NorthEast Radio Watch 11/6: WCIZ Moves Down the Dial

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

*An upstate NEW YORK radio station is making the move to a new
frequency.  Watertown's WCIZ (93.5) began telling its listeners last
week to get ready to adjust their dials to 93.3, and NERW's ears up in
the North Country tell us the change has now happened.  The classic
hits station known as "Z93" jumps from 4000 to 6000 watts with the
change, and moves from a tower north of Watertown to a site shared
with sister station WFRY (97.5) in the hills east of town.

Meantime in the Buffalo area, WHLD (1270 Niagara Falls) wants to move
its transmitter some 30 miles south.  The ethnic outlet is currently
5000 watts day, 144 watts night from a two-tower array on Grand
Island, halfway between Buffalo and Niagara Falls.  An application
filed this week with the FCC would move WHLD to the WNED (970) site in
Hamburg, on the shore of Lake Erie south of Buffalo.  WHLD's new
5000/143 watt DA-1 operation would blanket Buffalo and Niagara Falls
by day, and would be fairly solid in the ethnic neighborhoods on
Buffalo's south side at night as well.  Could a city of license
change, perhaps to Hamburg, Lackawanna, or Orchard Park, be next?

Craig Fox is making some call-letter changes at his central New York
stations.  WNDR (103.9 Mexico) has applied for WVOQ, presumably to
match simulcast partner WVOA (105.1 DeRuyter), and WMBO (1340 Auburn)
has applied for WKGJ -- and we have NO idea what that stands for!
WMBO's been simulcasting WOLF (1490) Syracuse and WOLF-FM (96.7)
Oswego.  Speaking of which, WOLF-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania also has
new calls -- it's returned to the "WSWB" that was on its construction
permit years ago (and which later spent years on the CP for channel 64
there, now a PaxTV outlet).  The WOLF-TV calls move to the sister
station on channel 56 in Hazleton, until now known as WWLF.  And Fox
isn't letting his heritage calls disappear in Central New York -- his
W60BY Syracuse becomes WMBO-LP, and W18AL becomes WNDR-LP.

In the Rochester area, Jacor has filed formal applications to shuffle
transmitter sites for WNVE (95.1 Honeoye Falls) and WMAX-FM (107.3
South Bristol).  As expected, "the Nerve" files to move its 50,000
watts from Bristol Mountain some 30 miles north to Baker Hill in
Perinton, within sight of downtown Rochester, while "Jam'n 107" flees
from Bloomfield up to Bristol Mountain, where its whopping 650 watts
will barely reach Rochester on a good day (but should cover the
central Finger Lakes quite nicely).  NERW wonders whether a
reshuffling of some of Jacor's Rochester-area formats will follow,
both to accomodate the new coverage areas and to account for the
still-unbuilt CP for 102.1 Albion.

WYLF (850 Penn Yan) has applied for reinstatement of its CP for
nighttime flea power.  

The Syracuse Community Radio folks have won a CP for 89.9 in Fenner,
New York, for a translator rebroadcasting yet-unbuilt WXXC (88.7
Truxton).  It's an interesting CP for two reasons; first, because SCR
already has a CP for a broadcaster in Fenner, WXXE (90.5), and second,
because 89.9 is co-channel with WRVO in Oswego, a full class B NPR
affiliate barely 60 miles away.  NERW wonders whether SCR will use the
construction of this translator as a bargaining chip to get WRVO to
drop its objections to some of SCR's plans to squeeze a new signal
into Syracuse.

In other translator news, St. Lawrence University's WSLJ (88.9
Watertown) will soon be heard over a new translator in nearby
Lowville, W201CB on 88.1.  And in TV news up that way, veteran WWTI
(Channel 50) reporter John Moore has been named assignment editor at
the Watertown ABC affiliate.  Moore's been with the station since
its 1988 debut as WFYF.  

Continuing up the St. Lawrence, the student station at SUNY Potsdam
has a new slogan.  WAIH (90.3) replaces "Your station, your music,
your way" (often followed with an on-air "Want fries with that?") with
the much more concise "The Way."  Wonder if they play Fastball twice
an hour?

And down on Long Island, there's a new general manager at WRCN (103.9
Riverhead.  Stephen Hobbs was once the GM at Boston's WKLB-FM.

*In MASSACHUSETTS, one of the founders of "The River" in Haverhill is
heading south.  Mike Mullaney was the founding music director when
WLYT (92.5) became WXRV back in 1995, and was the station's morning
guy for the last two years as well.  Now he's gotten an offer he can't
refuse, to become assistant program director at WBMX (98.5) in Boston.
He'll start later this month; no replacement has been named yet.

Brockton's WCAV (97.7) wants to move north; it's applied to move from
its current facility alongside route 24 south of the city to a
150-meter tower on North Quincy Street, at the northern edge of
Brockton (and, of course, a few miles closer in to Boston).  WCAV
would go from its current 3000 watts at 84 meters AAT to 2700 watts at
150 meters AAT.  Also moving is WCRB (102.5 Waltham), which has been
granted FCC approval to move across the highway from the WBZ-TV tower
in Needham to the FM128 tower in Newton.

