 9 as WHTK-FM, simulcasting WHTK (1280 Rochester).

In the Champlain Valley, WCLX (102.9 Westport NY) goes silent Sept. 9 amidst a dispute between owner Dennis Jackson and operators Russ Kinsley and Diane Desmond, who keep their "Musicheads" format alive as a webcast.

In New York City, Bruce Anderson retires after a quarter-century of news anchoring at WABC, while Dave and Danni are sent packing from "Fresh" WWFS after less than a year there, replaced by Long Island's Jim and Kim, in turn clearing the way for Steve Harper to return to the island's airwaves on WKJY (K-Joy 98.3).

"K-Love" comes to a stronger Pittsburgh signal, the former Keymarket "Froggy 98" WOGI (98.3 Duquesne), while up in State College, "Qwik Rock" returns to the air, displacing country/rock "Joe FM" from WJOW (105.9)/WZYY (106.9).

In Huntingdon County, PA, WBSS (106.3 Mount Union) flips from a State College classic rock simulcast to oldies as "Hunny 106," WHUN-FM.

A few format flips in Maine: WSKW (1160 Skowhegan) from ESPN to standards/oldies "Legacy 1160," on Sept. 6, and WMCM (103.3 Rockland) and WLKE (99.1 Bar Harbor) to a simulcast of country "Bear" WBFB (104.7 Brewer).

Across the border, Astral tries rebranding venerable CFRB (1010 Toronto) as simply "Newstalk 1010," shuffling the station's schedule in an attempt to attract a younger audience.

New to the air: W237CS (95.3 Smethport PA), with news/talk from WXMT-106.3HD2; WEVP (91.7 Laporte PA).

Call changes: WJSL (90.3 Houghton NY) to WXXY; WJOE (700 Athol MA) to WVBB, then to WTUB. WOGF (104.3 Moon Township PA) to WOGI, WOGI (98.3 Duquesne/Pittsburgh PA) to WOGF and then WPKV with its new "K-Love" format; WPKV (90.7 Nanty Glo PA) to WPAI, flipping from K-Love to "Air 1" Christian rock.

New calls: WSFS (89.3 Freehold NJ).

Gone for good: CIGM (790 Sudbury ON), at 5 PM Sept. 30; CKRU (980 Peterborough ON).

OCTOBER: A week after the big WQXR move, Univision Radio relaunches its new purchase, New York's 96.3 FM, at 6 AM Oct. 15 as Spanish hits "X 96.3," WXNY, quickly rocketing past longtime competitor WSKQ-FM in the ratings.

CBS Radio finishes its move to Hudson Street on Oct. 9, with the last broadcast from the dank basement in Astoria, Queens that was home for 22 years to WFAN.

Greater Media doesn't stick with top-40 "Now" on Philly-market WNUW (97.5 Burlington NJ), flipping that signal to sports on Oct. 9 as "97.5 the Phanatic," WPEN-FM and sending PD Jules Riley packing.

While ESPN gets an FM home in Philly, it also finds a new part-time home on AM in Boston, landing on WEEI (850) for overnights and weekends - and a new full-time home in southern New Hampshire, returning to WGAM (1250 Manchester)/WGHM (900 Nashua) after a three-year absence.

In Syracuse, Leatherstocking flips new purchase WFBL (1390 Syracuse) from oldies to talk, sending the oldies down the dial to WSEN (1050 Baldwinsville).

On TV, Vermont's Marselis "Div" Parsons signs off from WCAX-TV after 42 years, most recently as news director and evening anchor. Another veteran of many decades, Dale Dorman, quietly signs off his most recent radio gig, doing weekends on Boston's WODS.

Call changes: WAMO/WAMO-FM (860 Millvale/106.7 Beaver Falls PA) to WAOB/WAOB-FM, WEMR (88.7 Dushore PA) to WAMO; WHJB (1600 Bedford) to WAYC.

New calls: WWOM (88.1 Ellwood City PA).

New to the air: CKXS (99.1 Wallaceburg ON), at 9 AM Oct. 20; WXLS (88.3 Tupper Lake NY).

NOVEMBER: The biggest headlines come from the biggest markets, as New York's "Pulse" goes through its last days, soon replaced by a simulcast of "Party" WPTY (105.3 Calverton-Roanoke NY, where the venerable WDRE calls are retired) and as WGBH takes over classical WCRB at month's end.

