January 11, 2010

Duquesne Mulls WDUQ Sale

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*As public radio has evolved into a big business over the last quarter-century, many of the institutions that were early sponsors of public radio stations are finding that big-time broadcasting no longer fits their mission. The latest example comes from western PENNSYLVANIA, where Pittsburgh's Duquesne University announced last week that it's looking to sell WDUQ (90.5), the station it put on the air as a low-power student-run operation back in 1949.

"The university is proud of the station's success," said a statement from the station last week, "and sees that it is big enough to exist outside the university's umbrella. While the university continues to look at all opportunities, it is currently working with a group comprised of the current management of DUQ, representatives of the foundation community, and the public broadcasting consulting group Public Radio Capital to explore the possibility of WDUQ becoming an independent public radio station."

Duquesne's involvement with WDUQ has been largely hands-off for the last few years; while the university continues to hold the station's license and to provide office space, most of WDUQ's funding now comes from individual members, underwriters and corporate/foundation grants, and Duquesne has had little involvement with the station's programming. One notable exception came in 2007, when the Catholic university's leadership forced WDUQ to return underwriting money from Planned Parenthood.

While there's no shortage of message-board speculation about potential purchasers for the big-signalled station, it seems clear that the intent is to keep WDUQ functioning substantially as it already does. Its mix of NPR news/talk programming and jazz routinely nets respectable ratings, higher than classical competitor WQED-FM (89.3) or AAA WYEP (91.3), and with Pittsburgh's long history of corporate funding for cultural institutions, it's highly likely that WDUQ can be successfully transitioned to some form of community nonprofit ownership with its current staff and management intact.

(It's also possible that WDUQ could merge its operations with WQED or WYEP, though neither scenario seems likely, especially given the financial constraints under which WQED has been operating.)

*In northeast Pennsylvania, a veteran jock is on the beach this week after a 35-year run with the same station. WFYY (106.5 Bloomsburg) is the latest incarnation of the station that was WHLM-FM when Bob Gale started there in the mid-seventies. (He also worked at then-sister station WHLM 550, now defunct.)

Most recently, Gale had been doing afternoons at "Y-106.5" and voicetracking nights at sister station "Big Country" (WYGL-FM 100.5/WLGL 92.3/WWBE 98.3), but the 60-year-old jock says he was told his services were no longer needed after his last live shift Dec. 30. In an interview with the Bloomsburg Press-Enterprise, WFYY GM Carol Pierson called Gale a "local radio legend," but said the station is "kinda, sorta" changing format. Chad Evans, late of Sunbury Broadcasting's WKOK/WQKX/WEGH, replaces Gale on WFYY and Big Country, and Gale tells the newspaper he's not ready to retire yet, but doesn't have a new gig lined up.

More Radio People on the Move: in Allentown, George King (most recently operations manager at Clear Channel's San Antonio, Texas cluster) replaces Shelly Easton as operations manager of Citadel's WLEV/WCTO and PD for WCTO, while Laura St. James, late of crosstown WAEB-FM, comes on board as PD for WLEV.

In the hills around Scranton, there are two station moves making their way through the FCC. GEOS Communications' WNKZ (103.9 Laporte) has been granted a change of city of license to Dushore, about 10 miles to the northeast. There's no technical change associated with that move, at least not yet - but there's a big one associated with the application filed last week by WFUZ (91.3 Carbondale), whose owner, Telikoja Educational Broadcasting, is helmed by one of GEOS' principals, Kevin Fitzgerald. He's proposing to relocate WFUZ from its present site east of Scranton to the Brier Mountain site west of Scranton that's now home to WCIG (107.7 Dallas), which is in turn moving to a new location. The relocated WFUZ would change city of license to Tunkhannock, WCIG's old city of license - and in the application, Fitzgerald demonstrates just a sliver of overlap between WFUZ's present 60 dBu signal and its new one, in order to qualify this as a "minor change" in FCC parlance. (One more interesting note here: The WFUZ license on 91.3 is itself the former WCIG, obtained from Family Life Network as part of the $1 million sale of the present WCIG 107.7.)