Natick's WJLT (1060) has won FCC approval to boost power to 40
kilowatts daytime from its current transmitter site in Framingham
(shared with WKOX and WRPT).

Changes are imminent at Mega Broadcasting's new acquisitions in
Boston, as 10 staffers get the boot at WBPS (890 Dedham), which will
soon drop its multilingual format for Spanish.  Also going Spanish is
WNFT (1150 Boston.  Mega says the two stations will target different
demographics within Boston's diverse Hispanic community.  Mega takes
control of the stations December 1.  (NERW notes that WNFT's temporary
format of R&B oldies never even got mentioned in the Globe's article
this week about urban radio in Boston, while the other paper, usually
much more accurate, somehow put WBPS on "850".)

Anniversary time: Congratulations to WCRB, which celebrates 50 years
of classical radio in Boston next week.  NERW notes that while the
WCRB format is 50 years old, that history includes two stations --
WCRB (AM) 1330, which had a diverse format from its inception in 1948
until going all-classical a few years later, and WCRB-FM, which
debuted in 1954 and carried the classical torch after the AM changed
calls, formats, and eventually owners in the late seventies.)  And
congrats as well to UMass Amherst's WMUA (91.1), which is getting
ready for its half-century next year.  WMUA is asking station veterans
to drop a line to wmua50@stuaf.umass.edu to be added to a database of
former staffers -- and to be invited to the station's anniversary
party next June 3.  WMUA's also on the web -- check it out at
http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~wmua (and even listen to the station in
RealAudio!)

WBZ (1030) decided its all-news image was more important than its
sports committments this year, so unlike past Election Days, the
Tuesday night Bruins game was hurriedly moved to WESX (1230 Salem) and
WJDA (1300 Quincy), leaving 'BZ free and clear for non-stop reports on
the Cellucci-Harshbarger race and the rest of the elections action.
NERW wonders why none of CBS' FM signals were considered suitable for
one night of Bruins...

Corrections and clarifications from last week: The WFNX staffer who
was concealing the salami in the WBMX lobby was Angie C., not Julie
Kramer.  WMJX (106.7)'s new website is at www.magic1067.com, with no
period in the frequency.  And no matter what our folks in Chicago were
telling us, we should have known better than to think Chancellor would
pull Ed McMann off Kiss 108 during a ratings book.  His appearance on
the company's new "Jammin' Oldies 103.5" (ex-WRCX) in the Windy City
is via the miracle of voicetracking and ISDN...all from the comfort of
Medford.

What's this about WZLX luring Mark Parenteau back to Boston from New
York's WAXQ?  More next week...

*Another anniversary to report in RHODE ISLAND, as Newport's WADK
(1540) turned 50 Friday morning and celebrated with a day-long
anniversary show.  The station signed on November 6, 1948, as WRJM,
with the first show at 7 AM being "Wake Up with Flo."  Congratulations
to a station that's always believed in being local...and we'd love to
hear tape of the anniversary show if anyone out there has it!

*Two new calls in VERMONT this week, and one's an oldie-but-goodie.
The WNBX calls date back to the very dawn of radio in the Connecticut
River Valley in the twenties, and later spent years on the FM side of
WKNE in Keene (now WKNE-FM 103.7).  More recently, they've been
attached to the 100.5 in Lebanon NH.  Now Bob and Shirley Wolf have
laid claim to this piece of history, attaching it to their AM 1480 in
Springfield, formerly WCFR.  Up the valley a bit in White River
Junction, WKXE (95.3) becomes WWSH-FM, joining "Wish" sister stations
WSSH (101.5 Marlboro) and WZSH (107.1 Bellows Falls).  The WWSH calls
used to be in Pittston, Pennsylvania.

Way up north, WWLR (91.5 Lyndonville) returned to the air at full
power (3 kilowatts) Tuesday morning.  "Impact 91.5" had been suffering
some transmitter problems; glad to see them back on the air!

*Buckley Broadcasting turned on its latest adult-standards station in
the Hartford area last Saturday.  WMMW (1470) Meriden is the third
station to share voicetracked jocks and format with WDRC (1360)
Hartford; the other two are WSNG (610) Torrington and WWCO (1240)
Waterbury.  

Hartford LPTV W05CF gets new calls; they're WMLD-LP.

In an effort to repair its troubled image in the New Haven
community, WYBC (94.3/1340) is considering establishing a community
relations board.  WYBC came in for some bad press when it purchased
bankrupt urban outlet WNHC (1340) and changed its format, and for even
more bad press when a weekend host resigned from the station, claiming
it reneged on its promise to move the timeslot of her Saturday morning
show.  

This just in: Al Pellegrino, who served as general manager of WPOP
(1410 Hartford) and WIOF (104.1 Waterbury) for 22 years, starting in
1974, died Thursday at his East Haven home.  Pellegrino had also
served as executive vice president of Merv Griffin's broadcasting
group, and as founding general manager of WKCI (101.3 Hamden).
Pellegrino had been ill for several years.  He was 66 years old.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Albert Bernard Pellegrino
Scholarship Fund, Sacred Heart Academy, 265 Benham St., Hamden CT
06514.

*And that's it for this (fairly quiet) week...see you next Friday!

- -=Scott Fybush - NorthEast Radio Watch - (c) 1998=-

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