Nassau's New Hampshire ownership shuffles move "Hawk" classic rock off WNNH (99.1 Henniker) and WWHQ (101.5 Meredith), and over to WLKZ (104.9 Wolfeboro) on Nov. 4, leaving 99.1 and 101.5 with loops of promos for other Nassau stations and occasional simulcasts.

CBS extends "Sports Hub" WBZ-FM (98.5 Boston) into Hartford via WTIC-FM-HD3 - and it brings its WFAN (660 New York) programming down to Florida, adding relays on FM HD3 channels in Orlando, Tampa and West Palm Beach.

In the Hudson Valley, Clear Channel flips country WRWC (99.3 Ellenville) to news-talk as WKIP-FM; the WRWC calls and country format replace news-talk on sister WELG (1370 Ellenville). On Long Island, the LMA of WNYG (1440 Babylon) ends, with the station set to go silent for good in early 2010. And in the Bronx, Yankees fans celebrate championship #27, the first ever to be called on radio by a female color commentator, WCBS' Suzyn Waldman.

Country fans in the greater Toronto area lose a powerful voice on Nov. 13, as Corus flips "Country 95.3" (CING Hamilton) to classic hits.

"Corm and the Coach" return to Burlington's airwaves via new WNMR (107.1 Dannemora NY).

An FM translator launches with Spanish in the Hartford market, as Red Wolf Broadcasting puts Spanish hits "La Bomba" on W248AB (97.5 Bolton) and nominal primary WMRQ-HD2 (104.1 Waterbury).

In southern Rhode Island, Chris DiPaola closes on his $350,000 purchase of WXNI (1230 Westerly), flipping the station to AC as WBLQ. (Former WBLQ-LP 96.7 Ashaway RI becomes WYME-LP with religion.)

On TV, Philadelphia's beloved weatherman Dave Roberts (who was Buffalo's "Dave Thomas" before moving to WPVI in 1978) announces his retirement after more than half a century on the air.

And Christmas format flips hold off until Nov. 2, with Syracuse's WZUN and Utica's WUMX first to the punchbowl. (Technically, New Jersey's WEZW is first, with a pre-Halloween flip, but that appears to be stunting in advance of a brand-new format on that Cape May signal in the new year.)

Call changes: WGSM (107.1 Greensburg) to WHJB, at least on paper; WJOW (105.9 Philipsburg PA)/WZYY (106.9 Renovo PA) to WQCK/WQKK, WDRE (105.3 Calverton-Roanoke NY) to WPTY.

New calls: WRQV (88.1 Ridgway PA).

Back on the air: WCLX (102.9 Westport NY), with eclectic "Farm Fresh Radio" programmed by Chip and Kathy Morgan of WMUD-LP (89.3 Moriah NY).

New to the air: CJWF (95.9 Windsor ON), at 8 AM Nov. 16.

DECEMBER: Curtis Sliwa, longtime voice at WABC (770 New York), signs with competitor WNYM (970 Hackensack NJ) for a morning show to start in January, while John Batchelor takes over Sliwa's former evening shift on WABC.

In central New York, Craig Fox and Sam Furco rearrange their signals, flipping "Movin'" WMVN (96.7 Oswego) to "Wolf" WWLF-FM, and changing the calls of "Movin'" WMVU (100.3 Sylvan Beach) to WMVN. Over in Rochester, students at the Rochester Institute of Technology make headlines in a feud with community DJs at WITR (89.7 Henrietta), which ends up mostly on automation - and occasionally in dead air - over the holiday vacation.

In Watkins Glen, a tower collapse Dec. 14 at WRCE (1490) kills one tower worker and puts the station off the air.

In northeast PA, Bold Gold flips WPSN (1590 Honesdale) from sports to CNN news, with a new FM translator to simulcast. Near Philadelphia, Great Scott pulls the plug on WPAZ (1370 Pottstown) Dec. 10, leaving eight people without work.

