NorthEast Radio Watch 6/9/2025: Urgency Grows for Public Media
In this week’s issue… Public broadcasters plead for help - Connoisseur restructures leadership - Pennsylvania AM goes dark - Succession plan for veteran college radio manager
NorthEast Radio Watch 11/25/2024: Retirements of Note in NYC
In this week’s issue… NY TV anchor, radio historian both retiring – XPN PD to retire – More Cumulus cuts – Rogers sells FMs as Corus makes big talent cuts
By SCOTT FYBUSH
Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada
*There aren’t many radio stations with their own historians, and one of the most prominent is retiring. Andy Lanset has been with NEW YORK‘s WNYC since 2000 as the founding director of the station’s archives, and what a career he’s had there, following up on an already fascinating life in which he was a news reporter for WBAI and a freelance audio producer working on ventures that included the “Yiddish Radio Project” in the 1990s.
When we first met Andy, he was just a few years into the job, making sense of a chaotic collection of discs, tapes, wires and paperwork that was jammed into the attic of the old Municipal Building, and he’s done a magnificent job making sense of it all, moving to a spacious archival facility in WNYC’s current Hudson Square digs. Along the way, he added curatorial duties for WQXR when WNYC bought the classical station, and he did much of the work that went into WNYC’s centennial celebration this year.
(photo: Christine Butler/WNYC)
Lanset also put out a weekly WNYC history newsletter for more than two decades, announcing his retirement in this past week’s edition.
*Most New Yorkers didn’t know Andy Lanset, but they all knew Chuck Scarborough, who came to WNBC-TV (Channel 4) in 1974 after two years helping to drag Boston’s WNAC-TV (Channel 7) out of the ratings basement.
At WNBC, Scarborough became the first anchor of the new 5 PM newscast, which evolved into “Live at Five” and paired him with his longtime co-anchor Sue Simmons, then propelled him into the lead role anchoring the news at 6 and 11.
After retiring from the 11 PM show in 2017, Scarborough has remained on the 6, but at 81, he announced last week that he’ll leave the anchor desk on Dec. 12, though he’ll keep a finger in as a special projects anchor for channel 4.
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!
Related Posts
NorthEast Radio Watch 6/2/2025: A WOW Moment for WATR
In this week’s issue… Car dealership goes terrestrial - Lawsuit uncovers Connoisseur's attempted bids for Audacy, Cox - New newsroom for WNBC, WNJU - Remembering Buffalo's Deeb, Batavia's Platt
Top of the Tower Podcast #064: Talking Canada with Broadcast Dialogue’s Connie Thiessen
In this week's episode - It was a longer hiatus than we intended, but Top of the Tower is back with a new spring season of conversations with some of the most interesting people in radio. This week, we move north...
NorthEast Radio Watch 5/26/2025: A Holiday Free Preview
In this week’s issue… Purchase price revealed for WRCR - Lionel lands overnight gig - Another Worcester AM move - NY anchor on the air during labor - Canada flips impending
