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January 19, 2009
Z100 PD Adds Motor City Duties
TUESDAY UPDATE: Details
of Clear Channel's job cuts - a reported 9% nationwide - are
still trickling in, and probably will be for several days, but
from what we can see as of about 8:30 Tuesday night, there was
something of a pattern to be found across the company's Northeastern
markets: most of the cuts, as expected, affected sales and promotions
departments, with on-air job losses varying from market to market,
often hitting news and sports departments hardest.
We'll have a more comprehensive list in next Monday's issue,
but here are some of the names we know so far: in New York City,
WHTZ (Z100) night co-host Niko, WKTU (103.5) local sales manager
Mark Magnone and cluster communications director Josefa Paganuzzi
are all out. Up the road in New Haven, WKCI (101.3) lost morning
co-host and PD Chaz Kelly, while four salespeople are out in
Hartford.
In New Hampshire, marketing director John Pullo is out.
(No word yet on Boston, the Hudson Valley or Albany.)
In Syracuse, the cuts hit sports station WHEN (620), where
sports director/afternoon talk host Jim Lerch is out along with
a producer, while WBBS (104.7) lost promotions director Carole
Fargo. Rochester's cuts included 29-year WHAM (1180) news veteran
Bill Lowe and five salespeople.
Philadelphia's WIOQ (Q102) lost morning man Diego Ramos,
an 18-year veteran, and sales manager Tom Interrante. In Harrisburg,
we're hearing 14 people are out, mostly from sales, but also
WHP (580) assistant PD Rob Wilbur and WRVV (97.3) morning news
anchor Deena Joseph.
As for the breathless message-board postings predicting
that all local programming would be replaced by satellite-delivered
jocks? Aside from word that Ryan Seacrest's syndicated show,
already heard in most Clear Channel markets, would soon be coming
to Q102 in Philadelphia, it looks as though the cuts - at least
this round of them - won't create quite so dramatic an on-air
impact. Nor, however, can we easily square the earnest declarations
from Clear Channel's top management - a lot of hot air about
"focus" and "determination" and "long-term
growth prospects" - with today's cutbacks, especially with
the effect they're having on the morale of the remaining employees.
Much more in next Monday's NERW...
*We're still not sure how much stock to put
in the widely-circulating rumors about big cuts coming to Clear
Channel this week, especially after the message-board echo chamber
has had its way with them, but there's at least one sign of the
company's downsizing: in addition to her duties as PD of NEW
YORK's Z100 (WHTZ 100.3 Newark NJ), Sharon Dastur added the
PD title last week at Clear Channel sister station WKQI (95.5)
in Detroit.
 Yes, that means
a full-market top 40 station in a top-ten market will have a
PD who's in town only a day or two each month. No, we're not
sure this is a sign, as some have speculated, that the company
is planning to massively nationalize its programming. (We're
quite certain, for one thing, that the satellite receivers that
have been installed at CC transmitter sites nationwide are not,
as a prominent blogger has been suggesting, designed to eliminate
local studios - they are, rather, part of the company's emergency
response plan that was put in place after Hurricane Katrina wiped
out its New Orleans studios, forcing its New Orleans stations
to be fed via satellite from Baton Rouge.)
But no, this certainly isn't a good thing for anyone hoping
for a sign that radio's biggest owners (as opposed to the small-market
guys, who are faring pretty well, considering) have any real
sense of how to renew their focus on quality content, rather
than simply continuing to cut costs until there's nothing left
that anyone would want to listen to.
On Long Island, Dana DiDonato is staying put in morning drive
at WBLI (106.1 Patchogue), after announcing her plans to depart
late last year.
In the Hudson Valley, Aaron "Dave" McCord is leaving
WRWD (107.3 Highland) after nine years with the station; he's
leaving behind the PD chair and afternoon drive to become promotions
director and afternoon jock at WWJO in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Heading west on the Thruway, Albany Broadcasting has asked
the FCC to allow WIZR (930 Johnstown) to remain silent. "The
station was removed from the air in a time of economic turmoil
for the industry," WIZR tells the FCC, "in order to
converse (sic) financial resources for the operation of the licensee's
other stations in the market cluster that have larger audiences.
The licensee fully intends to restore service as soon as financially
feasible."
Back in September, former WIZR owner Joey Caruso announced
plans to flip the station to a Catholic format, but those plans
evidently never materialized, and the station went silent Dec.
