In this week’s issue… K-Love grows again with RI buy – Will low sale price prompt legal action? – WBZ brings Binswanger back – More broadcasters join 1WTC mast – Remembering Jay Thomas, Wyoma Best
By SCOTT FYBUSH
Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada
*After half a century as a student-run operation on a commercial license that covers most of RHODE ISLAND, and after more than a year of uncertainty as a potential sale loomed, WBRU (95.5 Providence) is in its final days as a modern rock station.
As our content partner RadioInsight.com first reported exclusively on Friday, the secretive sale process around WBRU has produced a buyer for the class B license: EMF Broadcasting, which will turn 95.5 into another outlet for its national “K-Love” format under new calls WLVO.
The sale, reportedly for a price tag of $5.5 million, marks the second time in just a few years that a big Providence class B FM has suffered a reduction in local coverage. iHeart’s signal shuffle at WWBB (101.5 Providence) two years ago took that former class B down to a class A signal while leaving its local programming intact; this time, it’s the local programming that goes away, while the 95.5 signal will remain in place carrying EMF’s California-based programming.
While WBRU has made only a brief statement indicating that an FCC filing for the sale will be made in the very near future, RadioInsight’s closer scrutiny of other FCC filings turned up a call change at WPVD-LP (101.1 Providence). That’s the share-time LPFM construction permit that belongs to Brown Student Radio, a university group that has no direct connection to BBS or WBRU – but which has now applied to change its callsign to WBRU-LP.
Will there be legal fallout from the deal? Did EMF get a bargain? And what’s happening on the LPFM side of things? Here’s where we make our occasional pitch to remind you that if all you’re reading every Monday is our free top story, you’re missing most of the insight NERW has been offering you for almost a quarter of a century now. Subscriptions are as little as 29 cents an issue – and if you’ve had problems with our soon-to-be-upgraded signup system, Lisa is back from our summer travels (we saw the eclipse!) and ready to help you by email or phone. (Contact her here – or click here to subscribe.) And pre-ordering is now underway for the all-new Tower Site Calendar 2018 at the Fybush.com Store, too!
THE TOWER SITE CALENDAR IS SOLD OUT!
In just a few months we’ll have information about the 2025 Tower Site Calendar.
Until then, please take a look at the books for sale in the Fybush Media Store.
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*Back to our analysis of the WBRU deal, with an important caveat to start things off: for all the uninformed online chatter about “another college station bites the dust,” Brown University itself had nothing to do with WBRU itself or the sale. While the WBRU staff is made up of Brown students and the BBS board of current students and Brown alumni, it’s been BBS, not Brown, steering the ship at WBRU. And it’s BBS, not Brown, that will bear responsibility for whatever fallout the sale brings.
What will that fallout be? On the programming side, despite sagging ratings, WBRU’s modern rock was still a unique part of the Providence radio scene, holding on with that format even as others in the region (most notably Boston’s WFNX) fell by the wayside. BBS says it will keep the WBRU identity alive as an online stream, and the proceeds from the sale will help with that for a time, but it’s hard to see that surviving as a viable part of the Providence scene over the long term.
Will there be public outcry? For a time, no doubt – but WBRU has been slowly fading away for a while now, making the end of its format now anything but a surprise to loyal listeners. If they haven’t spoken out by now, it’s probably too late.
Another group, however, may have more leverage: there’s already buzz in town about a lawsuit over the sale stemming from internal disputes within BBS. As NERW readers already know, the decision to sell the 95.5 license took as long as it did in part because of a rift inside the board between one group that argued for keeping the FM signal and another that pushed for the cash the sale would generate.
The no-sale group could have good reason to challenge this deal, since the reported $5.5 million price tag is considerably on the low side for a class B FM in a market the size of Providence. Even in the reality of 2017 (in which major Providence operators iHeart and Cumulus are facing their own financial struggles and prospective buyer Rhode Island Public Radio just did a deal for a different full-market FM signal), it’s not hard to imagine the losing board faction suing the current board for failing to reap the full value of the class B 95.5 signal.
It’s unlikely (verging on impossible) that challengers will get the FCC to dismiss the license transfer to EMF, which is expected to be filed as soon as today. The FCC tends to keep its distance from internal strife, sending those challenges to civil court instead. But in a Rhode Island courtroom down the road, who knows what could happen?
*What about that LPFM on 101.1? It’s a bit of a messy situation, with a CP that expires in January and a confusing share-time schedule that will find Brown Student Radio occupying just under half the signal’s airtime, swapping off in six-hour increments with two community groups, AS220’s WFOO-LP and Providence Community Radio, which doesn’t even have a callsign yet. Is the move of the “WBRU” callsign there anything other than a chance for BSR to get some visibility for its piece of the 101.1 pie? It’s hard to see the 100-watt LPFM as being any sort of real replacement for what WBRU once was.
And yes, it’s sad to see WBRU end in this particular way. Over the years, it’s been a consistently interesting destination on what’s otherwise become a very corporate radio dial, not to mention a launching pad for student broadcast careers. EMF, for all its professionalism, will do what EMF always does – WLVO will be a rack of equipment pulling down a satellite signal from California, with no significant local presence in the Ocean State. If you’re a college student in Rhode Island looking for something on the radio that speaks to your interests (or provides you a place to learn about doing radio), there will be one more reason to click on Pandora or Spotify instead. And so it goes…
(Disclaimer: Fybush Media provided consulting services to WBRU at an earlier phase of the sale decision; it had no involvement in this sale.)
