In this week’s issue… Oscar Brand, RIP – Vinikoor sells in NH, VT – FM swap in Philly – Mikey Adams returns – Rogers buys in SW Ontario
By SCOTT FYBUSH
Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada
*Quick – what NEW YORK radio host held the Guinness world record for longest-running show with a single host?
That was WNYC’s Oscar Brand, whose 70-plus years as host of “Folksong Festival” came to an end on Friday with his death at age 96. The folksinger’s career on radio started on a whim with a 1945 letter to the city-owned station offering to present a program of obscure Christmas songs. That one-off show turned into a fixture on WNYC’s schedule that survived, well, everything: Brand stayed on the station through the blacklists of the 1950s (he was listed in the infamous “Red Channels”), through its transition to an NPR outlet in the 1970s, through its move out of city ownership in the 1990s, right up until what turned out to be his final show Sept. 24.
Over all those years, Brand never had a contract with WNYC and never received a penny from the station for doing his show, which had most recently been relegated to a 10 PM Saturday slot on WNYC’s AM 820 signal.
And over all those years, Brand had everyone on his show, from a young Bob Dylan to a blacklisted Pete Seeger to Woody Guthrie and his son, Arlo, to the Weavers to…well, everyone in the folk community. All along, Brand carried on a prolific career as a writer and performer, receiving a Peabody Award in 1995 for his contributions.
In an autumn when we’re losing icons all over the place, including the retirements of Charles Osgood and Vin Scully, Brand’s death marks yet another end of an era, the last link between today’s big-budget WNYC and its early shoestring days when any New Yorker could get a shot at airtime just for writing a persuasive letter. We’ll not see his like again.
(photo courtesy WNYC archives)
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!
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*Our New York news continues high atop 1 World Trade Center, where John Lyons and his Durst Organization crew are celebrating the installation of the first of the permanent TV antennas to be installed on the building’s mast.
Lyons tells our colleagues at TV Technology that the first new antenna in place is an RFS UHF antenna at the top of the mast. It will be followed by a VHF antenna just below and another broadband UHF antenna below that; if all goes well, broadcasts from the tower will begin next May. (So far, it’s CBS’ WCBS-TV, NBC’s WNBC and WNJU and public WNET that have signed on for tower and transmitter space at the new downtown facility.)
At Cumulus’ WPLJ (95.5), Melony Torres and Ralphie are swapping shifts. Torres, who’s also WPLJ’s music director, will now be heard from 7-11 PM, followed by Ralphie from 11 PM until 3 AM.
*In Ithaca, we’re closely following a tale of strange bedfellows. We’re accustomed to seeing Saga Communications fight hard against any would-be competitor that isn’t 100% compliant with FCC rules – but this time, Saga is partnering with one of its much smaller market rivals, Todd Mallinson’s WPIE (1160), as it tries to get the FCC to shut down an Ithaca translator for WXHC (101.5), the classic hits station based some 35 miles to the north in Homer.
The translator in question is W266CI (101.1 Ithaca), a CP held by Edward Farmer, and the issue Saga and Mallinson raise is Farmer’s independence from WXHC’s licensee, Eves Broadcasting. That independence matters because W266CI isn’t a fill-in translator, instead extending the broadcast range of the recently-renamed “X101” into the bigger Ithaca market from its home base in Homer/Cortland.
Under FCC rules, Eves isn’t allowed to provide any financial or operational support to Farmer’s translator – and that’s where Saga and Mallinson are telling the FCC there’s an issue that should lead the Commission to deny the translator’s application for a license to cover. Some of that evidence is skimpy at best – there’s no rule prohibiting a station owner like Eves from putting out promotional material that mentions the frequency of a non-fill-in translator, so it doesn’t mean much that recent X101 newspaper ads and t-shirts have listed both “101.5 Cortland” and “101.1 Ithaca.”
Some of it, however, is rather more persuasive: the sign on the equipment shelter at the translator site lists a contact address and phone number, as required by FCC rules, but it’s the address and phone for Eves’ WXHC studios up in Homer, not Farmer’s Ithaca address. Then there are the invoices and packing slips that were left behind at the site when the translator was built over the summer: several of those, as submitted by Saga, show that equipment was shipped to the Homer address and billed to Eves, not to Farmer.
