NorthEast Radio Watch 11/23/2020: Triumph of the National Formats

In this week’s issue… National formats land in Windsor, Maritimes – Radio One shifts Philly formats – Station owner sentenced in felony case – Former station manager pleads to embezzlement – Veteran TV anchor retires – New owner in Pittsburgh

By SCOTT FYBUSH

Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada

*It won’t be the story of 2020, of course, but national radio format consolidation is certainly a big story of this most challenging year, on both sides of the border.

Even as iHeart continued slowly chipping away at jobs on the US side last week (will the slow-motion uncertainty and pain it’s imposing on its remaining staff ever end?), two of Canada’s giant broadcasters made bigger moves in several markets, reinforcing our long-held contention that Canadian broadcasters have remained several steps ahead of most of their US counterparts when it comes to consolidating “local” radio at the national level.

Consider Rogers, which was making cuts from coast to coast last week, axing local “Breakfast Television” morning shows at its CityTV stations in Vancouver and Calgary, as well as one radio morning show in Vancouver – all while taking a hatchet to staffing in Halifax, where it appears nearly half the staff at “News 95.7” (CJNI) is gone.

“(The) lay off axe was swung with wild abandon,” tweeted now-former reporter David Heintzman. Anchors Skye Bryden-Blom and Steve Gow, morning editor Steve MacArthur and talk hosts Sheldon MacLeod and Todd Veinotte are all out there, and it’s hard to imagine the existing format won’t see big changes, too.

A day after the Tuesday cuts at Rogers in Halifax, it was Bell Media’s turn across town. At CIOO (C100), 30-year Halifax radio veteran JC Douglas and Melody Rose were cut from the morning show on Wednesday. Douglas had moved to C100 from crosstown competitor CFRQ (Q104) five years ago, where he’d been PD; Rose joined him a year later, reports Broadcast Dialogue.

And while C100 will at least (we think) keep its branding once its holiday music comes to an end in a few weeks, the same isn’t true a few hundred km to the west at CJCJ (CJ104) in Woodstock, New Brunswick, where Bell cut morning man Ed Shaw as it rebranded the station with one of its national brands, “Pure Country.”

*But the move to national branding in New Brunswick was just a sideshow compared to the moves Bell made on Thursday in southwest Ontario.

Windsor can’t be an easy market to do commercial radio in these days: the city’s entire identity is so closely tied to its much bigger neighbor just to the north, Detroit, but for eight months and counting, the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel have been all but sealed shut, with no Michiganders able to come to the casino on the Windsor side and no Windsorites able to cross to Detroit for shopping or (nonexistent) entertainment or sports.

Bell had already closed down its Michigan-based US sales office a few years ago, recognizing that its Windsor stations were becoming increasingly reliant on Canadian audiences and advertisers. Even so, Bell’s FMs still leaned somewhat heavily on audiences across the border – and it was Detroit media and listeners who were quickest to react Wednesday when the news emerged that the alt rock on CIMX (88.7) was about to go off the air after three decades.

A few hours later, the other shoe dropped: it wasn’t just “89X” headed for the exits at noon on Thursday, but also AAA CIDR (93.9 the River). When the formats flipped at noon, those unique-to-both-market formats were gone, as were their entire airstaffs. In their place were two of Bell’s national formats: on 88.7, “Pure Country 89,” and on 93.9, top-40 “Virgin Radio.”

While they’ll still have some local content in mornings and middays, the new Pure Country and Virgin entries will follow the Bell pattern the rest of the day, with Pure’s national midday show and then the US-based Bobby Bones show at night on 88.7. For Windsor listeners, 88.7 will become a fourth country option, adding to Blackburn Radio’s local CJWF (95.9)/CJSP (92.7), plus the strong Detroit signals of Cumulus’ WDRQ (93.1) and Entercom’s WYCD (99.5). On the top-40 side, 93.9 will compete with iHeart’s WKQI (95.5). (While Bell licenses the “iHeart Radio” brand in Canada, there’s no ownership connection across the border.)

And with Bell pulling its Canadian-flavo(u)red version of alt rock out of the market, Entercom reacted swiftly on the Detroit side: three minutes after the noon flip at 89X, Entercom killed its soft AC “Breeze” format mid-song on WDZH (98.7), replacing it with “Alt 98.7,” a Motor City version of the format Entercom has been rolling out across the US. Will Detroit want to hear the national Alt morning show from New York’s WNYL (Alt 92.3)? And, as long as expenses stay low right now, will it matter?

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*In Philadelphia, this morning’s launch of Entercom’s all-news KYW on FM, via its purchase of Radio One’s WPHI (103.9 Jenkintown), came with some big format shuffling at Radio One’s remaining signals.

