Millennium Merges Into Townsquare

TOWER SITE CALENDAR 2011 - CLEARANCE SALE NOW ON! GET 'EM BEFORE THEY'RE ALL GONE...AT JUST $8 EACH!

Maybe you need an extra copy for the wall of your shop. Maybe you gave your first copy away as a gift. Maybe the year just got away from you and you forgot to order your Tower Site Calendar 2011.

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It's June now, and we want to clear out our remaining stock of the 2011 calendars so we can make room for the 2012 calendar, already in production. And that's why we're offering our very limited remaining supply for just $8 postpaid. (That's a $10 discount from the original list price of $18!)

Tower Site Calendar 2011 features more than a dozen great images of radio and TV broadcast facilities all over the country (and even beyond - this year's edition takes us to Mexico!)

Thrill to a night shot of KFI's new tower! Check out the WAEB Allentown array just after it lost a tower - or enjoy the history at venerable sites like those of KID in Idaho Falls, WCAP in Lowell, KTKT in Tucson and Rochester's Pinnacle Hill.

But wait - there's more! We also have a small supply of the new FM Atlas, 21st edition back in stock, as well as a limited supply of Tower Site Calendar 2010 - plus signed calendars, back isues and much more in the fybush.com store!

Orders of 20 or more calendars get an even bigger discount. We'll even add a bow or a gift card upon request. But don't wait...supplies are limited, and the calendar will sell out soon!

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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.

Note that 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.

One Year Ago: July 26, 2010 -

• After not quite two years as a talk station, CANADA's Astral Media has flipped CHAM (820 Hamilton) right back where it came from. On Thursday at noon, CHAM ditched "Talk 820," which had failed to make much of a dent in Corus' dominant CHML (900) since launching in September 2008. In its place is "Today's Country 820 CHAM," returning the 50,000-watt signal to the format it had used for decades before making the flip to talk.
• The revived country CHAM features morning host Mike Nabuurs, who'd been doing the station's late-morning talk shift. And along with sister station CKOC (1150)'s oldies format, we believe it makes Hamilton the only large Canadian market that still has two stations playing music on the AM dial - three, if you count Evanov's nearby CKPC (1380 Brantford), which recently flipped to a news/country hybrid.
• John Manzi worked in several New England states during his long radio career, but it was in RHODE ISLAND that Manzi became known as "Big Ange," bringing his high-energy delivery to stations that included WJAR, WICE, WHIM and most memorably WPRO. Manzi, who also went by "Andy Jackson," worked in Binghamton (WINR), Elmira (WELM) and Maine (WASY, WZON) as well during a career that stretched from the sixties into the late eighties. He died July 17 in Providence, at 67.
• In CONNECTICUT, Hipolito Cuevas made headlines a few years back when he sparred with the FCC over his unlicensed Spanish-language station in New Haven. "La Nueva Radio Musicale" was eventually shut down in 2000, and Cuevas went legit shortly thereafter, working at WXCT (990 Southington) and later at WNEZ (910 New Britain). Cuevas had a number of health problems, including kidney and heart disease and diabetes; he died on July 7 at just 44.
• Almost a year after being displaced from WCLX (102.9 Westport NY), VERMONT's "Album Station" is back on the air down the dial. Diane Desmond and Russ Kinsley had kept their eclectic AOR format alive via a website (www.musicheads.us) after their dispute with WCLX owner Dennis Jackson led to their departure from the FM airwaves over Lake Champlain, but on Friday they returned to the air via another leased facility, RadioActive's WZXP (97.9 Au Sable NY), transmitting from the old WPTZ-TV site at Terry Mountain south of Plattsburgh. WCLX, meanwhile, remains very much on the air with a similar AAA format and a new operator, Chip Morgan's "Farm Fresh Radio."
• Some good news for NEW HAMPSHIRE's scrappy little classical station: Harry Kozlowski's WCNH-LP (94.7 Bow) received planning board approval last week for the new transmitter installation it's planning at its new full-power CP, WCNU (91.5 Bow). Some neighbors had objected to the new signal, but others showed up in force at a planning board meeting to support WCNU's proposal, which would add a small transmitter shed and even smaller antenna to an existing 40-foot pole. (NERW notes that "I don't want to look at a shed every day," an actual objection from an actual neighbor at the board meeting, may well be one of the least persuasive NIMBY complaints we've ever seen...)
• In New York City itself, public station WNYC-FM (93.9) will soon be operating from fully licensed facilities for the first time since 9/11. Until now, WNYC has remained officially licensed at its long-gone World Trade Center site, while its actual operation has remained under Special Temporary Authority with 4 kW from the Empire State Building master antenna. The problem with WNYC's return to its old Empire home was the short-spacing that plagues so many stations in the region - when 93.9 moved from Empire to the World Trade Center in the early 70s, it lost the grandfathered short-spacing it enjoyed to adjacent-channel WZMX (93.7 Hartford), and WZMX's current owner CBS Radio objected to the interference an Empire-based WNYC-FM would cause to the Hartford station. WNYC and CBS finally reached a settlement, and now WNYC-FM will once again be licensed to Empire at 5.4 kW/1361', just shy of the 6 kW a full class B signal would use at that height. With WNYC's impending return to licensed status, only one of the Trade Center FM signals is still in license limbo: SBS' WPAT-FM (93.1) continues to operate under STA at Empire as it works out its own short-spacing issues.