So far, there’s been no response from Farmer to the informal petition to deny that Saga and Mallinson submitted against his application. We’ll be watching this one closely.
*Here in Rochester, JP Hastings replaces Tias Schuster as the new PD at WDVI (100.5 the Drive), as well as iHeart sister AC WMXW (103.3 Vestal) in the Binghamton market; Hastings will also continue as PD of WYYY (94.5 Syracuse), but he’ll give up his co-hosting role on the WHAM (1180 Rochester) morning news to Bill Moran. Scott “Brooksy” Brooks moves up from APD to PD at WKGS (Kiss 106.7) in Rochester to replace Schuster in that role.
From Buffalo comes word of the death of Dan McBride, whose radio career began as a teenager when he ran a club radio station with his friends Danny Neaverth and Joey Reynolds. McBride became an announcer at WEBR (970) in 1959, then worked at WWOL (1120) before helping to put WBNY-FM (96.1) on the air in 1966. At that FM signal, he rose to become general manager before moving into the advertising arena, where he owned his own agency. McBride also worked in Lockport (WUSJ/WLVL) and most recently on WXRL (1300 Lancaster). He died September 21.
Sad news from the North Country as well: Sandy Cook, who was morning man at WMSA (1340 Massena) for forty years, died early Thursday morning at age 61. Cook had been off the air at WMSA since his February arrest on charges of possessing cocaine and heroin.
*A big station sale in VERMONT and NEW HAMPSHIRE: after the death earlier this year of his wife, Sheila, Bob Vinikoor is selling his stations to a new group called Sugar River Media, LLC, headed by veteran broadcasters Rob and John Landry. Rob’s a familiar face around Boston, having served a long run as chief engineer at WCRB; his brother John is at Westwood One in New York. They’re paying $1.95 million to Koor Communications and the estate of Sheila Vinikoor for the station group that includes news-talk WNTK-FM (99.7 Newport NH), news-talkWUVR (1490 Lebanon NH)/W255CF (98.9 West Lebanon NH), oldies WCFR (1480 Springfield VT)/W293BH (106.5 Springfield VT), classic country WCVR (1320 Randolph VT) and country WCNL (1010 Newport VT)/W234BN (94.7 Claremont NH).
Sugar River is putting $97,000 down, paying $1.493 million at closing and paying the remaining $360,000 over 20 years. On the noncommercial side, the Sugar River Foundation will pay the Vinikoor Family Foundation $10,000 for classical WSCS (90.9 New London).
*In New Hampshire and MAINE, Binnie Media has added a well-known talent, former WEEI sports talker Mikey Adams. His new show, which will launch later this month, will fill the afternoon shift on Binnie’s “Frank” stations, WFNK (107.5 Lewiston) in Portland, WBYA (105.5 Islesboro) in Rockland and WFNQ (106.3) in Nashua.
We’re deeply saddened by the news of the death of longtime New Hampshire Public Radio president Mark Handley, who succumbed to cancer Sept. 11 after a five-year battle. Handley came to NHPR in 1990 when it was just a single station, WEVO in Concord, and over the course of 15 years built the network into a statewide operation and spent several years as board chair for NPR nationally.
Handley retired in 2005 to pursue his dream of sailing around the world, spending six years successfully circumnavigating the globe alongside his wife, Judy, on their sailboat “Windbird.” The Handleys settled on Cape Cod in 2011, and that’s where he was at the end. Handley was 74.
*The Vermont Association of Broadcasters has named its Hall of Fame lineup for 2016, including two veteran TV weather personalities. Both Tom Messner of WPTZ (Channel 5) and Sharon Meyer of WCAX (Channel 3) will be inducted at the Dec. 3 ceremony at the Hilton Burlington, along with the late Dean Slack (left), whose career in Burlington started at WCAX radio in 1950, continued as a top-rated DJ at WJOY in 1954, then at WVMT as sales manager and announcer in 1965 and then as GM of WVNY-TV/FM. Slack left Vermont in 1974 to go into station ownership in New Hampshire and upstate new York. He died in 2014.
