NorthEast Radio Watch 6/14/2021: WFME Plans Return to 1560

In this week’s issue… NYC AM finds new home – Alhart steps back – A move on the Vineyard – Stafford out in Toronto – New HD in Canada

By SCOTT FYBUSH

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

*It’s already been four months since Family Stations flipped the switch to take WFME (1560) in NEW YORK silent following the $51 million sale of its longtime transmitter site in Maspeth, Queens (shown below last year).

At the time, the word we heard from sources in the New York engineering community was that Family had two plans for returning its programming to the airwaves in market #1: the purchase of another license in town, and eventually a rebuilt 1560 at a different location.

With a third of the one-year silent period already having ticked away, there’s been no sign of the rumored station purchase – which may explain why last week, Family filed a request for special temporary authority (STA) to put a limited 1560 signal back on the air at reduced power from a surprising location: a longwire antenna strung from the tower on First Mountain in West Orange, New Jersey that was Family’s New York-market base of operations from the 1960s until 2013, when Family sold what was then WFME (94.7) to Cumulus. (It’s now Audacy’s WNSH, and has a CP to move from West Orange to the East Rutherford tower site of iHeart’s WOR 710.)

Family never actually sold that 200-foot tower on Mount Pleasant Avenue, which is also used by WFMU (91.1) and as an auxiliary site by several other New York FMs. While it’s hardly an ideal spot for an AM station, located in an area with awful ground conductivity, it’s apparently the best option available at the moment to get 1560 back on the air – and so WFME is now proposing to use no more than 12.5 kW day and night into a slanted wire extending from a midpoint on the tower to an ATU on the roof of the transmitter building.

It won’t be a great signal, putting only 1 mV/m over the far reaches of New York City, but it will at least keep the 1560 license alive and keep Family’s programming available to determined listeners in the metro area. Is this Family’s end game? Surely not – and we’ll be following the next steps as Family figures out how to better restore full service, whether it’s on the 1560 license or somewhere else on the dial.

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*There’s a new PD at WFUV (90.7 New York) to fill the impossible-to-replace shoes of the late Rita Houston. Rich McLaughlin is a Fordham University alumnus who had worked with Houston at WFUV before launching his own career that has included time in prpgramming at iHeart, Amazon Music and SiriusXM.

There’s also new leadership at MediaCo, which owns WQHT (Hot 97) and WBLS (107.5); Rahsan-Rahsan Lindsay joins as CEO, moving over from Urban One, where he’d been executive VP of advertising sales and marketing, while Bradford Tobin moves up internally to become president/COO.

*There’s no other local TV news anchor who can (or probably ever will) outdo the remarkable run of Don Alhart at WHAM-TV (Channel 13) in Rochester, where he notched his 55th anniversary just last week. (As he’ll be quick to tell you, his start date at what was then WOKR was 6/6/66!)

But just a few days into his 56th year, Alhart made a surprise announcement: he’s cutting back his workload at the Sinclair-run ABC affiliate. Alhart did his last 11 PM show Wednesday night, handing that anchor chair to Doug Emblidge, who also anchors the 10 PM newscast on sister Fox affilate WUHF (Channel 31).

Alhart, 77, isn’t going away – he’ll continue to anchor the 6 PM news, and here’s hoping he has a long run as he continues to set longevity records in that slot.

*Mark Maira is back on the Rochester radio airwaves. The former co-host of “The Gentlemen’s Club” in afternoons on WZNE (94.1 the Zone) has joined the cast of the Earl David Reed afternoon show across town on iHeart’s WAIO (Radio 95.1), and we note (belatedly) that former cast member/producer Pat McMahon has moved down the Thruway to become digital managing editor for the Townsquare cluster in Buffalo.

In the North Country, there are two ownership changes that close the circle on the frequency and format shuffles that happened earlier this year. North Country Radio Corp. is swapping WPLA (93.5 Warrensburg) to Loud Media LLC in exchange for Border Media Licenses LLC’s WRGR (102.1 Tupper Lake), ending the LMAs under which Loud had been operating WPLA and North Country had been operating WRGR.

Those LMAs were the result of the station moves that brought the WPLA license (formerly WSLP 93.3 Saranac Lake) down to Lake George/Glens Falls and backfilled the Saranac Lake area by moving a signal in from the Plattsburgh market. That license, formerly WPLA 100.7 Plattsburgh West and now WSLP 100.7 Ray Brook, is also changing hands; Randy Michaels’ Radioactive LLC is selling it to North Country for $45,000. North Country adds the 100.7 WSLP signal and its simulcast partner, WRGR, to a cluster that also includes WLPW (105.5) and WIRD (920) in Lake Placid; Loud’s cluster to the south includes not only WPLA on 93.5 but also “K94” country WNYV (94.1 Whitehall), WVNR (1340 Poultney VT) and WABY (900 Watervliet), plus WSSV (1160 Mechanicville).

*In NEW JERSEY, still more changes at the shore: Bill Fox has stepped down as morning jock at WWZY (107.1 the Boss) in Long Branch, saying he’s headed for a yet-to-be-announced job where he’ll be a brand manager and do afternoons.

