NorthEast Radio Watch 2/17/2025: Townsquare, For Better or Worse

In this week’s issue… Townsquare moves studios, cuts staff – Wake up with Mistress Carrie – No flip for WADO – Remembering Maine’s Colby, Binghamton’s Sommers – Suburban Toronto FM could go silent

By SCOTT FYBUSH

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

*You know the old line – “I have good news and bad news, which do you want first?”

Where Townsquare Media is concerned, we’ll start with the good news this week, because there’s definitely both good and bad from the company in this week’s headlines.

In Augusta, MAINE, today’s moving day for the local Townsquare cluster. For many years now, country “B98.5” (WEBB 98.5 Waterville) and top-40 “Moose” (WMME 92.3 Augusta) have operated from a rather inconspicuous facility tucked away behind a strip mall (Spirit Halloween and all) on Western Avenue.

That changed this morning, when Cooper Fox and the B98.5 morning show signed on from bright new storefront digs in downtown Augusta.

CEO Bill Wilson and COO Erik Hallum were on hand a couple of weeks ago for the ribbon-cutting at the new facility, which features virtual (Wheatstone “Glass-E”) consoles instead of physical consoles, among other new tech.

*That’s the good news. The bad? Another round of cutbacks at the company, and while we’re still awaiting the confirmation of more of the names involved, we know of at least one big one on the Jersey Shore, where Steve McKay is out as brand manager of WFPG in Atlantic City and WOBM in Toms River.

“This truly caught me off guard,” McKay told RAMP, which first announced his ouster. McKay is a familiar Mid-Atlantic name from his stints at crosstown WJRZ, along with WEJM in Philadelphia and WBHT in Wilkes-Barre. Before arriving at Townsquare in late 2022, he’d been PD of WTCB and WOMG in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s now on the hunt for new work.

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*There’s a change coming to NEW YORK‘s oldest Spanish-language radio station. At some point. Maybe.

Here’s what we know, anyway, about Univision’s WADO (1280): after it ended up being excluded from Univision’s sale of many of its second-tier radio assets to a new company, Latino Media Network (you probably know them from the little controversy that erupted online because of investor George Soros’ role with the company), WADO has been chugging along with little in the way of attention and ratings, carrying the TUDN sports network on its AM signal and on an HD subchannel of sister FM station WXNY (96.3).

And then, late last week, WADO’s social media lit up with promotions for a Valentine’s Day flip: instead of sports, WADO would take on a Regional Mexican format as “Que Buena 1280,” using mostly syndicated Univision talent from other markets.

Except the flip didn’t happen, and the promotions and new logo vanished from social media, with our sister site RadioInsight reporting that the branding may have posed a conflict with the trademarks of rival broadcaster SBS, which operates “La Buena 97.1” on the HD2 of its WQHT (97.1) in New York.

Will the format flip still happen? We’re hearing it will – but with a different brand attached, eventually.

*In Binghamton, Hank Sommers worked at pretty much every station in the market over a long career that started as a student at Ithaca College. From there, Sommers came to Binghamton as an air personality, including a stint as music director at WNBF, followed by a run at WINR and a move into ad sales. In later years, he was back on the air spinning standards at WKOP, then working down the road for Dave Radigan at WEBO in Owego.

Sommers was inducted into the Binghamton Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2015.

A passionate train buff, Sommers spent many of his retirement years leading “Ride With Me Henry” fan excursions around the rail and subway networks of his native New York City. Sommers died Feb. 9, at 81.

*Beasley is consolidating its studio and office facilities in NEW JERSEY, centralizing what had been four clusters of stations into two.

We’re told WMTR (1250 Morristown) and WDHA (105.5 Dover) quietly moved down the road from Morristown to New Brunswick in recent weeks, operating from renovated studios inside their sister cluster that includes WMGQ (98.3) and WCTC (1450).

The WMTR transmitter remains at the old Cedar Knolls facility, which we spotlighted on Site of the Week in 2017, and it’s not clear what will become of the rest of the building.

We have a better sense of what will become of the studios of WJRZ (100.1 Manahawkin), which is operating entirely on automation as it makes its move up the shore to Belmar and the facility of sister station WRAT (95.9): there’s already a real estate listing looking to sell the longtime WJRZ studios on Beach Avenue. The property still holds the original WJRZ tower, and there’s also a heliport there.

