NorthEast Radio Watch 2/5/2024: WJIB’s New Era

In this week’s issue… What next for Bittner’s stations under new owner? – CBS-FM shifts lineup – FCC begins granting, dismissing LPFM apps – Remembering Buffalo’s Wallack

By SCOTT FYBUSH

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

*The most unusual radio station in MASSACHUSETTS is getting a new owner – and he’s one of the most distinctive and memorable radio guys in the region’s history.

John Garabedian, the impresario who put music videos on UHF TV back in the 1980s on “V-66” (WVJV) and founded and hosted “Open House Party” for three decades, is buying WJIB (740 Cambridge) and its translator on 101.3, W267CE, from the estate of the late Bob Bittner, who died last May.

Garabedian’s RCRQ Inc. is paying $575,000 for the 250-watt AM daytimer (with five watts at night) and an additional $10 for the translator – but there’s a lot more going on with this deal, and we’ll try to clear up a lot of confusion about it below the fold.

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*First, the “who”: with his long history at the cutting edge of dance and pop music, Garabedian may seem like an unlikely suitor for a station that has long prided itself on being as far as possible from “cutting edge.” But it’s important to remember two things about Garabedian: first, that he’s 82 himself these days, though a very energetic 82, and second, that his career is more like Bittner’s than many realize. Bob, after all, had a long run playing current music (even loud rock and roll) at WCMF and WVOR in Rochester, and both Bittner and Garabedian had WXKS on their resume in the disco era.

For Garabedian, it appears WJIB will be a passion project just as it was for Bittner. He tells the Globe he doesn’t intend to change much about the station’s sound when he begins taking over, though some of the early novelty records Bob spun may start to disappear and there will be new station announcements voiced by Garabedian himself. There’s no plan just as yet to begin selling ads; instead, the new WJIB will likely follow the lead of the old WJIB in soliciting operational funds from listeners. In the longer run, Garabedian says he envisions creating a non-profit foundation that could continue operating WJIB as a listener-supported signal indefinitely.

What we know will happen, and fairly quickly, are technical changes. Bittner didn’t own the property on Concord Street where WJIB’s tower and transmitter have been located for the entire history of 740, back to the days when the site was Harvey Radio Labs and the station was Harvey-owned WXHR. For now, Bittner’s estate has been paying rent there month-to-month, as well as taking in rent payments from WNTN (1550), which subleases the use of the tower. The sale contract acknowledges that at some point, WJIB may lose the use of that site, which is of course the way of most AM stations these days.

In preparation for an eventual move of both AM stations and the WJIB translator, Garabedian has filed a move that Bittner had apparently long envisioned himself: after more than 75 years with 250 watts on 740, WJIB is applying to move to 720. Initially, it will use 1000 watts by day on that new frequency, dropping to 13 watts at night. Dennis Jackson, who brokered the sale and has been one of the driving forces in keeping Bittner’s stations going after his death, says the move to 720 will give WJIB a little more daytime reach and a clearer frequency after dark, when it will fight off a skywave signal from WGN in Chicago that’s weaker in Boston than Toronto’s CFZM on 740, a frequent pest to nighttime WJIB listeners.

(Readers who’ve been with us all the way back to our start 30 years ago might barely recall that there was an application back then for a higher-powered 720 signal in Billerica that would have used a directional antenna to beam back toward Boston day and night. Could a future WJIB move to a new site on 720 use a DA at night for a better signal while still protecting Chicago? Indeed it could, and we strongly suspect there’s more to come on that front.)

*Moving WJIB to 720 required engineering consultant Charlie Hecht to show protection to New York’s WOR on 710, Chicopee’s WACE on 730 – and there’s one more detail, too: the increase to 1000 watts meant another Bittner station, WJTO in Bath, MAINE, also has to move. It will keep its current 1000-watt daytime power but slide up the dial from 730 to 750, closing a hole left vacant more than 30 years ago by the demise of the old WHEB 750 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

So what become of the Bittner stations in Maine? WLAM (1470) in Lewiston and WLVP (870) in Gorham remain for sale along with their AM translators. WJTO, meanwhile, appears to be staying with Bittner’s widow, Raisa, and with the team led by engineer Bob Perry that’s been keeping it alive with Bob’s voicetracks and music collection.

Since Garabedian’s deal includes access to that music library, and since both WJIB and WJTO are planning to add the streaming audio that Bob never wanted to pay for, it’s looking as though fans of “The Memories Stations” will soon have plural “stations” to choose from – the original Bittner sound via WJTO, or a somewhat modernized WJIB. And if we can’t have an immortal Bob Bittner (and more’s the pity), this is probably as good an outcome as any of us could have hoped for.

