NorthEast Radio Watch 9/8/2025: A Farewell to Wease

In this week’s issue… Rochester FM talker flips – Legacy owner sells – Hudson Valley’s new sports station – Remembering NYC’s Ford, Colford

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*Over four decades on the radio here in Rochester, one thing that’s always been true: Brother Wease does things his way.

That was true in 2008 when he couldn’t resolve his contract issues at his original radio home, WCMF (96.5), and it was just as true last week when a format change at his later home, iHeart’s WAIO (Radio 95.1), left him with a choice: take what he perceived as second-tier slots or walk away from the medium that made him so famous locally.

After dropping hints for the first few hours of his late-morning show Thursday, Wease was able to let loose for his final hour on what turned out to also be WAIO’s final hour as a talk station.

“What’s happening is, this is my last show,” Wease said, after telling iHeart he wouldn’t accept an offer to do a weekend-only music show on the reformatted station, which flipped at noon to active rock as “Rock 95.”

“They gave me a couple good opportunities,” he told listeners, “but I can’t go out that way. I can’t be in the National Broadcast Hall of Fame…and have people that know me all over America and see the headline in the trades tomorrow, Brother Wease weekend mornings. I can’t go out that way. I was up all night. I was gonna do it, I was prepared.”

“They even offered me a 2-hour liberal talk show on Sunday nights on WHAM,” Wease said in the hour-long farewell he was given. “I don’t want to be the sacrificial liberal,” he said of the opportunity to appear on WAIO’s mostly conservative AM talk sister, whose Bob Lonsberry dropped by near the end of the hour to offer his goodbyes.

An hour, of course, was nowhere near as long as Wease, whose real name is Alan Levin, deserved to say goodbye to the community he built over so many years on the air.

“I just want to thank the guys who’ve been with me. Some of them have been with me for 40 years,” Wease said.

Those “guys” (and more than a few gals) quickly started texting in with accolades and goodbyes, but some in the Wease orbit were vocal on social media about what a proper farewell should have looked like, including the chance to bring back some of the cast members that Wease launched into big careers of their own and all the community members who’ve been part of the Wease world over the years.

With the format change to rock, only the syndicated Rover’s Morning Glory survives intact on the new 95.1. After that, iHeart’s national rock personality Aly handles middays, while former afternoon host John DiTullio is tracking afternoons alongside Jeremy Newman, who’d been hosting middays on 95.1 along with Lonsberry, who’s still doing mornings on WGY in Albany, late mornings on WHAM in Rochester and afternoons on WSYR in Syracuse. Mark Maira, the former afternoon producer/co-host, takes over nights on Rock 95.1 – but he and DiTullio are also starting a new local sports show weekdays at noon on WHTK (Fox Sports 1280), which hasn’t had a local sports talk show recently.

Over at WDVI, Dino Kay takes over afternoons from Newman, who will now be tracking middays. And at least one former 95.1 talk personality is out entirely – Deanna King, who was DiTullio’s afternoon co-host, posted that she’d lost her job with iHeart.

*While we get ready to put together the new Tower Site Calendar, which will be the 25th edition (!), here’s another bit of shameless self-promotion: on Thursday (Sept. 11), your editor will be Kirk Harnack’s guest on This Week in Radio Technology (TWIRT).

We’ll be talking about the FCC’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative, about some of my recent radio travels, and about my newest gig – if you’re looking for a state-of-the-art radio automation system that integrates playout, music scheduling and traffic, all at a lower price than the big guys, let me tell you all about the Myriad system from my new colleagues at Broadcast Radio.

(You’ll be hearing much more about it here soon, I promise!)