Five Years Ago: July 24, 2006 -

• The Citadel corporate mandate to install the syndicated Opie & Anthony show at most of its rock stations nationwide landed especially hard in western NEW YORK this week. With only one logical place in the Buffalo market for the O&A show - modern rock "Edge" WEDG (103.3) - this morning's arrival of Opie & Anthony meant a big move for one of the Queen City's top-rated (and longest-running) morning shows. After 11 years on WEDG (and its predecessor, WUFX, "the Fox"), Ted Shredd and Tom Ragan will move their "Shredd and Ragan" show to the 3-7 PM slot beginning this afternoon. The duo used their last morning show Friday to gamely promote the move, blowing up their alarm clocks on the air in a nice bit of radio theater.
• WEDG managers are trying to put a positive spin on the move, telling the Buffalo News that Shredd & Ragan may find a bigger audience in the less-competitive afternoon hours - but in a city with no huge afternoon rush hour keeping listeners in their cars, can Shredd & Ragan find the kind of audience loyalty and listening time they've enjoyed in the morning?
• The message boards were also quick to notice one area Citadel market that wasn't getting "infected" with the "O&A virus" - in Syracuse, where rocker WAQX (95.7 Manlius) would seem to be an obvious candidate for the show, the morning team of Beaner and Ken is being left intact, perhaps because it's also being simulcast to Citadel's WRAX in Birmingham, Alabama. Whatever the reason, "95X" lost a Syracuse competitor last week, as Clear Channel euthanized "The Dog" and flipped WWDG (105.1 DeRuyter) from modern rock to hot AC, focusing on modern AC hits from the 90s and the last few years and rebranding the station as "Nova 105.1" (or perhaps "nova 105-one," if you're the graphic artist who designed the logo.)
• Up in CANADA, the AM-to-FM juggernaut marches on in a big way this week. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, Maritime Broadcasting System (MBS) launched the FM replacement for CHNS (960) at noon on Wednesday, pulling the plug on the oldies format heard on AM in favor of classic rock as "89.9 Hal FM. With the debut of the new format on CHNS-FM, the AM signal will go dark within 90 days. Over on Prince Edward Island, we hear that Newcap has begun testing its second FM signal. In addition to new CHTN-FM (Ocean 100.3), "K-Rock 105.5" is now being heard, announcing calls CKQK. (There's still no timeline for MBS' CFCY 630 to complete its move to FM in Charlottetown, leaving PEI with no full-power AM signals.)
• Returning to Nova Scotia, CFAB (1450 Windsor) has applied to make its own move to FM, with 100 kW DA/159 m on 92.9. The CFAB move to FM is just one of many on the agenda for a CRTC meeting September 11 in Quebec City; the bigger story, by far, is a set of four Corus applications to move its network of AM talk stations to the FM dial in most of Quebec.
• Here's how those applications shake out: CJRC (1150 Gatineau-Ottawa), which has applied for FM moves in the past, would go to 104.7 (11 kW DA/95 m); CHLT (630 Sherbrooke) would move to 102.1 (23 kW DA/91 m); CHLN (550 Trois-Rivieres) would move to 106.9 (100 kW DA/87 m) and CKRS (590 Saguenay) would move to 98.3 (100 kW DA/148 m). If the moves are granted, the AM dial would become nearly silent in Sherbrooke (with only CKTS 900, the relay of Montreal's English talker CJAD, still standing) and Trois-Rivieres (which would have only CKSM 1220 Shawinigan, the relay of CHLN - unless it, too, goes silent during the conversion) - and it would be completely silent in Saguenay.
• In other news, "Humble Howard" Glassman has lost his morning gig at CKFM (99.9 Toronto), a year after the station dropped his longtime morning partner, Fred Patterson. Also out at CKFM are morning producer "Bingo Bob" and newscaster Judy Croon, and we hear the entire station is running jockless for several weeks as it retools.
• In NEW JERSEY, WKOE (98.5 Ocean Acres) finally dropped its "G Rock Radio" simulcast this morning at midnight, stunting with the Eagles' "New Kid in Town" en route to a noon flip (as had been widely rumored) to country as "Jersey Kountry K98.5." New calls are WKMK, as of 10 this morning.