19.
Mars Hill Network's new signal in the Utica area will apparently
have the calls WMHU, though that's not yet reflected in the FCC
database. The new station will operate on 91.1 and will be licensed
to Cold Spring, in Herkimer County.
A few bits of news from Syracuse: CNYRadio.com
reports that Citadel's WLTI (105.9) has added the syndicated
Bob & Sheri to morning drive, filling the hole left last
fall by the departure of the station's original morning man,
Dave Allen. The show originates from Charlotte, North Carolina
- and was briefly heard in Syracuse a couple of years ago on
WFBL (1390).
 Ithaca Community
Radio now has a second construction permit to go alongside as-yet-unbuilt
WRFI (91.9 Watkins Glen); the FCC granted a CP last week for
250 watts/341' DA on 89.9 in Odessa. That signal won't actually
reach Ithaca if it's built, thanks to first-adjacent CP WITH
on 90.1 in Ithaca itself.
In Buffalo, Dick Greene's WECK (1230 Cheektowaga) is adding
New York Yankees play-by-play this season. The team had been
heard for the last few years on Entercom's WGR (550); Entercom
also has the AAA Buffalo Bisons on its WWKB (1520). (And, seriously
- while the Yankees still have a sizable and very vocal following
in western New York, we're still waiting for an astute radio
owner to notice the equally sizable and passionate following
that the Red Sox have built up in the area. We're noticing just
as much Sox gear as Yankees gear on the heads and backs of fans
at minor-league baseball and other events around here, and the
change in WTIC's license means its signal won't be serving these
corners of Sox Nation next summer the way it once did...)
South of Buffalo, Chadwick Bay Broadcasting (which owns WDOE/WBKX
in Dunkirk) is selling translator W255BP (98.9 Silver Creek)
to Family Life Ministries, for $2,000.
Several obituaries from the Empire State this week: in Buffalo,
they're mourning Tim White, the versatile DJ and actor whose
radio career included stops at WECK, WJYE and WMJQ and whose
theater career spanned three decades. White died Tuesday morning
after a long fight with kidney disease; he had received a transplant
last August, and had just recently opened in a Buffalo production
of the play "American Rhapsody." White was 49. In Binghamton,
former WHWK, WAAL, WKOP and WENE jock Mike McCoy died Thursday
morning. In New York City, former WNYC and WQXR news anchor Emily
Hoffman died Jan. 5 of melanoma, at 53.
Did you miss it earlier this
month? Catch up on a whole year's worth of radio and TV happenings
across the Great Northeast, plus a particularly spirited (if
we do say so ourselves) Year-End Rant, all on one handy page
that will help you remember a year many of us would probably
just as soon forget.
Just click on the banner above
to visit's NERW's 13th annual Year in Review, brought to you
this year by these nice folks:
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*The big news from the talk radio
scene in eastern MASSACHUSETTS last week was what didn't
happen: despite rumors that suggested WTKK (96.9 Boston) middayers
Jim Braude and Margery Eagan might decamp for mornings at rival
WRKO (680), they're instead staying put at the Greater Media
FM talker, which signed them to a "long term agreement"
keeping them in place on WTKK.
 There
was no movement, either, at WBZ (1030), where the Globe reported
that fired weekend talk host Lovell Dyett met with station management
Thursday to talk about the possibility of a return to the air
amidst heavy community pressure for his reinstatement. When asked
whether the latest round of cuts at WBZ was the last, GM Ted
Jordan told the paper, "I can't imagine there would be more."
The new PD and morning man at Northeast Broadcasting's WXRV
(92.5 Andover) is a familiar voice in the market: he's Beau Raines,
who programmed WROR (105.7) from 1999-2002 and WZLX (100.7) from
2002-2005. Raines had most recently been in Denver, where he
was programming Entercom's KQMT (99.5) until budget cuts claimed
that job last fall.
Where are they now? Max Tolkoff, who programmed WFNX (101.7
Lynn) until early 2007, lost his job in Los Angeles last week
when Entravision flipped "Indie" KDLD/KDLE (103.1)
to a regional Mexican format. "Indie" continues online,
but the word is that all staff, including PD Tolkoff, is gone
at the critically-acclaimed (but ratings-challenged) modern rocker.
 *Saga is adding to its cluster in Manchester, NEW
HAMPSHIRE with a new top-40 station, "Hot Hits New Hampshire."