The ceremony will also include a Broadcaster of the Year honor for WOKO (98.9) morning man/WKOL (105.1) PD Rod Hill and distinguished service awards for WCAX senior news photographer Bob Davis and veteran radio personality and salesperson Bob Sherman.
*In MASSACHUSETTS, Howie Carr’s syndicated talk show is taking yet another stab at national distribution: it’s now being seen nationally on Newsmax TV for two hours each afternoon (4-6 PM ET).
*In PENNSYLVANIA, Radio One is on the move again with its Philadelphia FM cluster. On Tuesday, gospel “Praise 103.9” (WPPZ Jenkintown) and classic hip-hop “Boom 107.9” (WPHI Pennsauken) traded spots on the dial, returning the WPHI calls to the 103.9 facility they called home from 1997 until 2005. The “WPHI” identity has now gone full-circle around the Radio One cluster, having spent time at 100.3 (now WRNB) from 2005 until 2011. Moving “Boom” to the 103.9 signal, a class A from the Roxborough tower farm, gives the format somewhat better suburban coverage, trading off with better in-city coverage from Praise’s new 107.9 home, on the One Liberty skyscraper in Center City.
Along with the frequency change comes a shift in the musical mix at “Boom,” replacing some classic hip-hop with a more straightforward classic R&B sound.
*Over at Salem’s WFIL (560)/WNTP (990), VP/GM Russ Whitnah says he’s stepping down at the end of the year. Whitnah has been with Salem in Philadelphia since 1993; no replacement has been named yet.
In the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton market, Mike Vincent is departing afternoons and the PD chair at Cumulus’ “NASH” WSJR (93.7 Dallas); he’s staying with the company to become operations manager at its Melbourne, Florida cluster. No replacement has been named yet.
And in Pittsburgh, Suzanne Nadell is the new news director at WPXI (Channel 11); she moves from KOKI (Channel 23) in Tulsa to take the job last held by Mike Oliveira before his move to Boston’s WFXT earlier this year.
*How about some Hockey on the Radio? We’re still a couple of weeks from the start of the AHL season, but the Hershey Bears have named Zack Fisch as their new radio voice, moving him up from their ECHL affiliate in South Carolina. The Bears are heard on a three-station network that originates at WQIC (100.1 Lebanon). Fisch replaces Scott Stuccio, whose job was cut at the end of the 2015-2016 season.
*Sid Doherty, who died Sept. 25, started his broadcast career in West Virginia, Kentucky and Cincinnati (where he co-hosted the legendary “Ruth Lyons Show” on WLWT). Arriving in Philadelphia in the 1960s, Doherty did news and sports on WCAU-TV (Channel 10), left to spend a year at Boston’s WNAC-TV (Channel 7), then returned to Philadelphia in 1972 to become an announcer at WPHL (Channel 17), a gig that led to his eventual induction into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia’s hall of fame in 2013. After 15 years at WPHL, Doherty went to New York to become a booth announcer at ABC-TV, a newsman at WABC (770) and WPLJ (95.5), and later returned to Philadelphia to work at WWSH, WPEN and WIP. Doherty was also a talented performer, appearing on several soap operas and in the movie “Blow Out.” He was 90 years old.
*In CANADA, Rogers is adding to its holdings in southwestern Ontario, buying CKOT-FM (101.3 Tillsonburg) and CJDL (107.3 Tillsonburg) from Tillsonburg Broadcasting. No sale price has been announced yet for the stations, which do soft AC (“Easy 101”) and country, respectively.
It’s not yet clear how much of the operations for these very local stations might migrate up the road from Tillsonburg to nearby London, where Rogers owns CHST (102.3 Bob FM).
*In Montreal, CJAD (800) has unveiled its new evening lineup. Dave Kaufman and Dan Delmar are leaving “The Exchange,” the show they’ve been hosting at CJAD, and they’ll be replaced starting tonight by “The Night Side,” hosted by former CKBE (92.5) host Natasha Hall and My Broadcasting founder Jon Pole. Steve Faguy reports Hall will host the Tuesday through Friday shows, while Pole will host on Mondays.
Faguy tells us “Kaufman is moving to London to be with his girlfriend and Delmar is taking a step back to focus on his PR business.”
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