NorthEast Radio Watch 5/16/2022: State College Gets Loud

By SCOTT FYBUSH

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*The launch of a new translator wouldn’t ordinarily be a lead story in this column, but the addition of a new market for PENNSYLVANIA‘s “Loud Radio” merits some extra attention here, we think.

W268BB (101.5) in State College was a translator for Family Life Ministries for many years until FLM bought a full-power station in town (now WCOB 88.3) last year. Very alert NERW readers might have picked up on a mention a few months later that the translator had been sold to Pat and Andrea Cerullo’s Major Keystone LLC before things went quiet for a while.

Behind the scenes, though, Major Keystone was working with a team of consultants (which, we’re proud to note, included Fybush Media) to put some bigger changes into motion. Another nearby translator on 101.7 that belonged to the regional WGRC religious network was in the way of signal expansion for 101.5, but that obstacle became an advantage with a move that took the WGRC translator to 102.3, gaining additional power and a better State College signal and clearing the way for a much bigger 101.5 signal.

Cerullo – you know him as “DJ Grooves” from his syndicated mix shows – has been steadily expanding his “Loud” signals around the state in recent years. The hip-hop format is on the air via AM- and HD2-fed translators serving Allentown, Easton and Reading (recently relocated from 99.3 to a better 98.5 signal), and it’s syndicated to other stations in the Youngstown, Ohio and Fort Wayne, Indiana markets.

The State College market, full of college students and recent graduates, hasn’t had a hip-hop station serving them until the new “Loud 101.5” launched on Friday after several days of stunting. (It was “We Are 101.5,” using a loop of Zombie Nation’s “Kernkraft 400,” a favorite Penn State football anthem.)

Fed by an HD3 of WZWW (95.3), the State College version carries the syndicated “Ebro in the Morning,” followed by DJ H Vidal, Grooves himself in mid-afternoon, and Vijay in the afternoon. It brings Cerullo back into the market where he started on the former WJHT (“Hot 107.9”) – and, we hope, it’s far from the last big project Cerullo will pull off with help from us at Fybush Media, as well as our colleague Lance Venta of RadioInsight, who’s responsible for the station’s digital presence.