NorthEast Radio Watch 6/16/2025: Townsquare, Corus Cut Deeper

In this week’s issue… Oneonta signals go dark – Whiteoaks takes over in Niagara – Corus empties Ottawa studios – CBS-FM shuffles talent – Armstrong anniversary to be honored

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*If you’re listening to the radio in the hilly country east of Binghamton along I-88 and I-86/Route 17, nearly all your commercial radio choices are controlled by just one company, Townsquare Media.

As Townsquare continues to close down unprofitable broadcast signals and focus more on its digital and event platforms, there’s suddenly even less content on the air in and around Oneonta as a result.

Last week, Townsquare shut down its last AM signal in that cluster, WDOS (730 Oneonta), the first radio station in town that dated back to 1948.

Telling the FCC that “due to economic conditions in the market,” it was “forced to take the station off the air temporarily,” Townsquare began taking WDOS down the path it already followed in two nearby and even smaller communities where it once simulcast WDOS’ “CNY News” talk format on AM.

WDLA (1270 Walton) went silent back in January and WCHN (970 Norwich) went silent in 2023 and had its license cancelled in 2024. Townsquare also sold off the three southernmost FM stations in its Oneonta-based cluster recently, sending the former WIYN (94.7 Deposit), WTBD (97.5 Delhi) and WDHI (100.3 Delhi) to Family Life Ministries to become part of their regional Christian network.

What’s left in Oneonta? Not much at all. Back in 2021, the only local voice on CNY News, morning man “Big Chuck” D’Imperio, did his last show on the network of AM stations, leaving just syndication for that format’s last four years. There’s a local morning show on classic hits WZOZ (103.1) and even more syndication on AC WSRK (103.9) and country “Big Kat” WBKT (95.3 Norwich)/WDLA-FM (92.1 Walton).

And as for the biggest FM in that cluster? WKXZ (93.9 Norwich), which had been hot AC as “Star 93.9” with syndicated personalities, dropped music last week and began simulcasting Townsquare’s news-talk WNBF (1290) from Binghamton, an hour and a world away. WNBF has remained an unusually local station in the Townsquare universe, with in-house morning and late-morning shows – but the localism of those shows has been tightly focused on Binghamton and Broome County, and probably won’t mean much up the road in Oneonta and Norwich.

(Binghamton also suffered its own Townsquare cuts a few years back, when the company shut down WNBF’s sports sister station, WYOS 1360; the Binghamton Rumble Ponies broadcasts that had moved from WYOS to WNBF apparently won’t be simulcast on WKXZ.)