NorthEast Radio Watch 3/9/2026: Spring Blows Winds of Change

In this week’s issue… Cumulus bankruptcy roils radio – BTPM announces Buffalo format shuffles – WMEX moves newer, ditches Justice – Sliwa returns to NYC AM – Denis to step down at CHUM

*We’re back from a much-needed couple of weeks out west, and still catching up from a lot of news, a lot of miles in the rental car, a lot of work and probably a little too much birthday cake over the weekend, too. (Somewhere along the way in the last few weeks, NERW itself also celebrated a birthday, turning 32 and still chugging along.)

So what’s been happening in our absence? If you read the national trades such as RadioInsight, you already know the biggest headline from the month so far, as Cumulus filed its pre-packaged bankruptcy plan in hopes of wiping out debt and continuing operations as a newly private company with even more of its costs reduced.

For listeners and staffers in most of its NERW-land markets from Providence to Buffalo to Harrisburg and York, there’s little immediate change on the horizon. Having already exited station ownership in the New York metro area, Cumulus’ bankruptcy filing does include the rejection of its existing lease for its New York headquarters at 300 Vesey Street in lower Manhattan, as well as several transmitter sites for AM stations it’s already signed off in San Francisco, Amarillo and western Michigan.

Any bigger changes for local Cumulus clusters are likely to remain on hold until and unless the FCC follows through on plans to raise local ownership caps, a move that would allow for greater consolidation that might lead to swaps and sales in places like Buffalo.

*Meanwhile on the AM dial, we’re continuing to see the disappearance of aging transmitter sites and the move of formats to FM.

As we get this week’s issue to you a little belatedly, there’s news just in from Burlington, Vermont of Vox AM/FM’s WVMT (620) having added a new full-market, full-power FM simulcast on WCPV (101.3 Essex NY), replacing the former “Wolf” country format that had been on the FM. With WVMT’s studios having long since moved out of their old facility at the swampy AM tower site, how much longer will that AM stay on the air?

And in Allentown, Pennsylvania, iHeart talker WAEB (790) had already consolidated from separate day and night transmitter sites down to a single five-tower site north of the city, but now that site is also on the verge of going away as iHeart applies to diplex WAEB on the WSAN (1470) three-tower site in the parking lot of the Lehigh Valley Mall a few miles to the south.

Instead of its current 5 kW days/1.5 kW nights, WAEB’s new facility would use 5 kW days from two towers and would drop to just 190 watts non-directional at night.