NERW Update: Buffalo Gets Mix-ed

By SCOTT FYBUSH

Welcome back to the workweek, and to the fall season in radio! If you missed it over the long, lazy Labor Day weekend, there’s a full NorthEast Radio Watch column this week, available for your reading pleasure right here. Better yet – this column is free in its entirety for everyone. Our readers are our best marketers, and one of the best ways you can support what we do here is to share NERW with your colleagues and friends. Let ’em know what they’re missing!

As a NERW reader, of course, you’re not missing anything. Here’s what’s breaking this post-Labor Day morning:

*In Buffalo, Townsquare and PD Dave Universal have completed their rebranding of WJYE (96.1). After freshening the music on the former “Joy 96” a few months ago, Tuesday morning brought a 7 AM relaunch as “Mix 96,” with new calls WMSX.

“Mix” goes right up against Entercom’s hot AC behemoth, “Star 102.5” WTSS, as well as a former “Mix,” Cumulus’ WHTT (104.1), in search of the office-and-minivan crowd.

The airstaff stays largely intact, with the exception of afternoons: Trevor Carey is out, replaced by former production director Dan Rinelli. “Bobby O” O’Brian is the new production director, and veteran jock Dave Gillen adds some weekend shifts to his day job in sales at WGRZ (Channel 2), reports the Buffalo Broadcasters.

*Our content partner, RadioInsight, is tracking an impending format flip at WKZF (92.7 Starview) in the Harrisburg market, where the Hall station has changed calls to WLPA-FM, apparently ahead of a switch from rock to a sports simulcast with WLPA (1490).

There’s also a new callsign at WWBZ (700 Orange-Athol) in north central Massachusetts. After some false starts with branding earlier this year (it couldn’t be “Legends” or “WBZ,” as it turned out), the standards station is now WFAT.

And we’ll have full obituaries in our next column for two NERW-land broadcasters we lost over the weekend: Hank Yaggi, the former general manager of WTNH/WCTX in New Haven, was 69 when he lost his battle with Alzheimer’s disease on Sunday; in Philadelphia, they’re remembering Dan Donovan, one of the on-air legends from the heyday of WFIL (560) who went on to a long career in Minnesota.

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