NorthEast Radio Watch 3/10: Farewell, Judy Jarvis

[Scott D Fybush <fybush@world.std.com>]

*Eighteen months after being diagnosed with lung cancer, CONNECTICUT
based talk host Judy Jarvis died Tuesday (3/7) at age 54.  Jarvis, a
veteran of New England newspapers and radio and a nonsmoker,
discovered she had the disease after returning from a remote broadcast
of her Talk America show at the 1998 NAB convention.  She had recently
returned to join her son and producer, Jason Jarvis, after being
absent for treatment.  We hear Jason Jarvis will continue with the
show; our condolences go out to him and all who knew Judy Jarvis.

Just as we were getting ready to go to press reporting that the call
change for New London's WTYD (100.9) had yet to take effect, we heard
otherwise from the folks at Hall Communications.  The soft rock ended
at noon today (3/10), replaced by oldies as "Kool 101," WKNL.  Morning
guy Bill Reese stays, Dan O'Brien moves from sister country station
WCTY to afternoons at WKNL, trading places with former WTYD
afternoon jock Sarell, and the search for a PD is underway.  Oldies
had been missing from the New London market since WVVE (102.3
Stonington) dropped the format at year's end; we wonder whether the
WKNL calls are a subliminal swipe at competitor WKCD (107.7
Pawcatuck), aka "Channel 107-7."

Not going anywhere: We hear 64-year WTIC (1080 Hartford) veteran Bob
Steele recently announced his retirement -- when he reaches the age of
100 in the year 2011!  Steele continues to host one Saturday morning a
month during the warmer months on WTIC.  Meanwhile, Saturday 10 AM - 2
PM host Ann Baldwin is leaving the station to run her own media
consulting firm.

*Moving on to MASSACHUSETTS, we find the first Northeast spinoff from
the Clear Channel - AMFM merger: WHMP (1400/99.3 Northampton), which
go from Clear Channel to Saga, where they'll join WAQY (102.1) and
WPNT (1600 East Longmeadow) in what's now a Springfield-market
cluster.  This is a very small piece of a huge series of spin-off
deals involving more than 100 Clear Channel/AMFM stations nationwide;
expect Albany and perhaps Providence sales to be announced soon.

Entercom's WAAF (107.3 Worcester) has been granted a construction
permit to come down from Mount Asnebumskit in Paxton, moving closer to
Boston with 9600 watts directional from 335 meters on the
soon-to-be-built new tower at the WUNI-TV (Channel 27) site on Stiles
Hill in Boylston.  Also granted a move is WBOS (92.9 Brookline), which
will join Greater Media siblings WTKK, WROR, and WMJX on the
Prudential Center with 18.5 kW non-directional.  Like WTKK and WROR,
WBOS had been on the "FM128" tower in Newton, which will be left with
just WBUR, WJMN, WBMX, WODS and WCRB once all the dust settles.  

Speaking of WJMN, it's getting a replacement for afternoon jock
Ralphie Marino, who's moved to Clear Channel sister WKTU in New York.
Ramiro Torres moves from nights to fill Marino's slot, with Stevie
Demann coming up from Orlando's WJHM (101.9 Cocoa) to take over the
night shift.

And speaking of night shifts, there's a sudden opening on the
Saturday night roster at WODS (103.3).  We hear overnighter Jason
Wright walked out of the building mid-shift around 3 AM one recent
Saturday, leaving dead air until a quick-thinking CBS security guard
went 'round to the other side of the glass and took over Wright's
shift until reinforcements could arrive!

It's not "Music America," but it's close: former fill-in host Carole
Sloane is taking over afternoons at Worcester's public radio WICN
(90.5) beginning Monday.

Life among the low of power: Allston-Brighton Free Radio (1580) will
inagurate its Part 15 service to the neighborhood with - why not? - a
parade tomorrow afternoon (Saturday 3/11).  It starts at noon at
station headquarters, 107 Brighton Avenue, and will work its way
around the neighborhood before returning to the station.  After a
48-hour sign-on marathon, ABFR will settle in with a noon-midnight
schedule Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays, and 5 PM-midnight the rest
of the week.

We hear Beverly's "WLMK," operating with low power on 89.3 from the
Landmark School, hopes to become a legal LPFM on that frequency -- and
thinks it can pull it off by May.  

And March 15 is now set as sign-on day for full-power WNAN (91.1), the
new public radio outlet on Nantucket.  Wish we could be there!