Like its new outlets in Keene (as well as Ithaca, N.Y. and Asheville,
N.C.), this one's a translator - two of them, actually - relaying
the HD2 of a bigger Saga FM, in this case WZID (95.7 Manchester).
In Manchester, "Hot Hits" is on W231BR (94.1), which
had been relaying Saga's WMLL (96.5), while in Concord it's on
W276BJ (103.1).
Rush Limbaugh is changing affiliates in the Upper Valley.
Clear Channel, which owns Limbaugh syndicator Premiere, moved
the show from original affiliate WNTK (99.7 New London) to its
own WTSL (1400 Hanover) a few years back - but Clear Channel
sold WTSL last year, and now Limbaugh's show is on its way back
to WNTK and simulcaster WUVR (1490 Lebanon). NERW hears that
WTSL pulled the show off its schedule as soon as the switch was
announced - and ended up with three hours of dead air as a result.
*There could be a new FM signal coming to
the fringes of the Bangor, MAINE market, if Blueberry
Broadcasting has its way. In addition to its high-profile purchase
of Clear Channel's stations in Bangor and Augusta/Waterville
last year, the group owned by Bruce Biette and Louis Vitali also
rolled in the construction permit for a new station down the
coast in Machias that Vitali had won at auction in 2006.
 But
now it turns out that the new signal won't sign on from tiny,
economically-challenged Machias. Instead, Blueberry is applying
to downgrade it to class B1 in Gouldsboro, with its 17 kW/397'
signal diplexed into the antenna of Blueberry's WLKE (99.1 Bar
Harbor).
Meanwhile up in Madison, the Congregation of the Servants
of the Blessed Sacrament has been granted a new noncommercial
signal, with 2.55 kW/768' DA, vertical-only, on 90.7, rimshotting
Skowhegan and Waterville with what will presumably be Catholic
radio.
And just in case you were sitting there thinking, "Central
Maine really needs even more religious radio, especially the
kind that's piped in from out of state with no local content,"
you'll be pleased to hear that the two Clear Channel stations
Blueberry couldn't buy because of market-cap issues are being
sold to...out-of-state religious broadcaster EMF Broadcasting.
WFZX (101.7 Searsport) and WGUY (102.1 Dexter) had been held
in trust for the last few months; they'll now be flipped to one
or another of EMF's Sacramento-based networks, either "K-Love"
(heard on satellite-fed translators in Bangor and Orono) or "Air
1" (heard on recent EMF acquisition WARX 93.9 in Lewiston).
*The noncommercial end of the dial in northern
VERMONT is about to get a bit more crowded. The FCC has
granted a construction permit to the Adirondack Center for Peace,
based across Lake Champlain in Plattsburgh, N.Y., for a new signal
on 90.5 in St. Albans, running 1.5 kW/128', vertical-only. (This,
too, looks as though it will be a Catholic station.)
In the Upper Valley, Cheryl Adams is the new morning jock
at Nassau's "Wolf" WZLF (95.3 Hartford VT)/WWLF (107.1
Bellows Falls VT), arriving from sister station WWEG in Hagerstown,
Maryland. Matt Houseman moves from Wolf mornings to afternoons,
where he replaces Zach Michaels, now on nights.
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*In CONNECTICUT, CBS Radio's WTIC
(1080 Hartford) has apparently concluded that it can't win a
fight with the FCC to retain the unusual condition on its license
that allowed it to operate with its daytime non-directional facilities
until sunset in Dallas, where co-owned KRLD shares the frequency.
WTIC's grandfathered extended daytime operation was challenged
by WOAP, another 1080 signal in Michigan, which won a signal
upgrade by persuading the FCC that the post-sunset operation
in Connecticut should receive only groundwave, not skywave, protection.
To prevent further incursion on its signal during the period
before Dallas sunset (which falls anywhere from 45 to 75 minutes
after Hartford sunset, depending on the time of year), WTIC has
applied to the FCC for a license modification that will eliminate
the special post-sunset conditions, instead switching the Hartford
signal to nighttime directional operation (and the class A skywave
protection that goes with it) at Hartford sunset.
Down I-91 in New Haven, Cox's WPLR (99.1) has a new PD: Scott
Laudani starts work next month, filling the vacancy left when
Ed Sabatino lost his job in budget cuts last fall. Laudani moves
west from the PD chair at WHJY in Providence, and he's also worked
along the I-91 corridor at WAQY in Springfield and WHMP-FM in
Northampton, Mass.