Even though it’s down to just two FMs in eastern PENNSYLVANIA, Radio One isn’t saying goodbye to either the hip-hop that had been on 103.9 or the adult R&B that had been the most recent format on WRNB (100.3 Media).

Instead, it began moving the hip-hop music and the 103.9 airstaff to the bigger 100.3 signal, spending most of last week simulcasting the two as “R&B and Hip-Hop 100.3.”

The adult R&B that had been heard on 100.3 – and its mostly-syndicated lineup of shows, including Ricky Smiley in the morning and D.L. Hughley in the afternoon – won’t disappear completely, though. Along with midday host Mina Llona, they’re moving to a new HD2 on the 100.3 signal, which will take the “RNB” branding and continue to compete with iHeart’s dominant WDAS-FM (105.3).

In their new home on the main 100.3 signal, the former 103.9 airstaff (including the “Morning Hustle” morning show, middayer Paris Nicole, Dominique Da Diva in afternoons and DJ Bran at night) will have a stronger platform to compete with iHeart’s WUSL (Power 99). Radio One’s making no changes – at least not so far – at its other FM in town, classic R&B “Classix” WPPZ (107.9), which carries another semi-retired Radio One format, Black gospel “Praise,” on its HD2.

*South of Johnstown, the owner of WQZS (93.3 Meyersdale) has resolved his legal issues, though perhaps not his future as an FCC licensee.

Roger Wahl withdrew his original guilty plea on charges of invasion of privacy, and was instead allowed to plead guilty to a different felony charge, criminal use of a communication facility, as well as four misdemeanor counts. He’ll wear an electronic monitor for the first four months of a three-year probation period, which will close out a case that began with an investigation into a fake online dating profile he set up in hopes of finding a man to commit a rape.

As a convicted felon, of course, Wahl becomes disqualified to hold the WQZS license – but having also withdrawn a plan to sell the station to his daughter, it’s not yet clear how the FCC plans to handle the future of the class A oldies signal up in the mountains.

*Veteran western Pennsylvania owner Frank Iorio has found a buyer for his last station. St. Barnabas Broadcasting, Inc., an offshoot of the St. Barnabas Health System, will pay Iorio’s Pittsburgh Radio Partners LLC $2.05 million for WJAS (1320) and translator W256DE (99.1) in Pittsburgh.

There’s no property included in the sale – Iorio was leasing the two-tower AM site, as well as subleasing studio and office space from iHeart at its Green Tree cluster facility. And there’s no format change planned for WJAS, which effectively took over the syndicated lineup that iHeart dropped from WPGB (104.7) in 2014. That includes the Bloomdaddy morning show from WWVA in Wheeling, WV, as well as most of Premiere’s national talkers (among them, for now, Rush Limbaugh.)

Will WJAS become a marketing tool for St. Barnabas’ nursing homes? That’s what it looks like from here – and while it’s a very healthy price for an AM stand-alone these days, it also speaks pretty strongly to the perception that it’s mostly (much) older listeners consuming the sort of talk that WJAS churns out.

*One of the most familiar faces on central NEW YORK television has retired. Rod Wood began his Syracuse broadcast career fresh from the Army in 1963 at WNDR (1260) and WOLF (1490) before moving into television in 1966 at WHEN-TV (Channel 5, later WTVH).

In 1976, Wood jumped to WIXT (Channel 9, now WSYR-TV), becoming part of the team that took the struggling ABC affiliate from the bottom of the ratings to the top. Paired for more than 30 years with Carrie Lazarus, the two became one of the most stable anchor teams in the nation. Wood was inducted into the New York State Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2011 and served as president of the Syracuse Press Club, among many honors.

After a difficult year that included a battle with COVID-19 and the death of his wife, Nanette Groat, in May, Wood announced his retirement Nov. 11 and did his final shifts at the WSYR-TV anchor desk on Nov. 18. The station honored Wood (whose real name is Roderic Woodruff Groat) with an hour-long special that night; a day later, it named Jeff Kulikowski as the new co-anchor alongside Christie Casciano at 5, 5:30 and 6.

(It’s a tribute, perhaps, to the long Wood/Lazarus partnership that even though Lazarus retired in 2017, the initial version of the Syracuse.com story about Kulikowski said he’d “join Carrie Lazarus” at the WSYR-TV anchor desk. And with Wood’s retirement, there’s now no competition for the longest tenure on upstate New York TV: Don Alhart at Rochester’s WHAM-TV has been going since 1966, with no end in sight.)

*On Long Island, a former station manager could be sentenced to up to 15 years behind bars and a $250,000 fine after being caught embezzling money from the Long Island Broadcasting stations where she worked.

Stephanie McNamara Bitis had worked at CBS before being hired in 2015 as VP/GM of Long Island Broadcasting, the locally-owned cluster on the East End that includes WEHM/WEHN (92.9/96.9), WBEA (Beach 101.7) and WBAZ (102.5). After two years with the stations, owner Lauren Stone became suspicious and started reviewing the company credit card statements, which prompted an outside investigation that turned up hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal expenses that Bitis apparently charged to the station AmEx card.

