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July 14, 2003
Car Dealer/Broadcaster Boch Dies
By SCOTT FYBUSH
*Just in to NERW at press time is word that
one of the best-known voices in MASSACHUSETTS has
been silenced.
Ernie Boch never had an airshift, but his trademark "Come
on DOWN!" beckoned listeners to his auto dealerships over
decades of high-intensity radio and TV advertising. In 1991,
Boch became a broadcast owner with the $825,000 purchase of WOCB
(1240/94.9 West Yarmouth), and in the years that followed he
expanded his Cape Cod holdings into one of the market's most
important clusters.
With his 1996 purchase of three more FMs and his 2001 donation
of the former WOCB(AM) to Boston University, Boch's cluster now
consists of news-talk WXTK (95.1 West Yarmouth), AC WCOD (106.1
Hyannis) and oldies simulcast WDVT (93.5 Harwich Port) and WTWV
(101.1 Mashpee) - and with Boch's death Sunday at age 77, the
rumors are already flying about potential purchasers interested
in the stations. More next week...
 *Almost all the rest of the news
out of the Bay State involves WRKO (680 Boston): the station
temporarily pulled the Michael Savage show last week after the
blowup that ended his MSNBC gig (and if you believe his "apology"
about not realizing his mike was open, we have a daytime AM station
in Brooklyn to sell you) - and will soon lose its late-night
guy, Doug "Virgin Boy" Goudie.
"VB," who's come a long way from being just an occasional
voice (and behind-the-scenes producer) on the Howie Carr show,
will trade his 10 PM to 1 AM "Pleasure Pit" shift on
WRKO for an early wakeup call this fall, when he becomes part
of the on-air team for WFXT (Fox 25)'s new morning show. No word
yet on what WRKO will do with that 10 PM shift yet...
And CSN's new 91.7 in Gardner gets calls: WJWT(FM).
 *The public TV outlet that serves the southern
tier of NEW YORK may soon have a second full-power
transmitter. WSKG-TV (Channel 46) in Binghamton has long served
the adjacent Elmira market, 45 miles to the west, with a translator
on channel 30 (W30AA) - and for nearly a decade, it's had an
application pending to put a full-power noncommercial station
on the air on channel 30, licensed to Corning.
That application was finally granted last week, giving WSKG
813 kW visual from 242 meters above average terrain at a site
on Comfort Hill south of Elmira that's now home to WENY-FM (92.7
Elmira).
Good news for Elmira viewers? Maybe not - WSKG's website was
updated just last week with a notification that the Elmira translator
service is being discontinued to save the $40,000 or so that
it cost to operate each year. WSKG says only 500 or so viewers
received its signal directly on channel 30 (Elmira/Corning is
a heavily cabled market), and it's advising them to get outdoor
UHF antennas pointed at its channel 46 signal, which will soon
be coming from a tall new tower on Ingraham Hill.
That decision was apparently made before the long-pending
full-power channel 30 application was granted, and it will be
interesting to see whether WSKG decides it's worth the cost to
build out a high-power UHF facility in Elmira/Corning, or whether
this CP ends up getting sold or going unbuilt.
(One other possibility: since there's no paired DTV allocation
for channel 30, WSKG has the option of building it out as an
analog station and switching it to digital later, or of building
it out as a DTV facility from the start, so perhaps this facility
will become a relay of WSKG-DT, which is soon to come on the
air.)
*Speaking of Elmira, its classic rock station has new call
letters. WPHD (94.7 Tioga PA) has long been known as "The
Met," dating back to a time when it was simulcast with the
old WMTT (now WCDW) 100.5 Conklin-Binghamton. Now 94.7 actually
has the WMTT calls, after making a swap with the unbuilt 96.1
South Waverly PA CP that had been holding them. So South Waverly
will be WPHD when it takes the air...
 Over in Buffalo, Don & Mike
added WBUF (92.9) as an affiliate last week, displacing Michelle
The Eternal One from the timeslot she'd been filling temporarily.
(Bob "Godfather" Galli had held it before her, and
before that it was Opie & Anthony in afternoons
at WBUF, whch is just as heavy on talk as it is on rock.)
In Syracuse, NBC affiliate WSTM (Channel 3) has taken over
operations of the former WAWA-LP (Channel 14), and has rebranded
it as WSTQ, or "Q6." Why 6? That's the channel the
UPN affiliate will occupy on cable, now that it's displacing
Boston's WSBK there.
And here in Rochester, we heard a rather high-power signal
calling itself "100.9 the Pirate, Rochester's Rock Station"
over on the west side of town last week. (We also heard one in
Burlington, VERMONT when we were up there
a few weeks back - "Radio Free Burlington" on 87.9.)