Edited by NERW's own Scott Fybush - on sale now as
an e-book or printed volume!
*There's a new station on the air in south
central PENNSYLVANIA, where Harrisburg public broadcaster
WITF flipped the switch to put WYPM (93.3 Chambersburg) on the
air at 10 AM on Jan. 9.
 The
new signal is the relocated former WROG (102.9 Cumberland MD),
which former owner Bob Stevens moved out of the way of an upgrade
to his WANB-FM (103.1) in the Pittsburgh area, then sold to WITF
for $875,000.
It's carrying an NPR news and talk lineup, with the same schedule
that had been heard on the "Engage" HD2 service on
WITF's main FM signal in Harrisburg.
About 15 miles west of Chambersburg, a fire Wednesday night
gutted the transmitter building of WJAL-TV, the independent station
licensed to Hagerstown, Maryland that serves viewers on both
sides of the Mason-Dixon line. That, we suspect, means the permanent
end of WJAL's analog signal on channel 68; as for WJAL-DT, which
was to move from 16 to 39 after February, it too remains off
the air, but WJAL is reportedly working on ways to use other
stations' DTV subchannels to restore a signal to the air.
(And, you know, not to slip into Rant territory here - but
why in the world even have a station
Web site if you can't manage to update it, as WJAL hadn't
nearly a day after the fire, with the rather important news that
your station has burned down and you're off the air?)
Meanwhile up in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre market, another
analog TV signal will go dark today. WOLF-TV (Channel 56) follows
sister station WSWB (Channel 38) in going digital-only, one of
the increasing number of stations making the digital flip regardless
of whether Congress decides to extend the analog-shutoff deadline
beyond Feb. 17.
 *In CANADA, there's a subtle format change
in Cambridge, Ontario: "Dave FM" (CJDV 107.5) has segued
from classic rock to more active rock, with its airstaff and
nickname intact.
Up north, Larche Communications has withdrawn its application
for a new signal in Bracebridge, Ontario, but that still leaves
more than a dozen other applicants on the CRTC's agenda for its
public hearings starting next week in Orillia.
In Montreal, they're mourning Valerie Letarte, who worked
at community station CINQ (102.3) and at CKOI (96.9) and CFGL
(105.7) before becoming host of Radio-Canada's children's show,
"275-ALLO" in 2003. Letarte died of cancer on Dec.
28 in Sutton, Quebec; she was just 47.
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From
the NERW Archives
(Yup, we've been doing this a long time now, and
so we're digging back into the vaults for a look at what NERW
was covering one, five, ten and - where available - fifteen years
ago this week, or thereabouts - the column appeared on an erratic
schedule in its earliest years as "New England Radio Watch,"
and didn't go to a regular weekly schedule until 1997. Thanks
to LARadio.com for the
idea - and thanks to you, our readers, for the support
that's made all these years of NERW possible!)
January 21, 2008 -
- It's been a while since Bob Grant was making headlines in
NEW YORK - but the WABC (770) night talker was back in the news
last week after Radio & Records cancelled its plans to give
him a Lifetime Achievement Award at its upcoming convention.
The about-face apparently followed a barrage of e-mails to the
magazine and its parent company from Scott Pellegrino, a former
producer for rival talk host Jay Diamond, and it revived the
controversies that got Grant ousted from WABC back in 1996. This
time, though, most of Grant's fellow talk hosts closed rank around
him, with Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others using their
shows to speak out in Grant's defense, with some of them vowing
to boycott the R&R award ceremony. At week's end, one of
R&R's rivals, Talkers magazine, seized the opportunity to
announce that it would give Grant an award of its own in conjunction
with WABC, to be presented at its own convention in June.
- After 23 years at the helm of WXRK (92.3 New York), VP/general
manager Tom Chiusano is stepping down. Chiusano was there when
Infinity flipped the station from WKTU to "K-Rock"
in 1985, riding both the successful Howard Stern years and the
turbulent "Free FM" period that followed. Chiusano
says he'll stay with WXRK as a consultant through mid-year; no
replacement has been named yet.