*Across town, Rhode Island Public Radio is selling its original AM signal. It was back in 2011 that WRNI (1290 Providence) was leased out to Latino Public Radio as part of the deal with the Wheeler School that moved RIPR’s Providence flagship signal from 1290 to Wheeler’s WELH (88.1), where LPR had been operating for part of the day. Now that RIPR is in the process of migrating to an even better signal, WXNI (89.3 Newport), the 1290 AM facility had become redundant – which is why RIPR told LPR last fall that it had to either buy the AM station outright or it might be sold to another buyer. Now LPR has agreed to pay $400,000 for 1290. That’s a steep drop from the $1.8 million RIPR paid for 1290 when it took ownership local – but that cost included the studios and programming that WRNI had developed under its previous Boston University ownership, which formed the core of what’s now RIPR on four FM signals statewide.
And now he’s headed back to WBZ to take over early next month as co-anchor of the morning news block, a role that’s passed through several hands in the decade since Gary LaPierre retired. (Most recently, it was Joe Mathieu in that seat alongside Deb Lawler; he left a few months ago and has since joined WGBH as local “Morning Edition” host.)
*The death of Jay Thomas on Thursday produced plenty of obituaries remembering his gifted turns as a comic actor on “Murphy Brown” and “Cheers,” not to mention his long run as a Christmastime staple on David Letterman’s “Late Show.” But in NEW YORK – and in Charlotte and Los Angeles, too – he’s still well-remembered for his long radio career, too.
The native Texan started his radio career down south, most notably working for (and apparently even owning a piece of) Stan and Sis Kaplan’s stations, including WAPE in Jacksonville and WAYS in Charlotte. It was while he was at WAYS that New York came calling, luring him to mornings at WXLO (98.7) at the height of its “99X” glory days.
Thomas was arguably the first of the city’s top FM morning men, moving from WXLO over to WKTU (92.3) not long after ‘KTU dethroned WABC to become the first FM station to top the New York ratings. His run at WKTU lasted until the station’s end in 1985, when its flip to “K-Rock” as WXRK brought in Howard Stern from WNBC to do mornings. While Thomas would later do more radio – in Los Angeles at KPWR (105.9) and at SiriusXM – the rest of his career would be known more for television comedy.
Thomas had been suffering from cancer; he was 69.
Over at Cumulus’ WNBM (103.9 Bronxville), Marc Clarke has exited after three years doing nights amidst the mostly-syndicated “Radio 103.9” lineup. Clarke, better known for his many years on Washington radio, had been commuting home to DC on the weekends.
*Here in Rochester, we’re mourning Wyoma Best, who was the first black reporter on local TV when she joined WHEC-TV (Channel 10) back in 1972. Best pioneered the “Crimestoppers” segment on the station’s top-rated newscasts, among other firsts. She left WHEC in 1980 (replaced by Janet Lomax, who’d go on to spend 37 years there before retiring earlier this year) and had a long second career with the local chamber of commerce as well as making a name for herself as an artist and art collector. Best, who died Friday, was 74.
*A small correction from our MAINE story next week: the sale of WKTJ (99.3 Farmington) to the owners of WSYY (1240/94.9) in Millinocket doesn’t exactly unite longtime rivals, as we’d inadvertently suggested; the two towns are about 120 miles apart, so the stations will continue to serve separate audiences even under common ownership. NERW regrets the error and really needs to get back to Maine to do some visiting sometime soon…
*In the northern tier of PENNSYLVANIA, Seven Mountains is pulling the plug on WQYX (93.1 Clearfield), counting down to a relaunch tomorrow as “Pop 93.1” under new calls WPQP. The station will segue from hot AC to CHR and add more local voices, replacing Bob & Sheri in mornings with Sara, now heard on State College sister station WBHV.
*Can we avoid mentioning the news out of Philadelphia, where Beasley’s WBEN-FM (95.7 BEN-FM) used Amazon’s Alexa as a “guest DJ” Friday afternoon? No? OK, then: the stunt was a promotion for Beasley’s company-wide rollout of Alexa “skills” for each of its stations, allowing Echo users to easily access the Beasley stations.
And the move of the WLVO calls to Providence means K-Love’s station on 88.5 in Halifax, north of Harrisburg, will go back to its previous calls of WKHW.
*In CANADA, today is launch day for the new local 5 PM newscasts on CTV’s local stations, including CJOH in Ottawa, CTV Northern Ontario in Sudbury, CKCO in Kitchener and CFCF in Montreal; in the Maritimes, CTV Atlantic has been doing news at 5 for many years, going back to its days as ATV, and in Toronto, CFTO has been simulcasting the 5 and 5:30 PM segments from sister all-news channel CP24 for the last few months.
South of Ottawa, former CKBY (101.1)/CJET (92.3) Smiths Falls program director Bob Anderson has died. Anderson was inducted into the Ottawa Valley Country Music Hall of Fame in 2006; he retired from the Rogers stations in 2012 at the end of a 35-year career in country radio. Anderson was 69.
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