More new call letters for new stations: Invisible Allies Ministries gets WRPV for its new signal on 90.5 in Allport, in the hills above Clearfield. And Invisible Allies (based at WRXV in State College) is adding another signal as well: it's buying the construction permit for WZXF (91.7 Hustontown, near Breezewood on the Pennsylvania Turnpike) from Four Rivers Community Broadcasting for $1.

And there are two big Keystone State obituaries this week: first, we noted the passing of veteran Pittsburgh sportscaster and columnist Phil Musick, whose career included a long stint with the now-defunct Pittsburgh Press, as well as time as sports editor at the Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review. Musick was an early columnist for USA Today in the eighties. In addition to his print work, Musick spent 11 years as a talk host at WTAE (1250, now WEAE) before joining KDKA-TV (Channel 2) in 1998 as managing editor. He died Jan. 5 of congestive heart failure at age 71.

Then came another KDKA-TV obituary: Yvonne Zanos, the CBS station's consumer reporter, succumbed to ovarian cancer on Friday (Jan. 8), just two days after turning 60.

Zanos was a reporter for the old "Evening Magazine" on KDKA-TV in the seventies, then left for Kansas City before returning to Pittsburgh in 1984 to report for crosstown WTAE-TV (Channel 4). Zanos went on the consumer beat there in 1987, then rejoined Channel 2 a decade later. For the last two years, Zanos had continued to work at KDKA while undergoing treatment for the cancer that was diagnosed in late 2007. She's survived by her husband, two daughters and five grandchildren.

Click on the banner above to visit's NERW's 15th annual Year in Review, brought to you this year by these nice folks:

*In MASSACHUSETTS, the big news came from WFNX (101.7 Lynn), which pulled the plug on its "Sandbox" morning show after two and a half years, dropping hosts Charlie Padgett and "Special Ed" Oliveira. Co-host Dustin "Fletcher" Matthews stays on board at the modern rocker, hosting a new morning show with PD Keith Dakin and veteran FNX newsman Henry Santoro. Also helping out with the new show is production director and former afternoon jock "Big Jim" Murray, who's being replaced in drivetime by Adam Chapman, aka "Adam 12," who'd left WFNX a few years back to go to the now-defunct WBCN (104.1). Later in the evening, "Loveline" is gone, and Paul Driscoll's night shift now runs from 6 PM until midnight.

Adam 12 isn't the only former New England radio personality who came home last week: on the sports-talk front, Andy Gresh departed Sirius/XM's Mad Dog Sports channel and the SNY cable network in New York to take a new gig with CBS Radio's "Sports Hub" (WBZ-FM 98.5) in Boston.

Gresh was already a familiar voice to Sports Hub listeners as the host of the Patriots Radio Network pre- and post-game shows, and he'll continue in that role, as well as hosting a regular weekend shift and serving as the regular fill-in for WBZ-FM's weekday talent.

Out on Martha's Vineyard, the FCC has granted a healthy power increase to WCAI (90.1 Woods Hole), which takes advantage of the demise of adjacent channel 6 in New Bedford/Providence to jump from 1300 watts (vertical-only)/249' to 12.5 kW/241', significantly boosting the coverage of WGBH's Cape and Islands service in the Upper Cape.

Over at WGBH's main service on 89.7 in Boston, today's the debut day for two new local talk shows: Emily Rooney of "Greater Boston" will hold down the noon-1 PM hour, followed by Callie Crossley from 1-2 PM. Not everyone's happy with the new 89.7 lineup, of course, and WGBH general manager John Voci got an ear full last Tuesday as one of the panelists at a meeting organized by the Boston Musical Intelligencer website.