10 Years Ago: July 25, 2001 -

• Clear Channel has been awfully aggressive lately when it comes to moving its signature talk talent to its own radio stations, but in the Upper Valley of NEW HAMPSHIRE, one small station owner is fighting back. As we told you last week, Bob Vinikoor's WNTK-FM (99.7 New London) lost the Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Dean Edell shows, both syndicated by Clear Channel's Premiere, to Clear Channel-owned WTSL (1400 Lebanon), with the programs moving to their new homes on Thursday (July 19). But Vinikoor didn't take the move lightly; he tells NERW he spent the last few months trying to persuade Premiere it was making a mistake by moving from WNTK, whose FM signal covers much of western New Hampshire, to the little 1000-watt WTSL, which is strong in Lebanon and nearby Hanover but decidedly a distant signal in New London and Newport, more than 30 miles away. Vinikoor's efforts included a videotape showing the scenery in his coverage area -- and the weak WTSL signal on his van's radio. The tape was returned, unwatched, by Premiere executives, leading Vinikoor to try to get it to Limbaugh himself. And when it became clear that the battle was lost, Vinikoor switched to a new plan: hiring former gubernatorial candidate Deborah "Arnie" Arneson to fill Limbaugh's old shift on WNTK. Arneson's show debuted Thursday on the station, bringing Vinikoor media attention that included Manchester's WMUR-TV and several area newspapers.
• Elsewhere in the Granite State, a well-known name is getting back into the ownership game with the purchase of WBNC (1050/104.5 Conway) and WMWV (93.5 Conway). Ron Frizzell sold his Portland/Lewiston cluster to the Harron folks (WMTW-TV) last year; now he's buying the Mount Washington Valley stations from Lawrence Sherman's North Country Radio. It's always fun to see the old-fashioned names Frizzell uses for his companies ("Wireless Talking Machine" was the usual one in Maine, Massachusetts and upstate New York in years past); this time it's the "Mount Washington Radio and Gramophone, L.L.C" buying the stations. The WBNC simulcast does country, while WMWV is AAA; purchase price hasn't been announced yet.
• Ralphie Marino is coming back to MASSACHUSETTS, a year after departing WJMN (94.5 Boston) for the morning gig at New York City's WKTU (103.5 Lake Success). Look for Marino over at the new Entercom complex, taking Charlie Wilde's old seat at the middle of the WQSX (93.7 Lawrence) morning show, alongside Karen Blake, Heather Gersten, and "Survivor" Richard Hatch.
• Some good news for the Entercom cluster here in Rochester: the FCC this week approved the allocation shift that will transform 93.3A Avon, 20 miles south of Rochester, into 93.3A Fairport, just a few miles east of Rochester. In practical terms, it means a real city signal for WBBF-FM, once the paperwork is filed that will move its antenna from a rimshot tower down in Livingston County to the WBEE-FM (92.5 Rochester) stick on Five Mile Line Road in Penfield. (On a historical note, that tower was the original "WBBF-FM," since that was the first call on what's now WBEE-FM back in 1961 - and on 101.3 MHz back then, to boot!)
• In PENNSYLVANIA, Greater Media gets new calls to go with its new "Mix" format on Philadelphia's 95.7: WEJM becomes WMWX, a call last seen in the region on what's now WMEK (99.9) up in Auburn, Maine. Harrisburg's new Clear Channel "Kiss" changes calls from WWKL-FM (99.3) to WHKF, as long expected, while up in Erie, 102.3 changes again from WLKK to WQHZ-FM, just a few weeks after trading its longtime WJET calls with WLKK(AM) on 1400.
• And across the state line in OHIO, the call changes from the big format/facility swap in Cleveland are beginning to take shape. We've heard Cleveland's 1220, ex-WKNR, using the "WHKC" ID as it waits to take its new "WHK" identity (those calls having been parked at the former WCCD 1000 Parma), and we know Clear Channel temporarily moved the "Kiss" WAKS calls from 104.9 Lorain to 98.1 Canton (ex-WHK-FM) in preparation for swapping them with the WKDD calls still on 96.5 Akron (which is hiding its calls with a "WKDD Akron has moved to 98.1" announcement once an hour!). We know WCLV-FM's calls moved with the classical format from 95.5 Cleveland to 104.9 Lorain - and now we know that the WFHM calls that replaced it on 95.5 are also showing up down in the Youngstown market, where Salem took the dark 1440 facility that had been WHKW and changed the calls to WFHM(AM). Whew...