 *Up
in CANADA, CHUM officially launched its new FM signal
in Brockville, Ontario, transforming CFJR (830) into CFJR-FM
(104.9), aka "JRfm." The FM signal has been on the
air testing for several weeks, but the official launch today
sets the clock running to the signoff later this year of the
AM signal. (Oddly, CFJR's website makes no mention of the FM
yet!)
But in the midst of launching "JRfm," CHUM also
flipped its older Brockville FM signal. CJPT (103.7) has been
doing top 40 as "the Point," but as of today it's a
clone of CHUM's CKKL (93.9 Ottawa), running classic hits and
hot AC currents as "103.7 Bob FM."
Over in Simcoe, CHCD (106.7) wants to get off its interference-prone
FM channel. CHCD moved to 106.7 in 1997, when it pulled the plug
on the old CHNR 1600 - but with Buffalo and Cleveland operating
on 106.5 and all that Lake Erie water creating frequent tropospheric
ducting, a new frequency seemed to be in order. So CHCD is applying
to move to 98.9 and to boost its power from 3400 watts to 14.3
kW.
 Toronto's "Humble Howard"
Glassman and Fred Patterson are moving their morning show again.
The "Humble and Fred Show" started in 1989 at CFNY
(102.1) and lasted for more than a decade there before Corus
moved the pair to its AM talker, CFMJ (Mojo 640) in April 2001.
Now they're on the way back to FM, having signed a deal to
move to Standard's CKFM (Mix 99.9) next month. No word yet on
what Mojo will do for mornings once its star duo depart.
Aboriginal Voices Radio's CFIE (106.5 Toronto) has been granted
a power increase. It'll go from 350 watts to 1100 watts from
its First Canadian Place transmitter; right now, it gets killed
by co-channel interference from WYRK (106.5 Buffalo) as close
in as Etobicoke!
And the CRTC is getting out of the low-power business: it
announced last week that it will no longer require parks information,
traffic information and weather stations to submit to its licensing
procedures as long as they're less than 100 watts on AM, 50 watts
at 60 meters on FM. Those stations will still have to get technical
approval from Industry Canada - and, this being Canada, will
have to pledge to comply with the Canadian Association of Broadcasters'
guidelines on gender portrayal!
 *In PENNSYLVANIA,
Max Media is buying five Susquehanna Valley stations from Sunair
Communications. For $7.5 million, Max gets the "Big Country"
simulcast of WYGL (1240 Selinsgrove), WYGL-FM (100.5 Elizabethville),
WLGL (92.3 Riverside) and WWBE (98.3 Mifflinburg), as well as
hot AC "Flyte 106" WFYY (106.5 Bloomsburg). Max Media
owns 14 radio stations outside the region; it used to own WSYT
(Channel 68) up in Syracuse as well.
The Latino American Media Organization of PA was granted a
new LPFM on 93.1 in Lebanon; we understand this is where the
Spanish "Radio Omega" that had been on WPDC (1600 Elizabethtown)
will go.
Philadelphia's WPTP (96.5) grabbed some media attention last
week when morning guy Barsky announced that one of his show's
staff had won that enormous Powerball prize; the stunt was good
for some morning TV live shots before anyone caught on.
And just across the state line in the other direction, Clear
Channel finally has call letters on its 98.3 Ashtabula, Ohio
CP: mark down "WYBL" for that one, at least for now.
*A new LPFM in NEW HAMPSHIRE: The
Londonderry school district has been granted 102.9 with 100 watts.
*And that's it for this summer week...more in seven days!
 *Have
you ordered your Tower Site Calendar 2003 yet? That spiffy
image of the WBEN transmitter site on Grand Island is just one
of a dozen exciting images...and it's accompanied by many others
(including Providence's WHJJ; Mount Mansfield, Vermont; KOMA
in Oklahoma City; the legendary WSM, Nashville; WGN, Chicago
and many more), more dates in radio history, a convenient hole
for hanging - and we'll even make sure all the dates fall on
the right days!
This year's calendar is currently shipping! Calendars
are in stock, and orders placed now will ship within 24 hours!
And this year, you can order with your Visa, MasterCard, Discover
or American Express by using the handy link below!
Better yet, here's an incentive to make your 2003 NERW subscription
pledge: support NERW/fybush.com at the $60 level or higher, and
you'll get this lovely calendar for free! How can you
go wrong? (Click here to visit
our Support page, where you can make your NERW contribution with
a major credit card...)
You can also order by mail; just send a check for $16
per calendar (NYS residents add 8% sales tax), shipping included,
to Scott Fybush, 92 Bonnie Brae Ave., Rochester
NY 14618.
International orders: Calendars are US$18 to Canada,
US$20 to the rest of the world, postage included. Send checks/international
money orders (in US dollars) to the address above, or e-mail
for credit-card ordering information.
*The twelfth edition of the M
Street Radio Directory will soon go to the printer,
and we'll have a special offer for NERW readers coming within
a few weeks. Stay tuned!
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2003 by Scott Fybush. |