Your editor, while invited to participate, was unable to do so because of family commitments and winter-weather travel issues - but several NERW readers were among the 400 or so in the crowd at Old South Church, where the big issues were apparently the signal deficiencies of WCRB (99.5 Lowell), now the only full-time source of classical music with WGBH's move to fulltime news/talk, and the perceived lower quality of the WGBH-produced classical programming now being heard on 99.5. A particular concern was the removal of the Friday afternoon Boston Symphony Orchestra broadcasts, which Voci says would cost an additional $20,000-$30,000 annually.

Those hoping for easy solutions to these problems aren't likely to be satisfied: existing short-spacings and FCC allocation rules mean the 99.5 signal will be staying put at its existing Andover transmitter site for the foreseeable future (though the WCRB simulcast at 89.7-HD2 offers the promise of a cleaner classical signal for listeners south of Boston willing to invest in an HD Radio receiver), and WGBH officials seem unlikely to make significant changes in the programming now running on "All Classical WGBH" at 99.5.

*There's a radio sale to report: Antonio Gois is converting his LMA of WLLH (1400 Lowell and Lawrence) and WAMG (890 Dedham) to a purchase, for a remarkably low price - he's paying just $1.8 million for the stations that WallerSutton-backed J Sports bought for $9 million five years ago.

*On the TV front, you could just about hear the "I-told-you-so"s coming from Government Center in Boston as NBC backed away from its interesting, but poorly-executed, move of Jay Leno to 10 PM weeknights. It was concern about lower ratings for the 11 PM newscast that led WHDH-TV (Channel 7) to threaten to preempt the prime-time Leno show last fall, and NBC says it's bowing to concerns from many of its affiliates - not just WHDH - in reworking its late-night strategy. The details of the new NBC late-night plan will be announced this week at the network's affiliate meeting, but they're believed to involve a half-hour Leno show at 11:35, followed by Conan O'Brien at 12:05 AM, if he stays with NBC at all.

Over at Fox's WFXT (Channel 25), helicopter reporter Doug Meehan, who's been working from the ground since WFXT began sharing its chopper with WBZ-TV last year, is out of a job. The station isn't renewing his contract, and he'll leave WFXT's morning show this week.

*In MAINE, another former affiliate of Citadel's "Timeless" satellite-delivered standards format has found a new programming service: WDEA (1370 Ellsworth) is now carrying "Music of Your Life," instead.

*It was a very quiet week in NEW YORK radio, though it will get busier this week: longtime WABC (770 New York) talker Curtis Sliwa starts his new morning show today at a much smaller competitor, Salem's WNYM (970 Hackensack NJ). Will Sliwa be a big enough name to make "970 the Apple" a factor on a Big Apple talk landscape that currently has just two major players, WABC and Buckley's WOR (710)?

(Speaking of WNYM, its daytime power increase to 50,000 watts is coming at the expense of a co-channel station 200 miles away: Salem bought WAMD in Aberdeen, Maryland a few years back, and as of yesterday WAMD has been taken silent, eliminating one of the hurdles to WNYM's signal boost.)

While we're on the topic of signals, Fordham University's WFUV (90.7 New York) reports that it's completed the installation of its new antenna atop a Montefiore Medical Center apartment building in the Bronx. WFUV moved to Montefiore in 2006 from its never-completed tower on the Fordham campus, but the 10-bay Dielectric antenna that went up back then never quite lived up to expectations, and now it has been replaced by a six-bay Shively directional antenna at the same site.

Down the dial and one borough over, Columbia University's WKCR-FM (89.9 New York) is operating with a license for the first time since the September 11 attacks destroyed its former transmitter site at the World Trade Center more than eight years ago. Ever since then, WKCR has been operating under special temporary authority, initially at low power from the roof of a Columbia dorm and then, for more than six years now, from 4 Times Square. Last week, the FCC finally granted a license for the Times Square site, making WKCR the second of the four World Trade Center FMs to be relicensed at a new site. (WKTU 103.5 is the other, licensed at the Empire State Building since 2003; WPAT-FM 93.1 and WNYC-FM 93.9 are also at Empire under STA.)

