NorthEast Radio Watch 9/1/2025: Shula Bulks Up in Buffalo

In this week’s issue… Shula adds Buffalo translators – Toronto, Ottawa FMs go dark -Remembering NY’s Pfuntner, NH’s Bailey, Boston’s Meyer, Maine’s Audet – Format flip in Windsor – Funk Flex’s Hot move – Bridges departs the Boss

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*While the larger broadcasting world prepares for the seismic shifts looming from likely changes to ownership caps in radio and TV – and judging from the immediate reaction to the proposed Nexstar/Tegna merger, it could indeed be seismic – there’s still an entire separate world of smaller broadcast operators who are finding their own paths to success on a more local scale.

Take Buffalo’s Buddy Shula, for instance: his Radio One Buffalo picked up the former WHLD (1270 Niagara Falls) earlier this year, relaunching its talk format as WUSW, “The Patriot.” Could an AM-only talk station high on the dial really make a mark in the crowded Buffalo market? We don’t have to wonder anymore, because now WUSW is getting a pair of FM translators with the $200,000 purchase of two translators from Calvary Chapel of the Finger Lakes.

The 4-watt W227BW (93.3) is located on Buffalo’s One Seneca skyscraper, right alongside Shula’s 102.9 translator for his WECK classic hits stations, and the 27-watt W235BC (94.9) is located on the WBFO tower in Amherst serving the northeastern suburbs of Buffalo. Until now, they’ve been the last links in a daisy chain of translators that starts at Calvary’s WZXV (99.7) in the Rochester market, which is picked up off the air at another translator in Corfu, which is then picked up in Amherst and then rebroadcast from 94.9 to 93.3.

(It’s worth noting that the WZXV translator chain was designed by engineer Mark Humphrey, who also designed Shula’s three-translator FM network for WECK, and it’s also worth noting that while Shula is adding signals in Buffalo, he’s selling his Key West, Florida station, WKEY, to Michael Stapleford’s Magnum Broadcasting, which owns a small FM cluster in the Keys.)

*While we’re talking consolidation, we’re keeping an eye on what’s next for the Scranton-based Times-Shamrock group, one of those medium-sized cluster operators that’s trying to figure out its future in an industry where you’re either enormous or tiny and there’s not a lot of middle ground.

For several decades, Times-Shamrock was part of a joint venture in Milwaukee with All-Pro Broadcasting, owned by the estate of the late NFL star Willie Davis. That came to a very abrupt end last week with the surprise announcement that the Milwaukee Radio Alliance was selling its two big FM stations, WLUM (102.1) and WLDB (93.3), to K-Love, marking the end of WLUM’s distinctive modern rock format and WLDB’s AC format. (The MRA’s remaining stations, a small AM and two translators, are in the process of being spun off as well.)

The Lynett family, which owns Times-Shamrock, already unloaded its newspaper interests in northeast Pennsylvania last year, leaving it with its core radio cluster in Scranton and one FM station in Baltimore, WZBA (100.7 the Bay). While we don’t expect an immediate sale of those properties, we certainly wouldn’t be surprised if the likely lifting of ownership caps gives Shamrock the opportunity to cash out what remains.

(And speaking of newspaper changes, we also note the announcement from Cox last week that it’s ending print publication of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at year’s end, replacing the Star-Ledger and its New Jersey sister papers as the largest metro area to lose its big print newspaper. Why is this important to NERW-land? Because Apollo Global, which owns Cox, is another likely seller if ownership caps are lifted, which means changes could be afoot at Cox’s radio properties on Long Island and its TV stations in Boston and in central New York.)