February 26, 2007

Canada's Astral Buys Standard

• MAINE
• NEW HAMPSHIRE
• MASSACHUSETTS
• VERMONT
• RHODE ISLAND
• CONNECTICUT
• NEW YORK
• NEW JERSEY
• PENNSYLVANIA
• CANADA
• CLASSIFIEDS
• FROM THE ARCHIVES

*While the FCC's commissioners spent Friday in Harrisburg, PENNSYLVANIA talking about media consolidation (and staying longer than planned, as big public turnout pushed the scheduled 2:30 PM ending time to 3:30 PM), a real-life example of the trend was playing out up north in CANADA.

Just after the markets closed, Standard Radio and Astral Media, already two of the largest broadcasters in the country, announced plans for a C$1.3 billion sale that will put Standard's 52 radio stations in the hands of Astral, creating the largest privately-owned radio group in Canada.

For Astral, the purchase will finally take the company's radio holdings national, expanding beyond its current footprint in Quebec and the Maritimes. It's a goal Astral has had for some time, including an unsuccessful bid for CHUM Limited last summer. For Standard, it marks the end of 22 years of Slaight family ownership. (The family will retain Standard's other assets, including a share in Sirius Canada.)

The merger gives Astral a toehold in Toronto, where Standard owns news-talk CFRB (1010), soft AC "EZ Rock" CJEZ (97.3) and hot AC CKFM (99.9), as well as a new presence in Hamilton, London, and most of Canada's major western markets.

It also creates new clusters in Ottawa/Gatineau, where Standard's CKQB (106.9 the Bear) joins Astral's "Energie" CKTF (104.1) and "Rock Detente" CIMF (94.9), and most dramatically in Montreal, where Standard's English-language news-talk CJAD (800), AC CJFM (Mix 95.9) and rock CHOM (97.7) join Astral's "Rock Detente" CITE (107.3), "Energie" CKFM (94.3), as well as rimshot "Boom FM" outlets CFEI (106.5 St.-Hyacinthe) and CFZZ (104.1 St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu). Will the CRTC mandate a sale of some of those overlapping signals?

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*There's plenty more news from north of the border this week, including a new station on the air in Montreal.

Test transmissions from "Radio Shalom," CJRS (1650), have been widely heard by DXers in the eastern US and as far afield as Scotland. When the station begins regular programming soon, it will feature a lineup of shows aimed at the Jewish community, as well as several other ethnic groups.

Another Canadian ethnic X-bander, Spanish-language CHHA (1610 Toronto), has reportedly returned to the air from its new transmitter site at the Port of Toronto.

The CRTC granted Bayshore Broadcasting a new signal in Goderich, Ontario. The new 5.3 kW "classic AC" station on 104.9 will join Bayshore's existing 1 AM/2 FM cluster in Owen Sound and its FM in Port Elgin. Speaking of the Owen Sound cluster, Bob Wallace and Diana Meder take over in mornings at "Mix" CIXK (106.5).

More new station grants: FormationPLUS has been granted a new 40-watt signal on 95.9 in Chapleau, Ontario, simulcasting CHYC (98.9 Sudbury).

In Oshawa, CKDO (1580) has been granted a power boost for its FM relay. CKDO-FM-1 (and shouldn't that be CKDO-1-FM, really?) will go from 250 watts, nondirectional, to 2 kW DA (average ERP 665 watts) to help it overcome co-channel interference on 107.7 from WLKK (107.7 Wethersfield NY) across Lake Ontario.

In Lennoxville, Quebec, CJMQ (88.9) applies to boost power from 500 watts to 1.67 kW/108 m, with a change from "class B" to "class A" community radio status. In its application, CJMQ notes that with the demise of CKTS (900 Sherbrooke) last year, it's now the only independent English-language voice in the Sherbrooke/Estrie region.

