In this week’s issue… A ratings holiday surprise – WOR’s new old morning show – Joe Franklin, RIP – More AM-to-FM in Ontario
By SCOTT FYBUSH
Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada
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*The weather outside is frightful…but inside, it was so delightful – at least if you were at one of the Christmas-music stations that opened up the holiday Nielsen ratings last week.
After a few seasons in which stations that flipped to all-Christmas were rewarded with decent but not earth-shattering ratings, market after market posted numbers this year that were nothing short of historic.
Consider: in Boston, Greater Media’s WMJX (106.7) checked in with a whopping 16.5 share in the holiday ratings period. That’s substantially better than the 11-ish range WMJX posted in 2012 and 2013. It’s triple what second-place WXKS-FM (Kiss 108) posted. And when we asked ratings guru Chris Huff when anyone else in Boston pulled numbers that high, he had to dig all the way back to the summer of 1971, when the old WHDH (850) pulled a 17.9 share in a marketplace with far less competition for listeners.
Boston’s numbers were impressive, but no fluke: in New York City, iHeart’s WLTW (106.7) shot up from a 5.6 in November to a 13.5 in the holiday period. We’d figured the last station to post numbers like that was WABC in its Musicradio days, but no – you have to go back to January/February 1970 and WOR’s 14.3, Chris tells us. (WABC topped a 13 share only twice, once in 1965 and again in 1969. Now you know.)
In Philadelphia, Jerry Lee’s WBEB (101.1 More FM) felt the bump, too, posting a 15.1 in a market where it wasn’t even the only station to go all-Christmas. Add in WOGL’s 6.1 (not budging at all from that station’s usual classic hits numbers the rest of the year) and one out of every five people listening to radio in Philadelphia during the holiday season was tuned in to Christmas tunes. (Lee always seems to be a year ahead of everyone else: his 2014 numbers were actually down a bit from an amazing 17.2 in holiday 2013, a ratings number Huff says was last achieved by WIP in 1968.)
Smaller markets? Big numbers there, too: how about a 15.2 for Cumulus’ WWLI (105.1) in Providence, or another 15.2 for CBS Radio’s WRCH (100.5) in Hartford? In Pittsburgh, iHeart’s WWSW (94.5) checked in with a 14.0, nearly doubling the 7.8 rating it posted in the month just before the holiday music kicked in. (Holiday-tunes competitor WSHH 99.7 doesn’t subscribe to Nielsen Audio ratings, so we don’t know what its numbers looked like.)
So…now what? A few observations:
One station per market gets the boost. Switching to holiday music didn’t do a thing for WOGL, which was not only flat from its usual format but flat from last year’s holiday format, too. Listeners seem to have a knack for finding “the” holiday station each year – and after a decade and a half of month-long Christmas format flips, that station seems pretty well established in most markets.
There’s no obvious loser. All that listening that goes to the WLTWs and WMJXs and WBEBs isn’t happening at the expense of any one other station in their markets. In New York, for instance, competitor WCBS-FM was off less than a point but still ended up in second place, 12+. It’s increasingly clear that the Christmas format is that rare thing: a true mass-appeal radio format. But…
It has no legs. No matter how hard AC stations try to use the Christmas bump to keep listeners coming back after the calendar changes, those listeners who drift in from all over the rest of the dial seem to drift right back where they came from. Even with the added boost of a well-publicized format refresh (from “B101” to “More FM,” WBEB’s spectacular 17 share fell back to 6s and 7s during the rest of the year.
Can it start earlier or go later? We’ve seen the occasional small-market station (WEZW 93.1 in Cape May County, N.J., for instance) start all-Christmas music as early as October, and anecdotally, we hear it’s done pretty well for them. Will this year’s huge ratings lead some bigger stations to try an earlier-than-Thanksgiving start in 2015 – and will it work for them? And will everyone be so quick to drop the format like a hot potato on Boxing Day? There’s at least one station – WECM 104.3 in the Burlington, Vermont market – that’s still ho-ho-ho’ing away at the end of January, albeit as a stunt while it awaits new ownership and a “real” format.
Who’ll try to jump on the bandwagon next year? Even if the numbers show a pretty clear “one-to-a-market” advantage, there are bound to be some owners out there in search of a piece of that magical 16 share. Will 2014’s big numbers pull some stations into the holiday format that have avoided it in past years? (We’d look, in particular, to CBS Radio’s struggling WBMX in Boston and even more so to iHeart’s WISX in Philadelphia.)
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*One of the most enduring fixtures on New York radio and television has died – and, really, didn’t it seem like Joe Franklin was going to be around forever? Franklin began his radio career helping Martin Block on the “Make Believe Ballroom” at WNEW, and he pioneered TV talk when “The Joe Franklin Show” made its debut on WJZ-TV (Channel 7) in 1950. But Franklin really became famous, in his quirky only-in-New-York way, when he moved to WOR-TV (Channel 9) in 1962. In more than three decades on Channel 9, Franklin’s show became a late-night fixture, mixing appearances by big stars (Bette Midler was his house singer for a while, with Barry Manilow as her accompanist) with a bizarre mixture of has-beens and never-weres, all of them treated with the same respect from a host who truly loved everything about show business.