On TV, Tribune's WTIC-TV (Channel 61) and WTXX (Channel 20) move into new digs shared with their sister newspaper, the Hartford Courant, now under common management with the TV stations. In New Hampshire, the end of local programming at WZMY (Channel 50) threatens the job of Al Kaprielian, prompting a movement among his fans to save the quirky weatherman's job. Across the border, Max Keeping announces his retirement from Ottawa's CJOH after 51 years on the job, the last 37 at CJOH.

Down the road from the TV station, a 14-year-old kid named Jayhaed Saade becomes a cult hero after putting a high-powered pirate station, "Mix 91.9," on the air from the roof of his father's strip club; after defying Industry Canada for several weeks, Saade shuts the station down and announces he's pursuing a broadcast license.

New to the air: CJEU (1670 Gatineau QC), testing.

Silent: WPAZ (1370 Pottstown PA), on Dec. 10; WRJI (91.5 East Greenwich RI).

Back from the dead: WAMG (890 Dedham-Boston) with a loop of Spanish-language music.

New calls: WRUN (1150 Utica NY) to WUTI; WREQ (96.9 Ridgebury PA) to WZKN.

Year-End Rant (Abbreviated Version)

Some years deserve a lengthy exegesis. To others, we simply say "good riddance" and look toward the future. 2009 was definitely one of the latter years.

And everything we could have spent paragraphs writing about was more ably summarized by my good friend Dennis Jackson in a year-end quote he offered to my colleague, competitor and friend Tom Taylor:

The fruits of deregulation are now clear — Everyone loses. That’s the listening public, investors, lenders, advertisers, and thousands of broadcasters who once made radio great and were fired from jobs to which they were dedicated. For the most part, corporate radio is a hollow, bloodless shell replacing a medium that listeners once cared deeply about. Perhaps 2010 will be the year when real broadcasters are let back into their stations and we can begin to turn our medium around before it’s too late.

To which we can only say: amen.

And as we do every year, we close out our Year in Review by remembering the many great radio and TV people our region lost in 2009.

In Memoriam

This was a particularly painful year on that account, too, especially at the national level, where we pay particular attention to the passing of two of the all-time greats. Walter Cronkite and Paul Harvey were among the last broadcasters left with links to the golden age of radio, and Harvey in particular deserves a salute for remaining active in the industry almost to his last days.

The industry lost more than its share of local and regional legends as well: Boston's great all-night voice, Larry Glick; Paul Sidney of WLNG, who embodied all that was good about local radio; Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas, who went out in style with a World Series win; Fred Cusick, forever the voice of the Bruins.

From the TV world, there was Providence's Art Lake, who was there at the start of TV in town, and Gary Papa, taken from Philadelphia TV viewers far too young. KDKA's Fred Honsberger was taken from Pittsburgh talk listeners far too young as well. There was George Weber, whose brutal murder stunned the New York radio community; Ed McMahon, who never forgot the town or the station that gave him his start, and the list goes on (with a last-minute addition on Christmas Eve, WFIL/WABC late-night "King" George Michael, gone at 70 after a long fight with cancer.)