Up the dial at 99.5, WBAI celebrated its 50th anniversary as a Pacifica-owned noncommercial signal yesterday with a ten-hour broadcast full of archival material from the station's turbulent history. Missed it? Catch it again at the station's excellent WBAI Archives site, which provides audio files from several weeks' worth of everything the station broadcasts.

And while we're on the topic of FM radio and New York City, here's one last reminder of a big event this week: with 2010 marking the 75th anniversary of Major Edwin Howard Armstrong's first demonstrations of FM radio, our friends at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) are gearing up for a year of celebrations, beginning with a panel discussion about Armstrong's life and legacy tomorrow, Tuesday, January 12.

The event will run from 6:30-9:30 PM at the Hearst Corporation's Joseph Urban Theater, on Eighth Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, and will include presentations from veteran New York engineer Herb Squire of DSI, Steve Hemphill of Solid Electronics Labs, and your editor as well. (I'll be addressing the topic of "FM After Armstrong," looking at the technical and regulatory changes in the medium in the half-century since Armstrong's death.)

AES' David Bialik is moderating the event, which is free and open to the public. There's more information at the AES NY Section website - and we hope to see you there!

*There's a format change coming in the Hudson Valley (and neighboring Danbury, CONNECTICUT) later today, or so we're told - Cumulus' WDBY (105.5 Patterson) is promoting a 1:05 PM flip to country as "Kicks 105," replacing the AC "Y105" format that's been in place there since 2002.

MONDAY UPDATE: And that's exactly what happened, as WDBY segued out of its 1 PM "Y105" ID into five minutes of a countdown clock, followed by the launch of country music. Bill "Mr. Morning" Trotta, who was Y105's high-profile hire a year ago, when he moved from his longtime home on crosstown WDAQ (98.3 Danbury), remains in place in morning drive.

*It was an even quieter week upstate, with just one story of note: in Johnstown, west of Albany, Pamal (6 Johnson Road Licenses Inc.) has struck a new deal to sell long-silent WIZR (930). Thomas J. Kuettel, a Schenectady doctor specializing in addiction treatment, agreed last week to pay $175,000 for the 1000-watt daytime/28-watt nighttime license. (He's apparently reached a separate deal for the real estate where WIZR's tower is located.)

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*In CANADA's biggest market, fans of classic hits have plenty of choices these days - Astral's new "Boom" (CHBM 97.3) and Corus' Hamilton-based "Vinyl 95.3" (CING), which debuted its new jock lineup last week, including some familiar Toronto radio voices.

Bob Magee, late of CHFI (98.1) and before that at the old 1050 CHUM, is doing mornings with Corrie Miller, formerly at Vinyl's sister station Y108 (CJXY 107.9). John Novak, a veteran of the top-40 era at Hamilton's CKOC (1150), is doing a lengthy midday shift, from 9 AM to 3 PM - and he's followed by Gord James, who went from CKOC to CHUM in the seventies, eventually spending 23 years at CHUM, including seven years in mornings. Derek Rivers, another former Y108 jock, is handling nights.

Another Toronto radio veteran, Ron Hewat, has retired. Hewat was on the air in the fifties, sixties and seventies as an announcer for the Maple Leafs; later, he went into sales and marketing, developing the Blue Jays radio network in the seventies and hiring legendary Jays announcer Tom Cheek. Most recently, Hewat has been working as specialty sales manager at CFRB (1010), a job he wrapped up at the end of December.

In Montreal, Ted Bird has departed Astral's CHOM (97.7), 25 years "to the day" after coming to the Montreal airwaves. Bird came to CHOM in 1988, departed for CJFM (95.9) five years later, then returned to CHOM in 2002. He tells the Montreal Gazette that his creativity was being stifled by CHOM's corporate management, and he says he has no immediate plans for a new radio gig. For now, Bird's former morning co-hosts, "Bad Pete" Marier and Chantal Desjardins, are handling the shift by themselves.

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