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

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*It’s Memorial Day for our US readers, and Monday for our Canadian readers, as we head into an unpredictable summer for radio on both sides of the border.

We’ve written here before about the ways in which the big changes in Washington have been affecting the FCC, and now the uncertainty grows with the departure this past week of Geoffrey Starks, one of the two minority commissioners on the five-member FCC. Starks’ exit, two years before the expiration of his term, leaves the FCC with only three members, Republican chairman Brendan Carr, Republican Nathan Simington and Democrat Anna Gomez, which means there’s not a voting quorum right now and may not be for a while.

There’s a third Republican nominee, Olivia Trusty, awaiting confirmation in the Senate, but that’s traditionally paired with the nomination of a second Democrat – and right now, there’s no indication that the White House will be in any hurry to fill that seat, which means any action on issues such as removing ownership caps may stay on the back burner.

*Most weeks, we have an obvious big lead story within the region to share with you, but this turns out not to have been one of those weeks, and so we’re trying something a little different this week and sharing the entire NERW column with all of you, whether or not you’re a paid subscriber.

This is, of course, not entirely altruistic on our part. Your subscriptions, at any level (as low as $20 a year!), are what makes this column keep going in its 32nd year, and as the industry contracts, your support becomes all the more valuable. If you like what you read here, I hope you’ll think about subscribing – and even more so, I hope you’ll tell your friends and colleagues in the industry.

This is also a good place to note that we’ve revived two of the features on the site that aren’t behind the paywall and are always free for your enjoyment. Tower Site of the Week is back on a semi-regular basis, and we have lots of great travels to share with you in the weeks to come. And our Top of the Tower Podcast is back, too, with lots of interesting conversations with some of the best people in the business.

Check out our most recent episodes, including a great chat about radio and podcasting, a deep dive into how the best educational programs are bringing younger people into the industry, and a look at how broadcast engineering could function as an outsourced service. And stay tuned: next up, we’re partnering with Canada’s Broadcast Dialogue for a conversation about radio on both sides of the border.

And since there’s no paywall – on with the week’s news!

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

*How much is a top-of-the-dial AM station in the outer-ring suburbs of NEW YORK worth? If you’re WABC (770) owner John Catsimatidis, it’s apparently worth $600,000 to add a second AM signal in the form of WRCR (1700 Haverstraw), a number that raised a few eyebrows hereabouts in this era when AMs without translators are fading fast in value.

As with all things WRCR, the official filing of the sale from Alexander Medakovich’s Alexander Broadcasting came with a little chaos on the side: just a day before it showed up in FCC filings, WRCR’s website carried an annoucement signed by “President of Alexander Broadcasting” claiming in emphatic terms that there were “recent Fake News reports” and that “WRCR Radio has not been sold at this point and it has not gone ‘dark,’ ‘dead,’ or ‘off the air.'”

Which was true at that very moment, we guess – but by the time that was posted, the asset purchase agreement had been filed, including some concessions on the seller side including the need for Alexander to provide a working EAS unit, remove overgrowth at the transmitter site and fix several other technical issues at Medakovich’s expense.

What next? For now, WRCR is just simulcasting WABC’s main programming, but Catsimatidis has been clear about his intent to provide a “farm team” for his talk format, and we expect that’s what will end up on 1700 in the long run.

*While we’re recapping the week’s WABC news, we note that a month after bringing Lionel on board as a weekend host, he’s now apparently picked up the permanent gig as host of “The Other Side of Midnight,” replacing now-city councilor Frank Morano in the 2-5 AM slot on WABC and on the show’s syndication affiliates including WGN and KMOX.

*It’s the end of an era at WFAN (101.9/660) – well, sort of. On Saturday, New York radio veteran Richard Neer did his final scheduled weekend show at the Audacy sports talker, ending a regular run there that started back in 1988. Neer, whose history in New York radio goes back to WNEW-FM in 1971, isn’t retiring completely; from his home down south, he’ll continue to do fill-in and holiday shifts on the station. Another WFAN veteran, Joe Beningo, is taking over the 5-9 AM Saturday shift from Neer.

*Here’s something you don’t see on TV every morning: when WRGB (Channel 6) in Schenectady went on the air with its morning newscast Wednesday, co-anchor Olivia Jaquith told viewers she was expecting a baby – as in, within hours. Jaquith, who just joined her hometown CBS affiliate a year ago, had actually announced her pregnancy in February, but as the morning show aired, she was actively in labor and her water had broken.

Why not rush to the hospital? As Jaquith told viewers, it was still early labor and if she was going to be waiting around, she might as well get through the newscast, which she did, including the final 7-8 AM hour on sister station WCWN, all while the control room helpfully updated the graphics with a “Days Past Due Date: 2” counter in the corner of the screen.

After the show was over, Jaquith finally headed for the hospital, where healthy baby boy Quincy was born a few hours later.

*On Long Island, the as-yet-unbuilt CP for WOBI (89.7 Oak Beach) is going from the Celenza family’s JCM Radio, Inc. to a new group called Long Island Radio Outreach, Inc. for $8,000. The new owner? It’s a nonprofit helmed by Illinois resident Albert Adam David, best known until now as a very frequent filer of objections to other FCC applications. David has until the end of November to build out the 140-watt signal, which will serve only a tiny part of the South Shore near Babylon along with Oak Beach-Gilgo Beach and parts of Fire Island.