In Hamilton, Ontario, CHML (900) veteran Roy Green will retire at the end of March. Green joined the station in 1973, and for the last 17 years he's been the host of the midmorning "Roy Green Show." CHML says it hopes to find a way to keep Green on the station on at least an occasional basis after his retirement.

*Crossing the border to upstate NEW YORK, we can now put a price tag on the deal between EMF Broadcasting and Galaxy Broadcasting, which turns out to involve a third Galaxy station. In addition to the two Albany-market FMs that flipped from "Bone" rock to EMF's satellite-delivered religious formats last week (WBOE 94.5 Ravena to "K-Love," WOOB 93.7 Scotia to "Air One"), EMF's $3.65 million purchase from Galaxy also includes Syracuse-market WSCP-FM (101.7 Pulaski), which is heard in Syracuse via translator W267AL (101.3).

WSCP-FM dropped its classic country format late last week and flipped to contemporary Christian "K-Love," creating a network of "K-Love" outlets along the Thruway that now stretches from Rochester's WKDL (104.9 Brockport) through Syracuse to WKVU (100.7 Utica) and the Albany stations.

And what of WSCP (1070 Sandy Creek), the erstwhile AM simulcast of WSCP-FM? When we tuned in Sunday afternoon, it had flipped from classic country to a simulcast of Galaxy classic rocker WTKW (99.5 Bridgeport)/WTKV (105.5 Oswego), "TK 99 and TK 105."

While Don Imus' morning show is gone from the Albany market, he's found a new affiliate to the north. WWSC (1450 Glens Falls) began carrying Imus' show earlier this month.

Downstate, veteran Long Island morning man Steve Harper has found a new job. The former WBLI (106.1 Patchogue) jock, who turned down a gig across Long Island Sound at Cox's WEZN-FM (99.9 Bridgeport), will instead head for the East End, where he's the new PD of WBEA (101.7 Southold) and afternoon jock at sister stations WEHM (92.9 Southampton)/WEHN (96.9 East Hampton).

Jim Somich was better known for his long career in radio engineering in Northeast Ohio, but he made his mark on the New York City scene as well, when Malrite brought him to town in 1983 as the first chief engineer of WHTZ (100.3 Newark NJ). Somich worked closely with Scott Shannon, Frank Foti and other big names to create the "Z100 sound," and he was one of the engineers involved in the design and planning of the ERI master antenna and combiner at the Empire State Building before he returned to Cleveland and Malrite's WHK/WMMS/WOIO(TV) later in the eighties. Somich died last week in Cleveland, at 65, leaving a big void in the engineering community there.

*In PENNSYLVANIA, CBS is getting ready to vacate the Independence Mall building that's been home to KYW (1060) and KYW-TV (Channel 3) since the early seventies, and more recently to WYSP (94.1) and WPSG (Channel 57) as well.

The radio stations are moving a block away, to 400 Market Street (is that close enough to keep using the "From Independence Mall" stagers on Newsradio 1060?), and the TV stations are moving to the huge office building at 1500 Spring Garden Street. Some business offices have already moved, and the last of the studio and newsroom operations should be gone from Independence Mall by mid-March, we're told. The KYW building at Fifth and Market will be demolished and replaced by a new museum of American Jewish history, scheduled to open in 2010.

Radio People on the Move: Production goddess Lucy St. James, late of Radio One and before that with WEGX and Schenectady's WGFM, has landed a new job as production director at Clear Channel's Philadelphia cluster. Meanwhile, former WIOQ (102.1) APD/MD Marian Newsome-McAdam has landed as music director of Beasley's WRDW-FM (96.5 Philadelphia).

Just across the line in DELAWARE, the all-but-inevitable ax fell on Friday at WILM (1450 Wilmington), the unusual small-city all-news station that hung on with a remarkably large newsroom staff even after its sale to Clear Channel a couple of years back. Five members of WILM's news staff - veterans Joe Backer and Wayne Aikens, along with Ted Efaw, Jason Hinchcliff and Natalie Sannutti - lost their jobs Friday, just days after WILM moved from its home of 33 years at 1215 French Street to new suburban digs at 920 W. Basin Road in New Castle, shared with sister stations WRDX (94.7 Dover) and WWTX (1290 Wilmington), which moved from Philadelphia Pike in Claymont, Delaware.

