NorthEast Radio Watch 9/21/20: Headline News

In this week’s issue… iHeart spends for WWRL - Cutbacks at Maine Public - Sports Flip in the Valley - Translator fight in Boston By SCOTT FYBUSH Jump to: ME - NH - VT - MA - RI - CT - NY - NJ - PA - Canada Some weeks are full of news. Some weeks are... this past one. And so, since we're busy anyway with holidays and the start of school and other diversions, this week's NERW column is more of a quick headline summary - and with any luck, we'll have a fatter, newsier edition for you next week. *Where to start? How about NEW YORK , where we can now assign some numbers to iHeart's pending acquisition of WWRL (1600), which will become its flagship for the Black Information Network news service. If big 50 kW WABC (770) just sold recently for $12 million, you might expect a smaller (25 kW days) signal at the very top of the dial to fetch only a relatively small fraction of that figure. But as we tell our brokerage clients, station values these days are extremely fluid, and every deal is a unique meeting of buyer and seller. Which may explain why iHeart will pay NJ Broadcasting $8.5 million for WWRL and its unbuilt translator CP, W280GA (103.9 Edison NJ): iHeart needed a New York outlet for its BIN programming, and while WWRL's signal isn't huge, it does a nice job of covering the core parts of the market where much of its potential Black audience lives and works. While $8.5 million (less a $275,000 set-aside for transmitter site repairs, and $75,000 a month for an LMA starting Nov. 2, with $60,000 a month credited toward the purchase) isn't pocket change, it's likely well within the budget for BIN, which is working on more of a corporate underwriting model from sponsors eager to have their messages associated with BIN's programming right now. And on the "supply" side, we're hearing that WWRL was actually the only AM facility available immediately to iHeart - which means, yes, that there may indeed be some bigger news yet to come out of New York in the weeks to come. [bucket id="8276" title="Calendar Ad"] [pmpro_login show_menu="false" show_logout_link="false"] [membership level="1,3,5,7,8,9,10,11"] *Other news from New York City last week included the WABC debut of Bill O'Reilly's new daily talk show. For now, the former Fox News host is on for just an hour from 10 to 11 PM each weeknight (and he's not even "doing it live," we don't think) - but there's plenty of speculation that he's in the pipeline to fill a more prominent shift when one opens up. What has a bigger audience - WABC at 10 PM or NOAA Weather Radio up on the VHF dial? If it's weather radio, there's some good news for those listeners: after years of engineering challenges, the main New York City weather radio transmitter, KWO-35, has finally found a permanent home on the Empire State Building. KWO-35 had long been located atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza, but there were interference issues there that forced it to be reduced in power and even off the air for quite a while. As of Friday, though, it's operating from a pair of antennas on the northwest and southeast corners of the 81st floor setbacks at Empire, with 1000 watts of power. *Upstate, Dave Gillen is the new program director at Kenmore Broadcasting's WEBR (1440 Niagara Falls), moving up in stature from national sales manager at the Buffalo-market standards outlet. Gillen has a long on-air history in Buffalo, where he's programmed WGRQ, WNYS and WMJQ. He's been working in radio and TV sales since 2000. Over at Entercom's Buffalo cluster, we can provide some updates on what's happened at "Alt 107.7/104.7" (WLKK): it's not just PD Nik Rivers who's off the schedule and out of work, but also air talent Brandi, Axe and Kennedy. The corporate cutbacks last week took WLKK to a fully voicetracked schedule that mirrors that of New York's WNYL (Alt 92.3): Cane and Corey's morning show, Christine in middays, Chris Booker in afternoons, and Kevan Kenney's national show at night. (The move to national night shows in the alternative and country formats also ousted Dave Allan from New York's WNSH 94.7, where he'd had the local night show.) Here in Rochester, Entercom's cuts at WCMF (96.5) shift the dean of the station's airstaff, Dave "Kane-O" Kane, from middays to a long afternoon shift from noon to 6 PM, partially replacing the shift that had been covered by former PD "Mud." *On the PENNSYLVANIA line, iHeart's WLTM (95.9 Mina) changes calls to WEBG, parking the callsign that had been on the iHeart country station in Chicago before it flipped to "Rock 95.5" as WCHI-FM. (The WLTM calls had referred to 95.9's old "Lite" format, before it flipped to all-podcasts.) There's a call change in Bedford, too, where WAYC (1600) is now WRAX. In Pittsburgh, Maria D'Antonio and Elista are off the schedule as WDSY (Y108) moves to national afternoon and evening programming, but they retain their spots on sister station WBZZ (100.7 Star), in evenings and middays. *A CONNECTICUT -based morning show is going syndicated. Anna Zap and Jay Raven have been the morning hosts at Connoisseur's WEZN (Star 99.9) in Bridgeport since 2015, and have been simulcast across Long Island Sound on sister station WALK-FM (97.5 Patchogue) since the start of 2020. Beginning in January 2021, the "Anna and Raven Show" will be offered nationally by Compass Media Networks. *There's a change of sports affiliations in the Upper Valley, where one of Great Eastern's NEW HAMPSHIRE AMs has shifted from ESPN to the Boston-based WEEI network. WTSV (1230 Claremont) is now "94 WEEI Upper Valley," feeding translators at 94.3 in Claremont and 94.5 in White River Junction, VERMONT . It joins another Great Eastern-owned WEEI affiliate, WEEY (93.5 Swanzey) in the Keene market down the river. *In MAINE , three longtime public radio personalities are leaving the Maine Public airwaves after accepting early retirement offers. Robin Rilette's post as host of "Morning Classical" and Ed Morin's news reporter duties will be filled by other Maine Public staffers, while reruns of Sara Willis' "In Tune" show will continue to air on weekends. Maine Public CEO Mark Vogelzang says several other members of the staff also took early retirement, helping the network avoid bigger budget and programming cuts. *A bit of translator weirdness in MASSACHUSETTS : you might recall our mention, a few months back, of WGBH's application to move its longtime "East Cambridge/Beacon Hill" translator, W242AA, from 96.3 to 97.3. The move was part of the relocation of the translator and its neighbor, MIT's WMBR (88.1), from the soon-to-be-demolished Eastgate Building on the MIT campus to a new building going up next door. But (as we'd have told them if they were our translator engineering client at Fybush Media), 97.3 is a tricky channel for translator use in the area. Every attempt to use that frequency has been thwarted by interference complaints from WJFD, the big 97.3 signal, and this was no exception: WJFD filed a complaint about potential interference to its Portuguese-language format, and so WGBH decided not to pursue the move to 97.3. That, however, prompted a complaint from Beanpot Broadcasting, which owns the translator on 96.5 out in Newton, and which would have benefited from W242AA's relocation to open up its own frequency for signal expansion. Beanpot asked the FCC to rule that the only valid authorization for W242AA is now on 97.3 (as W247DO), but WGBH tells the FCC it has no plans now to pursue that construction permit, and it intends to stay put on 96.5. *And congratulations to Bill Blount, who brought his Life Changing Radio religious format to Boston last week with the relaunch of WILD (1090), which joins his existing stations in the Providence, Hartford, New Haven, Manchester/Nashua and Portland markets (where Fybush Media has been pleased to assist with translator expansion!) [/membership]

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NorthEast Radio Watch 9/21/20: Headline News

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Scott Fybush

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