• JOHN BLAKE, 69, Long Island engineer (Dec. 26, 2008)
• VALERIE LETARTE, 47, Radio-Canada "275-ALLO" host (Dec. 28, 2008)
• KEVIN COLLINS, Jr., 24, New Jersey and Binghamton DJ (Dec. 28, 2008)
• EMILY HOFFMAN, 53, New York radio news anchor (Jan. 5)
• BILL MORRISSEY, 84, longtime WKBR Manchester morning man (Jan. 8)
• ANDRIA HALL, 51, former WCVB Boston "Chronicle" reporter (Jan. 12)
• TIM WHITE, 49, Buffalo DJ (Jan. 13)
• MIKE McCOY, Binghamton DJ (Jan. 15)
• KENNY YOUNGS, 83, central NY DJ (Jan. 24)
• R.D. SUMMERS (THOMAS RENKENBERGER), 60, WWSW Pittsburgh DJ (Feb. 15)
• JOHN KANZIUS, 64, former WJET Erie VP/GM (Feb. 18)
• HARRISON RIDLEY, 70, WRTI Philadelphia jazz DJ (Feb. 19)
• DON RIGGS, 81, WPXI Pittsburgh announcer (Feb. 21)
• PAUL HARVEY, 90 (Feb. 28)
• NELSON DOAK, 60, WKTJ Farmington ME co-owner (March 1)
• TOD JEFFERS, 67, Pennsylvania talk host (March 1)
• STEVE AMIRAULT, 62, Merrimack Valley PD (March 2)
• FRANK FORD (ED FELBIN), 92, longtime Philadelphia talker (March 3)
• THOMAS T. GOLDSMITH, 99, DuMont engineering guru (March 5)
• BRIAN JAMES, 48, voiceover talent, ex-WBZZ Pittsburgh (March 6)
• GEORGE ROSSI, 75, Binghamton GM (March 5)
• JOHN "ROMAN" DOMANSKI, 55, ex-WKXW PD (March 8)
• JOHN B. HILL, 60, WVBR Ithaca engineer (March 12)
• MIKE "SPYDER" McGUIRE, 55, Jersey Shore DJ (March 15)
• BRIAN SMITH, 52, CHWO/CFZM DX coordinator (March 19)
• BILL "MARSHALL" GRAVINO, WVLT PD, WTMR ops manager (March 19)
• GEORGE WEBER, WABC newsman (March 20)
• LEN WOLOSON, 79, WARM Scranton DJ (March 22)
• LARRY GLICK, 87, WBZ overnight talk legend (March 26)
• PAUL SIDNEY, 69, WLNG GM emeritus (April 2)
• FRECKLES, 13, NERW Wonder Dog (April 3)
• HOWARD CLARK, 70, WWDJ jock (April 6)
• GARDNER HILL, 62, WKXL Concord NH talk host (April 12)
• HARRY KALAS, 73, legendary Phillies broadcaster (April 13)
• LES KEITER, 89, NYC sportscaster (April 14)
• MERLE HARMON, 82, Jets broadcaster (April 15)
• BILL CORBEIL, 40, WTSA Brattleboro owner (April 19)
• MERV AINSWORTH, 83, WKTV Utica chief engineer (April 19)
• KAREN YOURD LASH, 51, ex-WDAD/WQMU Indiana PA jock (April 21)
• LES WALTON, 52, CKTB St. Catharines news director (April 23)
• ERIK SELBY, 43, KQV PD (April 27)
• HARRY ABRAHAM, 64, WHAM jazz jock (May 7)
• PAUL GRIMES, 61, Scranton DJ (May 14)
• AL RACCO, 80, ex-WABC GM (May 20)
• RANDY STEELE, 47, CHCH Hamilton reporter (May 22)
• R. CLARK WITT IV, 32, former Utica board op (May 24)
• JIM "LORD" CHAMPLAIN, ex-WTRY jock/production director (May 25)
• JEN "KING" COUDREY, ex-WRRB/WRRV DJ (May 29)
• STEVE BULL, 54, WKTJ Maine operations manager (May 30)
• GENE GARNES, Sr., 81, NBC engineer (June 5)
• ANALOG TV, 70-ish, veteran broadcast technology (June 12)
• DON ZIHLMAN, 61, ex-WLAM host (June 12)
• BOB LAWRENCE, 80, WGBB PD (June 12)
• ART CERVI, 89, Erie-market station owner (June 14)
• MICHAEL BERNZ (CIPRIANI), 58, CT/RI DJ (June 18)
• GARY PAPA, 54, WPVI sports director (June 19)
• KEN ROBERTS, 99, New York announcer (June 19)
• ED McMAHON, 86, WLLH Lowell radio veteran who made it big (June 23)