Over on the western edge of the Keystone State, Harold Glunt's WEXC (107.1 Greenville) has been granted a change of antenna height. It'll go from 3 kW/328' to 2.1 kW/391' at its existing tower site in Shenango, PA.

And in Erie, they're mourning Kenneth Husband, former chief engineer at WICU radio and television. Husband stayed with the radio side, which became WRIE (1330), when radio and TV split in the sixties, and remained the station's chief engineer until it was sold in 1989. Husband died Feb. 20 at age 80.

*In NEW JERSEY, Greater Media is applying for a bit of a power increase at WDHA (105.5 Dover). The rock station hopes to boost its power from 1 kW to 2 kW, though a directional antenna that will limit its signal to its current strength in the directions of WDAS-FM (105.3 Philadelphia) and WDBY (105.5 Patterson NY) means the power increase will only improve WDHA's signal toward the Jersey Shore and to the northwest.

*A veteran MASSACHUSETTS program director is heading west. Max Tolkoff is leaving the PD chair of WFNX (101.7 Lynn) to take over as PD of Entravision's LA-market "Indie 103.1" (KDLD 103.1 Santa Monica/KDLE 103.1 Huntington Beach). Tolkoff will continue to consult WFNX, where APD/afternoon jock Keith Dakin will take over as PD.

*In MAINE, Mountain Wireless' WFMX (107.9 Skowhegan) has been granted a power increase. "Mix 107.9" will go from its present 5.98 kW/666' C3 signal to 15 kW/666' as a C2 from its existing site near Norridgewock, improving its signal to the south into Augusta and Gardiner.

*In CONNECTICUT, Entravision's Univision affiliate, WUVN (Channel 18), is flexing its "must-carry" muscles, moving to channel 18 on most of the Hartford-New Haven market's Comcast systems after being scattered on a variety of channel positions.

*Two new sets of calls in VERMONT: John Fuller's new 97.5 in Bristol, serving the Burlington market, will be WTNN. And up north along the Connecticut River, Barry Lunderville's new 93.7 signal, which is applying to move from Groveton, NEW HAMPSHIRE to Lunenburg, Vermont, takes the calls WXBN.

And we've been remiss in not making note of the death earlier this month of Charlie Liese, who joined the staff of Burlington's WCAX in 1954 to supervise the construction of its new TV station, WMVT (Channel 3), atop Mount Mansfield. Liese served as chief transmitter operator at WMVT/WCAX-TV from the station's sign-on until 1972, when he became the station's chief engineer, a post he held until his retirement twenty years later. Liese's earlier career included World War II service in the Air Force and several years as a flight radio officer for Pan Am's trans-Atlantic service. Liese died Feb. 4 in Berlin, Vermont; he was 84.

*With that, on with the second part of the NERW Rant that we started a month ago:

When we left off a few weeks ago, this space was bemoaning the lack of vision displayed by too many radio operators, large and small. Whether under giant corporate control or small local ownership, we're hearing too many radio stations that are just treading water, keeping a transmitter on the air without bringing anything new or useful to the airwaves, and in a few cases operating with so little attention to detail as to be literally unlistenable.

To add insult to injury, it's most often those same stations that are filling unsold air time (of which there's plenty) with well-meaning industry ad campaigns that promote HD Radio and bash satellite radio, most of which has the unintended effect of turning listeners off to anything branded as "radio."

And there's an interesting trend that we're just beginning to see as we review radio station sales around our region: for the first time in many years, the prices of some radio stations are beginning to decline. It's not a universal trend, and it's certainly not affecting the biggest markets in the region, but it's showing up both in small towns and larger cities, and we believe it sends a message about the effects of this "make-do" radio over the long term.

