NorthEast Radio Watch 5/12/2025: New Owners For Two AMs
In this week’s issue… Catsimatidis, Shula add signals - Radiodays rocks Toronto - Ex-Bell, Evanov stations rebrand By SCOTT FYBUSH Jump to: ME - NH - VT - MA - RI - CT - NY - NJ - PA -...
NERW Update: Hartford Gets a “Whale,” WOR Gets a Morning Show
By SCOTT FYBUSH
Two quick updates for your Tuesday morning, and both fall under the “huh?” category for us here at NERW Central:
*In Hartford, Connoisseur completed its reconstruction of WDRC-FM (102.9) with a Tuesday morning transition from classic hits to classic rock. Gone is any trace of the “DRC-FM” identity that Connoisseur had mostly dismantled when it bought the station from Buckley and ousted its established airstaff last year.
Instead, it’s now “102.9 the Whale,” with a harder-edged sound that’s very, very similar to sister station WPLR (99.1) down the road in New Haven. The stations were already sharing the morning team of Chaz & AJ, and the new lineup includes Allan Lamberti in middays, Michael Picozzi in afternoons and “Miss Klonk” at night. Klonk is an alumna of the former rock WCCC-FM (106.9), and the new “Whale” is squarely aimed at the audience that WCCC-FM once drew.
*In New York, the wait for a new morning show at iHeart’s WOR (710) was so long that most of us forgot we were still waiting. But just when most of us assumed that WOR had quietly decided to make its interim host roster permanent, the announcement came out of left field this morning: its new morning show will pair veteran sportscaster Len Berman with Todd Schnitt, iHeart’s longtime Tampa-based talent who segued from top-40 to talk a few years back.
What’s that all about? More in the next NorthEast Radio Watch…
Want to get updates like this in your email as soon as they’re posted? Sign up for our free email list, a new feature from your friends at Fybush Media:
SPRING IS HERE…
And if you don’t have your Tower Site Calendar, now’s the time!
If you’ve been waiting for the price to come down, it’s now 30 percent off!
This year’s cover is a beauty — the 100,000-watt transmitter of the Voice Of America in Marathon, right in the heart of the Florida Keys. Both the towers and the landscape are gorgeous.
And did you see? Tower Site of the Week is back, featuring this VOA site as it faces an uncertain future.
Other months feature some of our favorite images from years past, including some Canadian stations and several stations celebrating their centennials (buy the calendar to find out which ones!).
We still have a few of our own calendars left – as well as a handful of Radio Historian Calendars – and we are still shipping regularly.
The proceeds from the calendar help sustain the reporting that we do on the broadcast industry here at Fybush Media, so your purchases matter a lot to us here – and if that matters to you, now’s the time to show that support with an order of the Tower Site Calendar. (And we have the Broadcast Historian’s Calendar for 2025, too. Why not order both?)
Visit the Fybush Media Store and place your order now for the new calendar, get a great discount on previous calendars, and check out our selection of books and videos, too!
Related Posts
Top of the Tower Podcast #061: Rob Bertrand at NAB/PREC 2025
Top of the Tower talks with Inrush Broadcast's Rob Bertrand about the future of broadcast engineering as a service
NorthEast Radio Watch 5/5/2025: Public Media’s Uncertain Future
In this week’s issue… Public media faces a CPB-less future - Elections change broadcasters' fates - Another AM goes silent - K-Love buys in PA, Holy Family sells in Mass. - Bell hands off Peterborough stations
NorthEast Radio Watch 4/28/2025: Letterman’s Maine Surprise
In this week’s issue… "Nite Show" goes out in style - Remembering Erie's McKay - Rhodes retires in Scranton, Russo in Buffalo - Islanders drop radio team