• IRV HOMER, 86, Philly talker (June 24)
• CLEO "DON" BROOKS, 68, NJ station owner (June 27)
• MARTIN STREEK, 45, ex-CFNY Toronto jock (July 6)
• TUCK STADLER, 87, WINS newsman (July 10)
• BRAD SHERMAN, 83, WINS newsman (July 12)
• WALTER CRONKITE, 92 (July 17)
• WARREN DOOLIN, 71, WNAC/WHDH-TV/WCVB photojournalist (July 20)
• BILL CUSACK, 76, WXKS, WPLM DJ (July 21)
• LES LYE, 84, CJOH announcer (July 21)
• MARGARET JONES, 62, ex-WYNY/WHN DJ (July 21)
• GEORGE TAYLOR MORRIS, 62, veteran Boston DJ/PD (Aug. 1)
• JAMES HAZELTINE III, 67, "Jim Rivers" on WLAN/WIBG (Aug. 1)
• IRA APPLE, 74, WBZ, KDKA, WBAL PD (Aug. 11)
• CHRIS "GABLE" BOROD, 56, WYNY/WMGK jock, WRKZ PD (Aug. 12)
• CHUCK AZZARELLO, 60, CHEZ Ottawa founding PD (Aug. 22)
• GEORGE NEHER, 65, WWNY Watertown PD/morning man (Aug. 25)
• EGIDIO "ED" POLICASTRI, 84, former WPRO AM-FM chief engineer (Sept. 1)
• SHARON FOGAREN, 43, WFHN morning co-host (Sept. 2)
• JIM WHITE, 85, ex-KDKA, KMOX talker (Sept. 4)
• HILARY BOGDEN, 85, WJAS Pittsburgh announcer (Sept. 5)
• DALE LANE, 62, Albany DJ (Sept. 5)
• JERRY BARSHA, 83, WSYR/WSTM investigative reporter (Sept. 10)
• FRED SHERMAN, 86, KYW newsman (Sept. 12)
• JACK FREDERICKS, 84, WKTV Utica announcer (Sept. 14)
• FRED CUSICK, 90, legendary Bruins voice (Sept. 15)
• PAULINE YATES, 84, WCAP station manager (Sept. 19)
• STEVE "MR. MOVIE" FRIEDMAN, 62, Philadelphia talker (Sept. 20)
• ALAN DARY, 89, Boston/NH DJ (Oct. 2)
• JOHN "MR. MAGIC" RIVAS, NYC hip-hop DJ (Oct. 2)
• "DIAMOND" JIM NETTLETON, legendary Philadelphia DJ (Oct. 4)
• DONALD A. THURSTON, 79, Berkshire Broadcasting owner (Oct. 5)
• MARK OLDS, 88, WWRL/WRVR GM (Oct. 8)
• BOB ELLSWORTH, 83, WTIC anchor, WJMJ DJ (Oct. 9)
• HANK SPANN, WWRL DJ (Oct. 14)
• RICHARD GLADWELL, 88, WXXI "With Heart and Voice" host (Oct. 15)
• BRUCE CHARLES, 85, WNEW newsman (Oct. 16)
• SOUPY SALES, 83, TV comedian and WNBC host (Oct. 21)
• BILL CHADWICK, 94, NY Rangers announcer (Oct. 24)
• BOB APPELL, 52, ex-WSFW DJ (Nov. 3)
• STANLEY MIASTKOWSKI, 58, ex-WHMP DJ (Nov. 3)
• TED TEFFNER, 69, WCAX engineer extraordinaire (Nov. 12)
• DANIEL W. KOPS, Sr., 92, CT station owner (Nov. 14)
• DENE HALLAM, 56, former WHN/WKHK PD (Nov. 20)
• ART LAKE, 85, WJAR weatherman for 60 years (Nov. 22)
• NAT WRIGHT, 82, WIP overnight jock (Nov. 26)
• AL ALBERTS, 82, WPVI talent show host (Nov. 27)
• JOHN "SIR WALTER RALEIGH" CHRISTIAN, 92, Pittsburgh DJ, newsman (Nov. 29)
• HAROLD "HAL" FULMER III, 69, PA station owner (Dec. 3)
• PAUL JEFFERS, 75, ex-WCBS,WINS news director (Dec. 4)
• BOB GESSNER, 86, WBNR, WSGO/WGES owner (Dec. 5)
• JACK DALY, ex-CKOY/CKBY sports director, GM (Dec. 8)
• PAUL GODOFSKY, 91, WHLI/WKJY founder (Dec. 11)
• FRED HONSBERGER, 58, KDKA talk host (Dec. 16)
• JIM GENOVESE, 61, Long Island DJ (Dec. 16)
• GEORGE MICHAEL, 70, WFIL/WABC jock-turned-sportscaster (Dec. 24)
• MICHAEL MANCINI, 44, Cox Radio New Haven salesman (Dec. 25)
• PERCY SUTTON, 89, Inner City Broadcasting founder/owner (Dec. 26)
• DAVE MOCK, 41, CBS Radio News producer/reporter (Dec. 27)

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