NorthEast Radio Watch 5/15: Changes in the Morning

[fybush@world.std.com (Scott D Fybush)]

*We'll start this mid-May NERW with the latest from Boston's morning
drive circus: Talker WRKO has hired "Morning Guy Tai" from modern rock
WFNX (101.7) as the station's new morning co-host.  He'll join
Marjorie Clapprood in morning drive, replacing the departed Pat
Whitley.  The new "Clapprood and Company" morning show will debut next
Monday at 5:30; it will be shortened by an hour to make room for an
extra hour of Dr. Laura Schlessinger at 9 AM.  WRKO program director
Kevin Straley is defending his unorthodox choice, saying Tai (whose
real name is Tom Irwin) is eager to move to the talk arena from his
days as a rock jock.

Elsewhere in Massachusetts, Ware's WARE (1250) has reportedly ended
its simulcast with country WQVR (100.1 Southbridge) to pick up
Westwood One's adult standards format.  And M Street claims Lowell's
WLLH (1400) has added jazz overnights -- anyone in the Merrimack
Valley want to confirm that?

*One of CONNECTICUT's best known morning teams has been given the boot
from Hartford's WHCN (105.9).  Mike Picozzi and Gary Lee Horn, known
on air as "Picozzi and the Horn," were fired after their show last
Thursday.  Starting on Monday, WHCN replaced them with the Bob and Tom
Show out of Indianapolis, which is syndicated by WHCN's owner, SFX
Broadcasting.  Picozzi and Horn had been together on WHCN for more
than a decade.  We're also told WLIS (1420) in Old Saybrook CT is
simulcasting WMRD (1150 Middletown) most of the day.

*From RHODE ISLAND comes word of new call letters for the erstwhile
WPJB-FM (102.7 Narragansett Pier).  Now that the station is owned by
Back Bay Broadcasting and simulcasting WWKX ("Kix 106") Woonsocket,
it's going by WAKX(FM).

*In NEW HAMPSHIRE news, we learn that Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcasting
wants to build auxiliary sites for its Mount Washington stations, WHOM
(94.9 Mt. Washington) and WPKQ (103.7 Berlin), presumably to keep the
stations on the air should the mountaintop transmitters fail in the
winter months, when it's awfully hard to get up to New England's
tallest peak to fix them.

We also mourn the passing of Talbot Hood, former owner of Keene's
WKBK, who died May 2 at age 71.  Hood joined WKBK as program director
in 1959, and eventually became part-owner before retiring in 1991.