That same ethos pervaded “Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane,” the Saturday late-night show he hosted on WOR (710) for many decades – and it had its physical manifestation in Franklin’s legendarily overstuffed Times Square office, crammed from floor to ceiling with a century of show-biz memorabilia. It’s no wonder that Billy Crystal, who shared Franklin’s love for the (apologies to Bob Dylan) “old, weird” world of New York entertainment, made Franklin the subject of one of his most spot-on parodies on “Saturday Night Live,” is it?
Franklin retired from his TV show in 1993 (reportedly annoyed that channel 9, by then WWOR-TV, had moved its studios, requiring him to travel out of his beloved city to its new Secaucus, N.J. location); his WOR show ended not long afterward, too, but he stayed on the radio through the personal intervention of Michael Bloomberg, who hired him to do shorter segments on WBBR (1130).
Franklin had been very ill with prostate cancer in recent months, but he kept the diagnosis quiet right up until his death Friday at age 88.
(Thanks to longtime NERW reader Bill Dillane for the photo of Joe Franklin!)
*If Joe Franklin was a remnant of a very distinctive earlier era at WOR, what, then, can we make of that once-fabled station’s current programming choices? After more than a year without a permanent morning show, the now-iHeart talker finally named a new wakeup team last week, and it’s a combination so odd it probably could have ended up on Joe Franklin’s guest sofa back in the day.
Len Berman’s New York career is mainly associated with TV sports – 35 years on WCBS-TV (Channel 2) and WNBC (Channel 4) – and Todd Schnitt hasn’t had a New York career at all, having made his name in Tampa as top-40 morning man “MJ Kelli” and then as a right-wing AM talk host under his real name. Berman, 67, and Schnitt, 49, will team up for the first time this morning as WOR’s new morning show, evidently an attempt to capitalize on WOR’s Mets affiliation (by way of Berman) and to bring some younger talk voices to its airwaves at the same time. Schnitt will move from Tampa to New York for the new gig, but he’ll continue to host “The Schnitt Show” in the afternoon, heard on Tampa’s WHNZ (1250) from 3-6 PM and in syndication via iHeart’s Premiere Radio Networks.
*Over at CBS Radio, another long-empty morning slot has been filled. There’s been no morning show ever since the former “Now” WNOW-FM (92.3) shifted top-40 flavors to “Amp” as WBMP last May, but that changed Thursday with the arrival of “Shoboy” in the morning slot on 92.3.
“Shoboy” is Edgar Sotelo, younger brother of syndicated host Eddie “Piolin” Sotelo, and he’s been doing his thing for CBS Radio in the Dallas market at KMVK (107.5). His move from Dallas to New York brings along sidekick Micho Rizzo, and they’re joined by Nina Hajian, who’s been at CBS Radio’s KZZO (100.5) out in Sacramento.
A schedule shift at WPLJ (95.5 New York): it’s added the syndicated “Zach Sang and the Gang” in the coveted 11 PM-3 AM weeknight slot.
*On TV, CBS has pulled the plug on its little-viewed “CBSNY+” newswheel on the 2.2 channel of WCBS-TV. The service (like its CBSPhilly+ sister channel on KYW-TV’s 3.2) never got any cable carriage in its three years on the air, even on services like Verizon FiOS that carried pretty much every subchannel out there.
New to 2.2 in New York and 3.2 in Philadelphia is “Decades,” a new digital subchannel that’s a joint venture between CBS and Chicago’s Weigel Broadcasting, the latest entry in a crowded field of retro TV networks that already includes Weigel’s MeTV, among others. “Decades” will also appear on WBZ-TV’s 4.2 in Boston and KDKA-TV’s 2.2 in Pittsburgh, the first time those stations have had any subchannels.
(Next up? “LAFF,” a comedy-based network that will appear in April on ABC’s owned-and-operated stations, including WABC-TV in New York and WPVI in Philadelphia, replacing the SD feed of the LiveWell network, which will live on on those stations’ .2 channels.)
*In Rockland County, moving day is fast approaching for WRCR (1300 Spring Valley). Construction is underway at what remains of the 1300 transmitter site off Route 59 in preparation for a move sometime in February to WRCR’s new home at 1700 on the dial. The station is now promoting that it plans to broadcast digitally, in HD Radio, when it signs on the new 10,000-watt signal at 1700.