On Monday, Bitis pleaded guilty in federal court to a felony charge of “access device fraud,” acknowledging that she’d used the company card to pay for everything from braces to an Aruba vacation, falsifying credit card statements to try to conceal the fraud.

*No sooner did iHeart buy WWRL (1600 New York) and put its Black Information Network on the air there than it had to make some technical compromises.

One of WWRL’s four towers in Secaucus, NJ suffered structural damage in the Nov. 15 windstorm that ripped through the area, and now it’s going to have to be taken down and replaced.

In the meantime, its usual 25 kW day signal and 5 kW night signal will be reduced to 6250 watts by day, 1250 watts by night, non-directional.

(The damaged tower lives on, ironically, in the all-new Tower Site Calendar 2021, where WWRL’s site is featured on the January page, marking 70 years since WWRL moved to the Secaucus site from Woodside, Queens.)

*Here in Rochester, Cory “Kobe” Fargo gets a promotion to PD at Stephens’ WZNE (94.1), where he’s charged with relaunching the alt-rock format after the rest of the airstaff was let go. Kobe will continue in afternoons while looking for replacements for middayer/PD Violet Woods and for the syndicated “Rover” morning show.

*In Utica, Al Bonapart died Nov. 13 at 97. Bonapart’s radio career started in 1951 as an announcer at WIBX; in later years, he was a co-founder of WUFM (107.3, later WRCK and now WKVU), a co-owner of WADR in Remsen, and sales manager at WRCK/WTLB before his retirement in 1990.

Longtime broadcast engineer Roy Taylor died Nov. 4 in Chittenango. Taylor worked in radio at WNDR (1260) and WHEN (620), and in TV at WSYT (Fox 68) and at Utica’s WUTR; he was also on the air at the old WSEN-FM (92.1), spinning oldies. Taylor was also a tax accountant, which made him a natural as the longtime treasurer of SBE Chapter 22. Taylor was 72.

*An FM station at the southern tip of NEW JERSEY is changing hands, as Equity Communications sells WAIV (105.5 Cape May Court House) to The Bridge of Hope, Inc. for $65,000.

WAIV will drop its simulcast of Equity’s top-40 WAYV (95.1 Atlantic City), replacing it with a new simulcast of Christian contemporary “Bridge” WKNZ (88.7 Harrington DE), which has a fringe signal already at the southern end of Cape May County. The addition of 105.5 will carry “Bridge” up almost to Atlantic City, becoming the third full-power station in a network that goes south down the Delmarva peninsula into Virginia.

(WAYV listeners, meanwhile, can just switch from 105.5 back to the main 95.1 signal, which covers most of Cape May even without the 105.5 simulcast.)

*Ritmo Broadcasting, the Spanish-language operator that’s run “Ritmo FM” on several translators in South Jersey and Delaware and “Amor” on a Philadelphia-area translator, has launched a new leased-time format in Burlington County: WIFI (1460) and its translator on 92.9 are now playing top-40 as “WiFi Radio.”

*In MASSACHUSETTS, iHeart is adding to its partnership with talk host Howie Carr at WRKO (680 Boston). In addition to carrying Carr’s own regionally-syndicated afternoon show, WRKO will add a new midday show hosted by Carr’s executive producer, Grace Curley.

The new show will take the 12:15-3 PM weekday slot that had been hosted by Doug “VB” Goudie, who’d worked directly for iHeart until being caught in the ongoing job cuts. Since Goudie’s abrupt ouster, WRKO has filled the midday show with simulcasts of Rush Limbaugh (from sister WXKS 1200) and with Vinnie Penn, who hosts mornings on iHeart’s WELI in New Haven, CONNECTICUT.

*In Lebanon, NEW HAMPSHIRE, Steve Silberberg’s Lisbon Communications is selling translator W299AM (107.7) to Costa-Eagle Communications for $75,000. The translator had been relaying the AAA “Point” format from WRJT (103.1 Royalton, VERMONT), which Silberberg is selling to EMF Broadcasting.

In Concord, Binnie Media has promoted production director Harrison Hinman to PD at top-40 WJYY (105.5), where he’ll also host middays. Nazzy adds APD/MD duties to his afternoon shift on WJYY.

*One more story from CANADA: Dana Wigle returns to Toronto’s CJRT (JAZZ.FM91), this time as the new general manager of the jazz station as it tries to rebuild itself after a few rough years of management and staff changes. Wigle was CJRT’s advertising sales director for six years, before family reasons took her to Windsor in 2017. When she starts as GM next week, she’ll replace the retiring Lorie Russell.

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