*There’s yet one more “Memories Station” loose end to be tied up, and that’s out on Cape Cod, where the Bittner estate has also filed to sell WBAS (1240 Hyannis) and its translator on 106.5.

WBAS was Bittner’s last acquisition, purchased for $100,000 in 2021 from Alex Langer shortly before Langer’s own death – and now it goes to Gary Hanna’s GCJH Inc., which is paying $130,000 to add the AM and translator for a mid-Cape signal to accompany Hanna’s existing “X102,” WGTX (102.3 Truro).

Hanna will begin simulcasting WGTX’s classic hits format on Wed., Feb. 14, under an LMA before closing. But it won’t quite mean the end of “The Memories Station” on the outer Cape – the Bittner estate will pay $1 a year to keep that format going on WGTX’s HD3.

*It is the end, finally, for a Cape Cod noncomm: WCCT-FM (90.3 Harwich) has lost its license after a Nov. 2023 FCC inquiry about its operational status. When filing for renewal, Cape Cod Regional Tech High School had admitted the station hadn’t been on the air since construction started on a new school building, and that replacing the studio was a “low priority.” And since the school also hadn’t filed for a silent STA or fully responded to the FCC’s letter, it now appears WCCT is gone for good as an over-the-air signal.

*Back to MAINE we go for a big hire at Binnie Media’s Portland cluster: Stella Mars is the group’s new regional operations director, overseeing the cluster that now includes country “Wolf” WTHT/WBYA, classic rock “Bone” WHXR, classic hits “Frank” WFNX and WBQX and its newest launch, soft AC “Wave” WBQQ Kennebunk.

Mars started her career in Portland at WBLM in the 1980s, later working at multiple Boston stations and most recently as a host and producer at Maine Public.

*We’ll have a lot of LPFM news from the current filing window coming up later in the column, but in NEW HAMPSHIRE, one of the original 2000-era LPFMs is changing hands. The Londonderry school district is transferring WLLO-LP (102.9) to the nearby town of Merrimack, which will move the station’s transmitter there and operate it as a public safety outlet.

*In NEW YORK City, February brought a new on-air lineup at WCBS-FM (101.1), where Jesse Addy has been promoted from weekends and fill-ins at sister station WNEW (New 102.7) to the afternoon shift on CBS-FM.

Addy joined the now-Audacy cluster when it acquired WNSH (94.7), where he’d been music director and afternoon host going back to its country debut under Cumulus as NASH-FM. At CBS-FM, his move to afternoons sends market veteran “Broadway” Bill Lee to nights, which in turn sends even more senior CBS-FM personality Joe Causi from nights to weekends.

For fans of Lee’s fast-talking, how-the-hell-did-he-hit-THAT-post patter, it’s another sign that CBS-FM isn’t the station it used to be – but that’s exactly what Audacy management seems to want, as it continues to reinvent 101.1 as a classic hits station with a younger-skewing appeal.

*In Buffalo, Al Wallack ended up getting his obituary printed twice in the News, which in part reflects careless out-of-town newspaper editing and layout (we’ll explain in a moment), but also ends up being an accidentally fitting tribute to a radio guy who embodied the essence of the Queen City.

A graduate of Buffalo State, Wallack began his radio career on weekends at WKBW in 1969 and then worked brief stints at many stations in and out of the market, but by 1972 he’d settled in at WEBR (970) in the role that would define him, hosting “Jazz in the Nighttime.”

WEBR was an unusual station then, a bit of a throwback to a much older time of commercial radio, and it soon became far more unusual: in 1976, it became part of WNED, the first public TV station to acquire a commercial AM station and retain its format. Wallack was a key player in the unique “WEBR Newsradio” operation, serving as its production director, its PD, and then as its director of jazz programming, overseeing a lineup of nighttime jazz hosts that included other important Buffalo voices such as Jim Santella.

Wallack was the perfect face and voice for the format and the city: a rumpled blue-collar guy who loved cheap beer and was never boastful about his deep knowledge of the jazz scene, whether it was behind the mic in WEBR’s creaky old North Street mansion or hosting live shows at the Tralf and other unpretentious night spots around town.

When WEBR became WNED(AM) in 1993 and streamlined its programming into a more traditional news-talk lineup, Wallack remained on board as operations manager for both the AM station and its classical sister, WNED-FM (94.5), then as the PD of the AM station. He remained a voice of jazz, now on an HD subchannel of WNED-FM, as well as turning his attention to producing TV documentaries for WNED.

Wallack retired in 2014, a year after his induction to the Buffalo Broadcasters Hall of Fame. He’d been diagnosed with leukemia three months ago, and he died Jan. 26 at Roswell Park Cancer Center, at 75.