The message? Stations that invest in stable, high-quality, locally-focused programming are holding their value when it comes time for a sale, while stations with less well-defined identities are often being sold for considerably less in 2007 than their sellers may have paid during the boom years earlier in the decade. We know of one cluster in a fairly important market somewhere in NERW-land with two identical full-market FM signals, one of which is being offered for twice the price of the other - simply because it comes with an established identity that's been built over 20 years of service to its community.

We'll take that concept one step further: the stations that continue to command premium prices in an otherwise flat market are doing so, we'd contend, precisely because they're not succumbing to the fear that seems to have gripped so much of the industry in the last few years.

It's true that the media universe is changing quickly and dramatically. It's true that many of the new technologies out there - not just satellite radio and portable music players, but the inevitable arrival of near-universal mobile high-speed broadband, making any stream available to anyone anywhere - pose serious threats to much of today's radio landscape. Stations with little or no local connection to their listeners are right to be afraid of what's coming down the road, and the market is appropriately reducing their value.

But there's a smaller subset of radio stations that will survive, thrive and even continue to add value for their owners, and they do it precisely by not being afraid of the future. Whether it's WYRK in Buffalo (which helped CBS Radio pull in a record price when it sold its cluster of stations there), WENT in Gloversville, WDEV in Waterbury or WBZ in Boston, these stations have made an investment in the people needed to make good community radio, and by extension in their communities themselves.

(That, by the way, is about the only common thread among this diverse group of "stations that get it" - just like our poster children for sloppy radio in the first part of our Rant, these stations run the gamut of format, market size and ownership size. The only other common factor here is patience - none of these stations is a member of the "format of the month" club, and most have built their identities over the course of many years, if not many decades.)

What's more, because the value of these stations lies as much in the content they generate as in the spectrum they occupy, which gives them even less reason to fear whatever the future brings. We've already seen some of these stations in other parts of the country successfully transplant their heritage from AM to FM, as Bonneville in particular has demonstrated with its launches of news-talk FMs in Washington, Salt Lake City and Phoenix. Some of our "stations that get it" are using their strength in over-the-air content to build web content that's more than just gimmicky - again, we point to WBZ, where Carl Stevens is taking his many years of experience as a radio reporter and using it to create short videos for the station's website.

That sort of content will transfer seamlessly to whatever medium comes next, and it will keep building value in the meantime, while we all wait to find out what that medium might be.

Next week - some concluding thoughts on what the latest round of station sales, and the dramatic change in station values, might mean when it comes to creating more new "stations that get it."

(And as always, we welcome your thoughts at rant at fybush dot com - let us know if it's OK to use your name when we present reader reaction in an upcoming issue of NERW.)

*It's here! As seen in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Chicago Sun-Times, and soon on WCVB's "Chronicle," Tower Site Calendar 2007 is not only now shipping - it's close to a sellout! If you're waiting for the 2007 edition to go on clearance sale, don't keep waiting - the word from the shipping department is that fewer than 200 copies remain, and we expect to sell them all in the next month or two.

This year's edition features what we think are the finest tower images yet - from the cover image of WCCO Minneapolis all the way to the back-cover centerfold of WBZ in Boston, and from KGO San Francisco to KOIL Omaha to Philadelphia's famed Roxborough tower farm, captured in a dramatic dusk shot with the lights all aglow.

This sixth annual edition once again contains plenty of historic dates from radio and television history in the Northeast and beyond, and as always, it comes to you shrink-wrapped and shipped first class mail for safe arrival.

You can even get your 2007 calendar free with your new or renewal subscription to NERW at the $60 level.

Visit the Fybush.com Store and place your order today - and be among the first to get the Tower Site Calendar 2007!

NorthEast Radio Watch is made possible by the generous contributions of our regular readers. If you enjoy NERW, please click here to learn how you can help make continued publication possible. NERW is copyright 2007 by Scott Fybush.