*If this column had a magical power, it appears that it would be “Restoring Vintage Rochester Callsigns to the Air.” We were indirectly responsible for bringing back the old WMJQ calls some years ago on what was then 105.5 in Brockport (it’s now EMF’s WKDL 104.9), and our mention last week that EMF had dropped the WOKR calls from its Utica-market Air 1 outlet set the balls rolling to bring that callsign back to town, too. From 1962 until 2005, “WOKR” was the identity of Rochester’s ABC affiliate on channel 13. As of last Thursday, “WOKR” is the new callsign on Genesee Media’s 1590 in Brockport, the station formerly known as WASB – and it’s all because Genesee’s Brian McGlynn saw the call change news from Utica in last week’s NERW.
(As for the Utica-market 93.5, that Remsen-licensed signal is now WARW on the FCC’s books….but as of midweek last week when we checked it out over the air to grab a new ID for our sister site TopHour.com, there was no local ID at all, just the network-flagship ID from KHRI in Hollister, California. Oops!)
*In Buffalo, Anita West is gone from the blues lineup at WBFO (88.7). Weekend blues have been a point of contention ever since WNED bought WBFO from the State University of New York a few years back, moving the blues programming from its longtime afternoon slot to a later evening schedule. West, who also does part-time work for WGRF (97 Rock), was one of the last remaining veterans of the “old” WBFO, and she says the decision to take her off Sunday nights was very much not her own.
*If you check the site during the week for our occasional mid-week updates (or if you’ve signed up for our new e-mail list – it’s free!), you already know about last week’s big news from CONNECTICUT, the rebranding of WDRC-FM (102.9 Hartford). It’s now “102.9 the Whale,” going after the harder rock audience that used to tune in to WCCC-FM (106.9) – and you can read more about it in that aforementioned Mid-Week Update.
*Absolute Broadcasting is moving studios in NEW HAMPSHIRE, relocating its ESPN simulcast of WGHM (900 Nashua) and WGAM (1250 Manchester) from its current second-floor space on Main Street in Nashua to a new streetfront space at 922 Elm Street in downtown Manchester. What’s now known as the “Bell Building” may be renamed the “ESPN Building” once Absolute co-owner Tom Monahan completes his acquisition of the structure. Absolute’s Nashua talk station, WSMN (1590), will stay in Nashua, though it may move from the current Main Street space to a smaller, more visible location.
*It looks like MASSACHUSETTS stands to get the worst of the blizzard that’s bearing down on the East Coast as we write this, and we’ll be watching closely to see how radio and TV stations there (and all along the coast) handle the approaching storm.
(Have you signed up for our new email list at the top of the page? You’ll get immediate notification when and if we publish any midweek updates on the effects of the storm!)
The City of Boston has picked the calls WBCA-LP for its 102.9 LPFM in Dorchester.
*In RHODE ISLAND, we’re still waiting to find out what becomes of the Pawtucket Red Sox now that the team has been sold to the parent Boston Red Sox. This much we do know: the minor-league team will have yet another new voice in the radio booth this coming summer. After just under two seasons with the PawSox, play-by-play man Jeff Levering is joining the Milwaukee Brewers’ radio team this year, becoming the seventh former PawSox voice to go to the big show. (Levering’s predecessor, Bob Socci, went a different way: he’s now part of the radio team for the New England Patriots, who were apparently in the news this past week.)
*A translator shift in central PENNSYLVANIA: two years after WHGB (1400 Harrisburg) and translator W237DE (95.3) shifted from ESPN to CBS Sports Radio, “Sportsradio 95.3” is becoming “Sportsradio 96.5.” The move shifts the CBS Sports Radio programming to a much bigger (200 watts) FM signal, W243BR, that’s more centrally located in the market. It’s not clear what becomes of the AM signal, nor of 95.3; since the 96.5 signal is actually licensed to the Hope Christian Church of Marlton, NEW JERSEY, it’s possible that 95.3 may end up as a new Harrisburg relay of the church’s extensive “Hope FM” network, based at WVBV (90.5 Medford Lakes NJ) and extending to just south of Harrisburg right now via translator W210BX (89.9 Highspire).
LPFM grants: the Middletown Area Bible School gets a CP for 95.5.
*We’ve watched AM radio fade away completely in some of CANADA‘s smallest provinces. It’s all gone in Prince Edward Island and down to small single digits when counting remaining stations in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Now two more AMs are poised to vanish from the increasingly barren dials of Quebec and Ontario.
In Stratford, Ontario, Vista Radio applied last week to take CJCS from the 1240 spot on the AM dial that it’s occupied since 1941. If the move is granted, CJCS will trade its present oldies format for rock as it moves to 107.1 with 900 watts average/4 kW max DA/32.6 m. It would become part of a two-FM cluster with sister station CHGK (107.7), which does top-40 as “2Day FM.”
In Gatineau, Quebec, Catholic broadcaster Radio Ville-Marie has struggled to keep CIRA-5 (1350) on the air in recent months. A balky transmitter took the signal off the air in late December, and while it returned for a while, it’s silent again at the moment and may not be back, we hear.
There’s a launch date set for Evanov’s “Radio Fierte” (CHRF 980) in Montreal: after testing for several months, the new French-language GLBT station is set to make its official debut February 2.
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