No Subject

On the public radio side, WAMC (90.3 Albany) wants to fill in a dead
spot in its coverage (say it with us now: "WAMC 90.3 Albany, WAMK 90.9
Kingston, WOSR 91.7 Midd"-- OK, now stop!) with a 91.9 translator in
Millerton, on the Connecticut line some 40 miles south of Albany.
We'd suspect this one will end up on the same Millerton tower as
Connecticut-licensed WQQQ (103.3 Sharon) and WKZE-FM (98.1
Salisbury).  Now there's a trivia question: how many sticks are home
to stations licensed to different states?  (Hint: WAMC itself
counts...)

And whilst in the Capital Region, we note that Clear Channel is
playing the allottment game again, with an application to move the
103.5B facility from Cobleskill (where it's now licensed as WQBJ) to
St. Johnsville, a wide spot in the road on the north side of the
Mohawk River between Little Falls and Fort Plain, some 40 miles west
of Albany (which, no matter what the FCC may say, is the market WQBJ
actually serves).  It's not yet clear what transmitter move could
follow an approval of the reallottment; stay tuned.  

Welcome back to the Albany Times Union's Mark McGwire; after a month
or so covering the Amadou Diallo trial for the TU's Web audience, he's
back to the radio/TV beat, where he continues to be one of the
region's most incisive and accurate columnists.

It was the end of an era in Buffalo radio a week ago, as WBEN (930)
signed off from its Elmwood Avenue studios at the end of Ed Little's
11 PM newscast last Saturday (3/4).  In addition to marking the end of
40 years at Elmwood for WBEN, the newscast was the last of Little's 62
year radio career, most of which was spent in Buffalo and much of
which was spent at the legendary WKBW (1520).  WBEN now holds forth
from an Amherst office park; Little's now enjoying retirement with his
family.

Our condolences to friends and family of Tom Sherman.  The WBBS (104.7
Fulton-Syracuse) jock died last Saturday (3/4) after a long illness.
His career included stops at WYXL and WNYP in the Ithaca market and
Elmira's WLVY.  Sherman was 43.  

*This tidbit from CANADA this week: CFBG (100.9 Bracebridge) wants to
cover the Muskoka region (the resort country way up north of Toronto)
with a much more potent signal.  The station has applied to move to
99.5, with 100 kilowatts in place of the present 2.9 kW.  

And a clarification of the Sudbury CBC transmitter history we were
wondering about last week: While the CRTC approved CBBS (90.1; CBC
Stereo) and CBOS (90.9; Radio-Canada Stereo) in October 1984, the
transmitters were never built and the licenses were deleted in 1993,
only to be reapplied for this year.

*Finally, this call letter note from out West: The legendary KHJ call
letters are about to return to the Los Angeles airwaves, more than a
decade after they disappeared.  (KHJ radio on 930 became KKHJ when it
was sold separately from the TV station in the great RKO sell-off;
blame Disney for changing KHJ-TV to KCAL-TV a few years later).  Now
the Spanish-language broadcaster (Liberman Broadcasting) that owns
KKHJ has convinced the FCC that "KK" in Spanish spells "ca-ca," which
is a naughty word -- and that changing the calls to anything but the
heritage three-letter version would confuse listeners.  Call it a
silly argument if you like, except for one thing: the FCC agreed.  

NERW can't help but hope that this is a prelude to the end of one of
the last remaining rock-solid regulations left at the FCC.  For the
last 15 years or so, when a three-letter call is changed, it's been
gone for good, with no exceptions.  We'd love to hear WHN, KYA, KRE,
KOH and the rest back on the air!  (Anybody for a return of WHQ? --
heck, anybody besides me even know what WHQ was?)

Which reminds us: We've been remiss in failing to summarize January's
California excursion.  Next week...promise!

*Finally this week, we note that Jim Hawkins has done it again.  The
latest addition to his "Radio Room" Web site
<www.exit109.com/~jimh/radio.shtml> is a visit to New York's WADO
(1280) transmitter in the Jersey Meadowlands, where the old Blaw-Knox
diamond tower met its demise last fall.  Want to see what's replaced
it?  Go visit Jim...just be sure to leave an hour or three for all the
fun stuff you'll find there.

*That's it for this week; see you next Friday!

---------------------NorthEast Radio Watch------------------------
                     (c)2000 Scott Fybush

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