15 Years Ago: New England Radio Watch, July 30, 1996

• Nostalgia is big on the airwaves in Boston this summer. As part of Barry O'Brien's big WVBF reunion on August 10, former 'VBF jocks have been invited to take airshifts for the day on 70s-rocker WEGQ 93.7. Tape will be rolling here at NERW headquarters. The hi-fi VCR will also see action this coming Saturday, August 3, when the 3-8pm slot on WRCA (1330) formerly occupied by the late Bill Marlowe will be home to a Marlowe remembrance hosted by Ron Della Chiesa of WGBH. And from the rumor mill: Greater Media's WMEX (1150) in Boston did a brief stab at bringing back the oldies one Saturday night a few weeks ago, and while it hasn't been heard since (the station is back to its usual leased-time Spanish), rumor has it new jingles are being cut. 1150 tried doing oldies when it got the WMEX calls a decade ago, and of course the calls themselves were part of the "Wimmex" top-40 legend on 1510 (now WNRB) in the '60s and early '70s.
• Also from the history files: Longtime (1951-1983) WBZ radio and TV weatherman Don Kent was honored a few weeks ago with the dedication of Don Kent State Park, a small portion of the Wollaston Beach Reservation in Quincy. The park sits on the site of the old Kent's Carpetland store, from which Kent first broadcast the weather for WJDA (1300) in Quincy in the late 40s. Kent now lives in New Hampshire, and his forecasts are still heard on WQRC (99.9) on Cape Cod and WEMJ (1490) in Laconia NH.
• On the fringes of New England: M Street reports the former WMJR (107.1) in Hudson Falls NY, some 50 miles north of Albany and just a few miles west of the Vermont line, has become WHTR, "Hot 107.1." I'll check that one out next weekend as I hit the road for Buffalo and Syracuse. And a familiar sound in the southeast Connecticut area is about to go FM-only... WLNG in Sag Harbor, Long Island is selling its AM 1600 operation to Unity Broadcasting of New York City. Unity will presumably shut down WLNG(AM), allowing its flagship WWRL 1600 New York to expand its pattern a bit to the east (and since the WWRL transmitter is in Secaucus NJ, west of NYC, that's good news for WWRL). Unity bought silent WQQW 1590 Waterbury CT earlier this year for the same reason. The good news is that the very distinctive, jingle-laden sound of WLNG will continue to be heard in glorious mono on 92.1 FM. Also down that way, the former WMRW 98.5 Westhampton LI has become WLRI, after a brief stint with the WLIR calls that now live on its simulcast 92.7 in Garden City LI. And 92.7's old WDRE calls are now in Philadelphia on the former WIBF 103.9 Jenkintown. Scorecards are for sale in the lobby...