- Disney's WEPN (1050 New York) continues to expand the reach
of its ESPN programming beyond its own directional signal. In
addition to the impending simulcast on WCHR (1040 Flemington
NJ), WEPN announced last week that beginning today, it will be
heard on The Morey Organization's WLIR (107.1 Hampton Bays),
bringing its sports programming to the east end of Long Island.
WLIR has been temporarily simulcasting sister station "Party
105" (WDRE 105.3 Calverton-Roanoke) since dropping the last
incarnation of the modern rock for which WLIR was known at its
old Nassau County home, now WQBU (92.7 Garden City).
- On the MAINE-NEW HAMPSHIRE line, Clear Channel indeed flipped
the format on WUBB (95.3 York Center ME) to top-40 "Kiss"
last Monday, and for the moment it's a complete simulcast (except
for spots) of Boston's WXKS-FM (107.9 Medford), including the
"Matty in the Morning" show.
- CANADA's biggest market is one radio station smaller this
week. CFBN (1280 Toronto) turned its license in to the CRTC,
after the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, which owned the
station, discontinued its operation. 1280 was originally CFYZ,
programmed with live reports about airport traffic and travel-related
features, but changed calls and format last April, switching
to business news and information. The business programming continues
online, at least for now, or so CFBN's website claims; we weren't
able to connect to the CFBN stream on Sunday night. There won't
be a new radio station in Parry Sound, much to Rogers' dismay.
The company applied for a new 100 kW rock outlet on 94.7, but
the existing station in town, Haliburton's CKLP (103.3), objected
to the new station, saying the market isn't big enough for two
FMs. The CRTC agreed, and last week it denied Rogers' application.
January 19, 2004 -
- It was a slow news week here at NERW Central, and it seems
to have been a slow news week overall in MASSACHUSETTS, too -
at least judging by the amount of attention devoted to the "revelation"
that WBZ (1030 Boston)'s veteran morning news anchor does his
broadcasting from his vacation home in Florida several weeks
a year.
- By way of disclaimer, it's no secret at all that your editor's
resume includes a stint (1992-97) at WBZ, much of that time as
Gary LaPierre's morning news writer - but LaPierre's Florida
remotes were hardly a secret to anyone in the Boston broadcasting
community. To the Boston Globe, though (and longtime readers
of this column know just what we think of that paper's coverage
of the broadcast scene), the discovery that some of LaPierre's
broadcasts were coming from St. Augustine was worthy of a long
story, complete with quotes from the "journalism ethics
experts" whose numbers must still have been in the Globe
Rolodex from the days of Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle.
- LaPierre, who's now 61 and coming up on 40 years of doing
news at WBZ, has been talking about retiring for years. In his
last contract negotiation, he asked the station to let him work
from Florida for half of each winter month and for a couple of
weeks in the summer, and the station was happy to let him do
so in exchange for his willingness to stay with the top-rated
broadcast. Though WBZ never explicitly told listeners that LaPierre
wasn't in the station's Allston studios , LaPierre also never
claimed to be in Boston when he wasn't (and never denied he was
working from Florida when anyone asked.)
- Up in NEW HAMPSHIRE, the ever-growing Nassau Broadcasting
is adding yet another set of stations to its nascent New England
cluster, as it picks up oldies WNNH (99.1 Henniker), oldies WLKZ
(104.9 Wolfeboro) and hot AC WHOB (106.3 Nashua) from Tele-Media,
which bows out of New England with the sale. No purchase price
has been announced yet; the Tele-Media stations join the clusters
Nassau is buying in Maine from Mariner and the WMTW Broadcast
Group.
- From Concord, Harry Kozlowski checks in with an update on
the construction of WCNH-LP (94.7), the new classical music station
that's getting ready to sign on up there. Harry sent along this
picture of the 2-bay Shively antenna that the folks from Prescott
Tower in Vermont rigged up over the weekend at the station's
site on Little Pond Road; he says transmitter tests will get
underway as early as the middle of this week, with the formal
sign-on coming in February.
- Speaking of power increases, WYSL (1040 Avon) has a big one
in the works. Before the FCC put a freeze on applications for
"minor" AM facility changes last week (in preparation
for a rare window for "major" changes next week), WYSL
owner Bob Savage slid in an application to take the news-talk
station from 2500 watts during the day to 20,000 watts daytime
and 13,200 watts during critical hours. (WYSL would still be
just 500 watts at night.) All that, and no changes to WYSL's
four-tower directional array - it's a long way from the 500-watt
daytimer that WYSL was when it signed on for the first time 17
years ago this month. (We have fond editorial memories of visiting
Bob at the station even before its official debut...)