*This from VERMONT and Jay Williams: Contrary to what NERW's ears in
the market have been telling us, he has *not* bought out partner Robin
Martin -- and what's more, he says WIZN (106.7 Vergennes) and WBTZ
(99.9 Plattsburgh)'s LMA are *not* for sale, though he says he
continues to receive offers.  Duly noted!

Out in the Northeast Kingdom, Steve Silberberg's WDOT (95.7 Danville)
has been granted a CP to move to 95.9 as a class C3.  The new WDOT
facility would still be 3 kilowatts, but from 205 meters AAT instead
of the current 51, and from a new site east of St. Johnsbury rather
than southwest.

*On we move to NEW YORK, where the NERW-mobile spent most of the day
in Seneca Falls, listening to the dignified farewell of WSFW-FM
(99.3).  As we told you last week, WSFW (1110) and its FM have been
sold to Family Life Ministries, which is trading them to George Kimble
and Jim Martin (The Radio Group) in exchange for the 93.7 Clyde
facility of The Radio Group's WLLW.  The WLLW classic rock format and
calls will move from 93.7 to the former WSFW-FM facility at 99.3 come
Monday morning at 6; 93.7 will go religious under yet-to-be-announced
calls; and WSFW(AM) goes to Music of Your Life while moving its
studios from downtown Seneca Falls to the WLLW/WGVA (1240 Geneva)/WNYR
(98.5 Waterloo) facility on the west side of Geneva.

WSFW's outgoing owner, George Souhan, held an open house at the
station on its final day Friday, and the community responded in a
manner befitting a station that's been focused on its home town since
it signed on in the fall of 1968.  All day, listeners stopped by with
food and farewell messages, and many in the building were in tears
when a half-hour farewell show aired at 12:30.  While WSFW news
director Greg Cotterill and at least one salesperson have been hired
by the new owners, and while several other WSFW personalities turned
down offers, for most of the staff it was the last day of work.  After
playing Kenny G's "Millennium Mix" of Auld Lang Syne, WSFW-FM repeated
the farewell show just after 5:30 and pulled the plug shortly after 6
PM.  A few minutes later, the signal reappeared as a simulcast of the
Radio Group's WNYR (and, we'd note, with no WSFW-FM legal!), which
will continue through the weekend until WLLW takes over Monday
morning.

On the AM side, the automated classic country format kept running
until about 6:25 PM, when it dropped carrier for a moment and returned
with Music of Your Life.  That format, which will add local news
on Monday, is only temporary; because of overlap with MOYL affiliate
WYLF (850 Penn Yan), owned by Kimble's brother Russ, WSFW(AM) will
switch within a few weeks to the soft AC format of the Radio Group's
WCGR (1550 Canandaigua).  The AM side of WSFW also keeps much of the
school sports and all the Sunday specialty programming that had been
on WSFW AM-FM.

Still in the offing: an application to move 99.3 from the AM stick
on East Bayard Street to a full 6 kW from the WNYR tower south of
Waterloo on Route 96.  (And, we hope, an actual sign-off announcement
on 1110 -- it just dumped carrier a few minutes after the abrupt
switch to MOYL, the result, most likely, of a frenzied few days of
realigning STLs to make everything work right...)

It's depressing to think that there's now no commercial station in the
northern Finger Lakes that will be live and local after morning drive
on weekdays; at the same time, NERW's at least grateful that the
Kimble-Martin group is locally owned.  The situation could easily have
been much worse.

Apropos of which, we note that Family Life has a few more irons in the
fire this week: a license to cover for W210BL (89.9 Norwich), which is
a relay, if we recall right, of WCII (88.5 Spencer) -- and an
application for a 91.1 Rochester translator for WCIY (88.9
Canandaigua).  Yes, that's second-adjacent to WXXI-FM (91.5), a
Rochester-licensed full class B.  NERW hopes sanity will prevail, but
fears otherwise.

The Family Worship Center has been hit with a petition to deny for its
89.5 Corning translator application.

While we're in the Southern Tier: We now know how much White
Broadcasting is paying for WENY AM-FM (1230/92.7) in Elmira: $1.5
million.  We also now know that "White" is commonly owned with "Lilly
Broadcasting," which recently bought the TV side of WENY (Channel
36).  And if you want to point out that the sale thus turns WENY from
"Green" to "Lilly-White," well, at least one NERW correspondent has
beaten you to it.