Down in Cape May, Perdomo Media Group has filed a $60,000 deal to buy W222AL (92.3) from Gail Lee Burke. The translator had been relaying “Wibbage” (WIBG-FM 94.3) from Atlantic City, but is now listed as relaying a subchannel of WENJ-FM (97.3 Millville).

*At the triangle where New York and New Jersey meet PENNSYLVANIA, there’s new branding on WYNY (1450) in Milford, where Neversink Media has replaced “106.9 WYNY” on the AM/translator combo with a new “Lite 106.9, Relaxing Favorites” identity and a softer AC playlist.

*It was a week of anniversaries in eastern MASSACHUSETTS – Boston’s WBZ-TV (Channel 4), the first TV station in New England, turned 73 on Wednesday, followed on Thursday by the 70th anniversary of WCAP (980) in Lowell, for which your editor, a long-ago WCAP alumnus, was one of many guests who called in for a special anniversary show on Friday.

But the big celebration in Boston broadcast history is just getting started: September will mark the centennial of WBZ (1030), which may not have been the very first signal in New England way back in the fall of 1921 (a tip of the hat to 1XE, Medford Hillside), but which was the station that survived, thrived and built broadcast radio into a successful commercial business.

WBZ was still under its original ownership (Westinghouse, which had absorbed and renamed itself CBS) when your editor was one of the producers of its 75th anniversary celebration in 1996. Back then, the commemoration included a gala party and a new logo. Its second and current owner, iHeart, also has a special logo for the centennial (albeit without the fancy star we had for the 75th!), as well as a 100-day countdown with special on-air features and lots of history on its website.

A voice from WBZ’s recent history is on the move again: Joe Mathieu went from WBZ’s morning anchor chair around the corner to WGBH (89.7) to be the local “Morning Edition” host three years ago – but part of his heart stayed behind in Washington, where he’d been working for CBS Marketwatch and SiriusXM before he joined WBZ in 2007.

Now Mathieu is headed back to DC, where he’s joining Bloomberg Radio as a Washington correspondent and host of “Sound On”; no replacement has been named yet in the morning chair at WGBH.

*Out on Martha’s Vineyard, the little house on Carrolls Way in Vineyard Haven has been home to radio studios since the days of the old WVOI (95.9) in the 1970s; since the early 1980s, it’s been home to WMVY in two incarnations, first as a commercial station on 92.7 (now WBUA) and then as a noncommercial signal on 88.7.

No more: as of June 8, Friends of WMVYRadio has relocated the WMVY studios to a new $2.5 million facility in a much more visible location on State Road in West Tisbury. The transmitters for 88.7 and 92.7 remain at the old Vineyard Haven location, and fundraising continues to get the last 10% of the goal met so construction at the new studio can be completed.

*In RHODE ISLAND, Ann Alquist is departing The Public’s Radio (WNPN 89.3/WNPE 102.7), where she’s been serving as assistant GM and chief progress officer. She’s headed south next month to start a new role as executive director/GM at another public radio station, WBHM in Birmingham, Alabama.

*In MAINE, June 23 will be the last day for Renee Nelson after 30 years as morning host on WMME (92 Moose) in Augusta. In her announcement to listeners last week, Nelson said she’d originally intended to leave two years ago when she sold her house, but family issues and then the pandemic kept her in place in central Maine for a little while longer.

Not far away at WHTP (1280 Gardiner), “Hot Radio Maine” has filed to drop day power all the way down to 250 watts, non-directional. The former WFAU had already been operating at 1 kW under STA after suffering transmitter problems with its licensed 5 kW signal back in 2019, and it had already given up its former three-tower directional night signal, going to 40 watts ND. (It’s reaching listeners primarily through its translator on 100.3.)

*He was one of the more prominent talk hosts in CANADA‘s largest market, but Mike Stafford is out at Corus’ Global News Radio 640 (CFMJ) in Toronto

Even though he was on a long-term absence after breaking his neck in a fall, Stafford became the solo morning host on 640 over the winter when co-host Supriya Dwivedi quit, alleging Corus wasn’t doing enough to address harassment she was receiving from online trolls.

Once he returned, Stafford faced the same challenge that had tripped him up in the past: remaining edgy enough to attract the listeners Corus sought in mornings while avoiding the controversies that had engulfed him as recently as 2019. That’s when Stafford came under fire for tweets about South Asians at a Toronto-area hospital. This time, it wasn’t a public-facing issue, but rather a comment in an internal Microsoft Teams channel that used a derogatory phrase for Pakistani Canadians.

(There’s more detail, and a response from Stafford, in a comprehensive piece from VICE Canada.)

For now, Greg Brady is guest-hosting the 640 morning show.

*Down the dial, a Canadian AM station is experimenting with HD Radio, the first time the system has been tested on that side of the dial after many years of FM operation in Canadian markets. It’s Evanov’s CHLO (530 Brampton) just outside of Toronto, and for now the tests are taking place in the old MA1 hybrid analog-digital mode, though the multiethnic station has hinted it may also do some testing in the much more robust all-digital MA3 mode that promises wider coverage and less interference at the expense of analog radio compatibility. (In MA1 mode, CHLO’s callsign has popped up on the digital display on the car radio here in Rochester, but so far without any lock of digital audio.)

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