And here’s the part that would have given him a laugh over a beer or two: when the News, now printed in Cleveland and owned by the out-of-state Lee Enterprises, ran his obituary in print, the paper found a photo of Wallack with a group of jazz musicians including the great Dave Brubeck – and then cropped the photo to show only Brubeck instead of Wallack. A reprinted version showing Wallack’s picture (right) ran a few days later.

*The News isn’t what it used to be, obviously, and neither is the old WEBR, now religious WDCZ(AM) – but at least the Buffalo 970 AM signal is still on the air. The other 970 in New York state, WCHN in Norwich at the edge of the Southern Tier, surrendered its license in January. Townsquare Media shut off that signal last year, and the FCC would have deleted the license January 31 on the one-year anniversary of its silence.

(We’re watching to see if Townsquare will end up doing the same with the FM signals it turned off at the end of 2023, WTBD 97.5 and WDHI 100.3 in Delhi and WIYN 94.7 in Deposit.)

*On Long Island’s East End, the CONNECTICUT-based WMNR public radio network is applying to move its current translator in Sag Harbor before it gets displaced. W233AI (94.5 Sag Harbor) rebroadcasts WRXC (90.1) from across Long Island Sound in Shelton, but there’s now a construction permit for a full-power station, Bark Out Loud Dogs Media’s WLIE (94.5 Sagaponack), on the channel – so the translator has applied to move to 104.3, moving westward to Water Mill.

*The FCC is moving quickly to grant “singleton” low-power FM applications as long as there are no objections or other issues standing in the way of a grant, and so we can begin to tell you not only who’s holding freshly-minted construction permits but even what they’ve requested for callsigns.

In the Mohawk Valley, Lazona Inc. gets the first CP of this cycle in New York State, for what will be WALM-LP (103.9 Gloversville).

The FCC also dismissed two ungrantable applications from Women of a New Generation, for 88.1 and 92.3 in Hempstead.

*In southern NEW JERSEY, Living Springs Global Fellowship has been granted 92.9 in Hammonton; the FCC has dismissed New Jersey Institute of Technology’s defective application for 88.7 in Newark along with three applications for 94.3, 100.5 and 100.9 in Paterson.

*There were plenty of “garbage” applications on the PENNSYLVANIA list that found quick FCC dismissal: the City of Erie Cable TV Access Corp. apparently meant to apply for some channel other than the 88.1 it put on its application, while Hype Media Global PA submitted coordinates that were out in the ocean for its 88.1 in Fayette. Applicants for 94.5 and 99.3 in Hazleton, 98.7 in Johnstown, 106.1 in Middletown, 99.3 in Waynesboro and 96.9 in Whitehall (Allentown) were also dismissed for failing to comply with spacing requirements.

*In New England, the FCC has handed out a few new CPs in its first rounds of grants: 94.5 to the town of Readfield, Maine; 98.1 to the town of Milford, NH; 107.3 in Bennington, VERMONT to SHSF School Radio Outreach; 100.5 in Fairfax VT to Queen of Peace Radio Inc.; 104.1 in Northfield VT to Our Lady Undoer of Knots Radio Inc.

Back in Massachusetts, M&M Community Development (Oak Bluffs Branch) used to have an LPFM on Martha’s Vineyard, the defunct WYOB-LP (105.5 Oak Bluffs), and now it has a new CP for the same facility, with new calls WJZV-LP. In Orange, mark down WTRS-LP (107.7) for The Revival Society, Inc.; and in Scituate, the familiar WFNX calls will return to the edge of the Boston market on a new LPFM at 101.3 belonging to Scituate Community Radio, Inc.

(Some NERW readers with very long memories will recall that the original WFNX on 101.7 actually used the 101.3 frequency for a few years for a Back Bay translator from the John Hancock Tower; more recently, those calls had been on an FM station in northern Minnesota that recently surrendered its license.)

And it’s dismissed applications for 90.7 in Waterbury CT, 95.1 Greenville RI, 96.3 Tiverton RI, 105.3 Dracut MA, 94.1 Haverhill MA, and 97.9 Nashua NH, mostly over spacing issues, although several may be fixed with amendments.

*In CANADA, Bell Media has a new national midday host for almost two dozen of its “Bounce” hot AC stations, and it’s a familiar Toronto-area voice. “Tarzan Dan” Freeman started his broadcast career in Oshawa, spent a long time out west in between Toronto stints, and for the last year or so has been doing weekends on Stingray’s CHBM (Boom 97.3) and its CFXL in Calgary.

In his new role, he’s heard coast-to-coast on 22 Bell stations, including CKKW (99.5) in Kitchener-Waterloo, CKLH (102.9) in Hamilton, CKTO (100.9) in Truro NS and CFXY (105.3) in Fredericton.

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