• My Account
  • Your Profile
  • Member Archives
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Cart / $0.00

No products in the cart.

Fybush.com
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links
No Result
View All Result
Fybush.com
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links

No products in the cart.

No Result
View All Result
Fybush.com
No Result
View All Result

NorthEast Radio Watch 9/11/2023: End of an Era

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
September 11, 2023
in Free Content, Northeast Radio Watch
1

In this week’s issue… O’Shaughnessy family exits Westchester – New Ontario signals launch – Applicants position ahead of LPFM window – Remembering Sommers, Skibenes

By SCOTT FYBUSH

Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada

(Programming note: We’re back, for now, with what I hope will be a weekly schedule for the next few months. I’m still figuring out the long-term future of NERW. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.)

*It’s been a long time since WVOX (1460) and WVIP (93.5) in New Rochelle, NEW YORK were the full-time community voices that longtime owner Bill O’Shaughnessy fervently promoted, and perhaps they were never quite as big as he passionately proclaimed them to be.

But in the suburbs north of New York City, the O’Shaughnessy family’s Hudson Westchester Radio hung on with its long tradition of local ownership long after other nearby stations such as WFAS in White Plains and the original WVIP in Mount Kisco had sold out to larger companies and eventually become relays of programming from far away.

After O’Shaughnessy’s death in May 2022, WVOX and WVIP held on for a while under his children. WVIP’s entire broadcast day continued to be leased out to a combination of several programmers aiming at the Haitian and Caribbean community, with three more HD Radio subchannels carrying Jewish, Haitian and Russian programming. WVOX’s schedule was also mainly leased, carrying a mix of talk shows hosted by local leaders and other music and ethnic programming, all flowing out of the studios at O’Shaughnessy’s beloved “One Broadcast Forum” at the AM transmitter site in New Rochelle.

Now it’s all over, and rather abruptly. We knew earlier in the summer that WVIP had found a buyer, the Hope Media Group, which paid $8.15 million for its class A FM signal transmitting from the Bronx to about half of New York City and a big chunk of Westchester and north Jersey. With almost no fanfare, the start of September brought a midnight flip to 93.5, which became WNVU and began transmitting a loop of Spanish-language Christian pop on its way to becoming the New York-market outlet for Hope’s “Vida Unida” network.

That left WVOX, O’Shaughnessy’s crown jewel ever since his 1968 purchase of the cluster from his father-in-law, Jock Whitney. (At one time, O’Shaughnessy had sold airtime for Whitney when he operated multiple suburban stations as a radio network attached to the now-defunct Herald Tribune.)

With just 500 watts by day and 122 watts at night, along with a tiny translator (15-watt W252DX on 98.3 over in New Rochelle), the WVOX license didn’t have much market value, apparently; at the end of August, the O’Shaughnessy estate announced that it was being donated to the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC Broadcasting), which in turn sold the licenses to West Coast broadcaster Jeff Chang for $20,000.

On September 7, WVOX signed off from One Broadcast Forum, closing the books on 55 years of O’Shaughnessy operation and leaving its programmers looking for new radio homes. The deal with MMTC and Chang included only the WVOX AM transmitter and ATU. Whatever he has planned next for 1460 and 98.3 will require a new studio and likely a new transmitter location, since the O’Shaughnessy estate retains the studio/transmitter site and the rest of the stations’ equipment. It’s very likely that the property will be more valuable for development than for radio, leaving Chang the difficult task of finding somewhere else in Westchester County to transmit the AM signal.

There won’t be another broadcaster quite like Bill O’Shaughnessy, of course, with his steadfast dedication to the First Amendment and his unique skill for self-promotion (as well as his support of this column over the years.) We were saddened by his death last year, and it’s sad to see his stations go out with a whimper.

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! 

 

Log In

Join Now | Lost Password?

Share this:

  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
Previous Post

NorthEast Radio Watch 8/21/2023: A Big Beasley Sale

Next Post

NorthEast Radio Watch 9/18/2023: Windsor Honors CKLW, Rosalie

Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

Editor/Publisher, NorthEast Radio Watch and Tower Site of the Week

Related Posts

NorthEast Radio Watch 7/14/2025: Townsquare Cuts Continue
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 7/14/2025: Townsquare Cuts Continue

In this week’s issue… Budget cuts hit Townsquare markets - WBEN rearranges schedule - WPDH's Taylor steps down - K-Love prepares for PA additions - "Swan" preens in VT

by Scott Fybush
July 14, 2025
NorthEast Radio Watch 7/7/2025: Boston Mourns LB
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 7/7/2025: Boston Mourns LB

In this week’s issue… Remembering Boston's Lyndon Byers - CRTC approves Rogers, Evanov spins - Towers come down in PA, and might go up in NY - More FM moves in Ontario

by Scott Fybush
July 7, 2025
NorthEast Radio Watch 6/23-30/2025: Another Great Day in Alpine
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 6/23-30/2025: Another Great Day in Alpine

In this week’s issue… Honoring radio's greatest inventor - Maine morning vet retiring - Buffalo names new HOF inductees - PA's Loftus retires

by Scott Fybush
June 30, 2025
Top of the Tower Podcast #65: Back and Forth With PA’s Jason Togyer
Free Content

Top of the Tower Podcast #65: Back and Forth With PA’s Jason Togyer

In this week's episode - Top of the Tower is back with a new spring/summer season of conversations with some of the most interesting people in radio! This week, it's another joint episode, a two-way chat with my good friend Jason...

by Scott Fybush
June 22, 2025
Next Post
NorthEast Radio Watch 9/18/2023: Windsor Honors CKLW, Rosalie

NorthEast Radio Watch 9/18/2023: Windsor Honors CKLW, Rosalie

Please login to join discussion

Log In

Join Now | Lost Password?

Get Fybush.com Updates

Get Fybush.com updates emailed directly to your inbox!

© 2025 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links

© 2025 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.