- In southern NEW JERSEY, WSNJ (1240 Bridgeton) is getting
a new owner. Quinn Broadcasting, which already owns WMVB (1440)
in nearby Millville, will pay Ed Bold's estate $550,000 for the
AM station and the studio-transmitter facility that's long been
home to 1240 and its sister station, WSNJ-FM (107.7). And while
the FM station will have a completely new sound in a few months
when its sale to Ed Seeger's American Media Services closes (and
it's then moved to 107.9 in Pennsauken and spun to Radio One
to serve Philadelphia), Quinn's owner, Millville mayor Jim Quinn,
says the AM facility will keep the hyper-local programming that's
long distinguished WSNJ. Quinn says some WSNJ programming will
be simulcast on WMVB, and he plans to add a Webcast as well.
- Forever Broadcasting finished reworking its station lineup
in Altoona, PENNSYLVANIA early last week, returning a well-known
set of calls to the airwaves in the process. After several days
of stunting on what had been classic hits "Majic" WMAJ-FM
(104.9 Hollidaysburg), the station relaunched as "Rocky
104.9," playing some newer rock along with the old, and
applying for new calls WRKY - the same calls that spent many
years on co-owned 103.5 over in Steubenville, Ohio, before it
became "Froggy" WOGH.
January 15, 1999 -
- Fresh from a morning of doing live shots in the snow ("It's
still snowing out here...drive carefully!"), we turn our
attention to the radio dial and find there's not much going on
out there. Here's what passes for this week's highlights:
- No more local programming at the adult-standards outlet in
Springfield, MASSACHUSETTS. As of the first of the year, WMAS
(1450) has switched from ABC/SMN's "Stardust" to Jones'
"Music of Your Life" satellite service. In the process,
WMAS also dismissed morning guy George Murphy, whose show was
the last vestige of local radio on the AM side at WMAS.
- A few new pirates on the air in the Hub: We're hearing reports
of foreign-language stations on 102.1 and 102.9...more details
to come.
- A RHODE ISLAND morning team was suspended for a day after
a too-successful hoax Thursday morning. WWBB (101.5 Providence)
morning team Daria Bruno and Tiffany Hill told listeners that
the state's "Department of Outdated Decorations" would
begin imposing $25 fines on anyone who didn't remove their Christmas
decorations by noon. Gullible listeners hauled out the ladders
and began pulling down their lights; some apparently stayed home
from work to get the job done, according to newspaper reports.
"B101" program director Al Brock went on the air to
apologize mid-morning. NERW notes that this stunt, at least,
didn't bring the Secret Service calling -- unlike two stations
down South whose morning jocks claimed they had scanned and printed
phony $1 bills and were using them in the station vending machines.
- A veteran CONNECTICUT newscaster is calling it quits in April.
Ten years to the day after launching the 10 PM newscast at WTIC-TV
(Channel 61) in Hartford, Pat Sheehan will sign off on April
10. Sheehan already had 24 years in the business when he joined
the "News at Ten" in 1989, with stints at WFSB, WTNH,
WHCT, CPTV, and at several Nutmeg State radio stations. He'll
continue his day job as a broker at A.G. Edwards in Hartford,
and he's not ruling out a return to the airwaves sometime soon.
Speaking of WHCT (Channel 18), it has switched from the Shop
at Home network to ValueVision, which we're sure will help the
station better serve the ol' "public interest, convenience,
and necessity"...
- An upstate NEW YORK cluster could be broken up soon. The
FCC wants to take a closer look at the Binghamton stations being
sold by Wicks to Citadel. The cluster of news-talk WNBF (1290),
standards WKOP (1360), country WHWK (98.1), rock WAAL (99.1),
and oldies WYOS (104.1 Chenango Bridge) pulls in 63% of the market's
ad revenue, according to BIA, which is far above the informal
40% standard the FCC and Justice Department seem to be using.
Don't look to the market's other big owner, Majac, to be able
to pick up anything spun off from this deal -- its cluster of
sports WENE (1430 Endicott), rock WKGB (92.5 Susquehanna PA),
AC WMXW (103.3 Vestal), and CHR WMRV (105.7 Endicott) is already
bringing home just about all the rest of the market's radio dollars.
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