*Upstate, Buddy Shula has picked out new calls for his new purchase: when he takes over from Cumulus on Saturday, WHLD (1270 Niagara Falls) will become WUSW. Beyond waving the flag with the “US” in the new calls, Shula isn’t saying what will eventually show up as a new format on his new AM signal.

And we’ve been remiss in noting the retirement of Buffalo’s longest-running polka radio host. Greg Chwojdak launched his first polka show in 1976 on the old International Cable, moved to WWOL (1120, now WBBF) in 1979, and landed at WXRL (1300) in 1985, where he took over the mantle from the legendary Stan Jasinski.

Chwojdak’s final “Polkamotion” show aired May 11 on WXRL, with the veteran host saying “the time has come for me to focus on my health and to spend more precious moments with the people I love most.”

*In central New York, Dave Frisina is back on the air, from a distance. His “Soulshine” show was a weekend staple on the old WXTL (105.9 the Rebel) in Syracuse, continuing even after the station left FM and went streaming-only, and he’s kept the mellow triple-A grooves going as a streaming offering from his new home in Florida. Now Soulshine is back on the airwaves, too, adding the Cornell student-run WVBR (93.5 Ithaca) as his first full-power FM affiliate. You can hear Dave on Saturday afternoons from 4-5 on WVBR.

Bud Williamson’s WALL oldies network has a new translator signal along the Delaware River in Port Jervis, where he’s moved the former 102.9 signal from nearby Milford, PENNSYLVANIA to a new frequency, 93.3, running from his WDLC (1490) tower with 250 watts.

*While we’re in that corner of the Keystone State, we note that WARM (590) in Scranton has returned to the air, at least temporarily. The venerable AM signal had been off the air since June 12, 2024 after the end of the “Bigfoot Country Legends” programming it was simulcasting with WLGD (107.7 Dallas); for the moment, it’s simulcasting the classic hits of “Gem 99 & 100,” Geos Communications’ WGMF (750 Olyphant plus numerous translators).

*Across the state, veteran broadcaster Ken “Hawk” Hoculock is retiring from the business after a 37-year run, which most recently has found him running his own hyper-local streaming/Part 15 signal in Saxonburg outside Pittsburgh.

His retirement won’t be the end of “Saxonburg Radio,” though. He’s donating the station’s intellectual property and equipment to Knoch High School, which will use it for training students to do radio, which is a nice legacy for Ken.

(You can hear all about it from our friends at PBRTV.com, who have also revived their podcast after a long absence. Welcome back!)

*The FCC has once again rejected an appeal by a would-be CONNECTICUT LPFM operator. “WHKA FM 87.7” had a clever idea during the 2023 LPFM window, when it tried to get the Commission to allow it to get licensed on 87.7 in Storrs-Mansfield, an area where it noted that no other frequency was available for LPFM use.

The application hit an initial snag because the LMS filing system wouldn’t allow for a filing on 87.7, so it was submitted on 88.1 and immediately rejected due to nearby WESU on that frequency in Middletown.

But the WHKA group persisted, filing an appeal that noted that the FCC’s current policies on the use of 87.7 have become contradictory, allowing DTV “Franken-FM” operators to use channel 6 with an analog FM signal at 87.75 MHz. Clever as it was, the FCC isn’t buying it – it denied the petition for reconsideration of the denial, and the WHKA application now appears to be dead in the water.

*In central MASSACHUSETTS, Kurt Jackson is consolidating two of the AM stations he’s recently purchased. In addition to his existing application to move WQVD (700) from Orange-Athol into Worcester, he’s now also applying to bring WQVR (940) from Webster into the bigger Worcester market. Like WQVD, WQVR would operate its daytime signal from the old WAAF/Yankee Network tower on Mount Asnebumskit, with a new city of license of Paxton and 570 watts non-directional by day.

You’ll recall, perhaps, that the 940 signal in Webster has been the testbed for the unusual HEBA low-profile AM broadcast antenna, and at least for now WQVR would continue using that facility at night, when it runs just 4 watts. WQVR’s translator on 99.3 would also remain where it is for now, between Worcester and Southbridge.

*We’re waiting for the next big development in CANADA: at some point in the next few weeks, we expect the Caine family’s Whiteoaks group to take over operation of the four stations in St. Catharines and Hamilton that they’re acquiring from Bell Media as the company continues to spin off its stations in smaller markets.

We don’t expect format changes at two of the St. Catharines stations, news-talk CKTB (610) and rock “Hits” CHTZ (97.7), but Whiteoaks has hired Jeff Kirkwood as its new imaging producer and there’s something in the works to replace the current “Move” and “Bounce” formats at CHRE (105.7 St. Catharines) and CKLH (102.9 Hamilton), respectively, likely arriving early next month.

Meanwhile around the Golden Horseshoe, veteran broadcaster Richard Syrett is departing CKNT (Sauga 960 AM) in Mississauga at the end of the week.

Syrett came to 960 a few years ago after a long run with “Conspiracy Radio” on weekends at CFZM (Zoomer 740) and as a fill-in host of “Coast to Coast AM;” there’s no word yet on who’ll replace him in the 4-6 PM weekday slot as he turns his focus to his daily podcast.