*West of Scranton, PENNSYLVANIA, Telikoja Educational Broadcasting has cancelled the construction permit for its unbuilt 89.1 in Evans Falls, which most recently held the WVPN callsign.

And out along I-81 near Shippensburg, Four Rivers Community Broadcasting is selling translator W260DD (99.9 Lees Crossroads) to Cumberland Valley Community Broadcasting for $10,000, shifting the translator’s parent facility from Four Rivers’ “Word FM” (via WZXQ 88.3 Chambersburg) to “The Bridge,” via WFPG (91.3 Carlisle).

*In MASSACHUSETTS, Mistress Carrie has a new market to dominate. Still best known for her many years at the old WAAF in the Boston market, Carrie’s been heard most recently in afternoons on WWFX (100.1 the Pike) in the Worcester market, as well as in Portland on WHXR (106.3 the Bone).

Now she’s added a new gig: as of Friday, she’s heard in mornings on Saga’s “Lazer” stations in Springfield and the Pioneer Valley, WLZX-FM (99.3 Northampton) and WLZX (1600/98.5) in Springfield. The morning slot on Lazer has been empty for ten months, since Dave Coombs retired from the gig, which he’d been hosting remotely from his bigger Saga job in Milwaukee.

*In the Lakes Region of NEW HAMPSHIRE, there’s a new voice in mornings on “Mountain Country” (WASR 1420 Wolfeboro and its translators at 96.1 and 97.1), but Mark Ericson should be familiar to a lot of Granite State listeners from his long run at WOKQ (97.5 Dover) that ended a decade ago.

Since then, Ericson has been working with Special Olympics of New Hampshire and keeping his pipes warm on the air at “Seacoast Oldies” (WXEX 1540/92.1).

*Lew Colby wasn’t born in Maine – he was a Bronx native who started his career at WBRE in Wilkes-Barre, PA and WNDU in South Bend – but once he arrived in Bath in 1957 to do mornings at WMMS (later WJTO), he never left the Pine Tree State.

Colby (whose real name was Lewis E. Bowlby) gave up his “Ham ‘n’ Eggs with Colby” show in Bath in 1963 to join WCSH in Portland, where he spent most of the rest of his career. And what a career it was! After starting out as the TV weatherman, where he created the mythical town of “Hannibal’s Crossing,” Colby steadily moved up in the company, managing promotions, operations and programming before becoming general manager in 1983 and CEO of parent company Maine Broadcasting System in 1995.

Colby later headed CSP Mobile Productions before retiring in 2010. He was 89 when he died Dec. 27; his death was just announced last week.

*Chip Morgan’s Mud Radio LLC is adding a new signal in VERMONT, where he’s acquiring WFAD (1490 Middlebury) from Christian Ministries Inc. Mud Radio started an LMA of the AM station last November, simulcasting his WMUD-FM (101.5 Brandon) in the Rutland market.

*In southern RHODE ISLAND, The Buzz Alternative Radio Foundation has surrendered the license of WSUB-LP (96.7 Ashaway). The signal, which had been silent since late 2022, is being replaced by a new LPFM licensed to the same group on 101.7 in Westerly.

*A small FM station on the edge of CANADA‘s biggest market could go off the air as soon as this week as it faces bankruptcy.

CFMS (105.9 Markham) just hit its 11th anniversary this month, mixing local news and talk in English for the York Region outside Toronto with multicultural programming for the area’s large Asian population.

But owner Debra McLaughlin told York Region officials last week that the station needs more local advertising support if it’s to have any chance of surviving. She said the station is only about a week away from issuing layoff notices to its staff and shutting down.

“We’ve hit critical here. We don’t have a big window, and we can continue to invest, but with no hope in sight, I don’t want to give up my house,” McLaughlin said. She’s asking the region’s governments to follow the lead of Ontario’s provincial government by agreeing to commit to spending 25 percent of their ad budgets on local media, including CFMS.

As NewmarketToday.ca reported, McLaughlin’s plea met with a friendly response, including from Newmarket mayor John Taylor, who agreed that local governments get plenty of free “earned media” from local outlets, but would lose that visibility if those outlets don’t survive.

“In an age of social media where people don’t believe half of what they see, and they scroll past it, I do think there’s an immense value in a world we live in today to supporting local media,” Taylor said.

Even with a committment from local governments, though, Taylor and his deputy mayor questioned whether help would arrive in time to save the station. McLaughlin said it’s possible CFMS may have to sign off for a while to stabilize its finances before being able to return later on.

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