NERW 3/5: More on Lydon/WBUR Dis-"Connect"

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

------------------------------E-MAIL EDITION-----------------------------
--------------------------NorthEast Radio Watch--------------------------
                               March 5, 2001

IN THIS ISSUE:

*MASSACHUSETTS: Lydon, WBUR's Dis-"Connect" Gets Ugly
*RHODE ISLAND: So That's What WARL Stands For!
*NEW YORK: FCC Commissioner Speaks Out on WGR Complaint

-----------------------------by Scott Fybush-----------------------------
-------------------------<http://www.fybush.com>-------------------------




*From beneath the snows of upstate New York, it's another edition of
NorthEast Radio Watch...and what a strange week it's been around the
dials.  Let's start in MASSACHUSETTS, where the dispute between
WBUR-FM (90.9 Boston) and Christopher Lydon's "Connection" crew turned
into a full-fledged split this week.

If you've been following this saga, you know by now that Lydon and
"Connection" executive producer Mary McGrath wanted partial ownership
of the public-radio talk show as WBUR prepares to offer it to the NPR
system.  WBUR management, perhaps envious of the fortunes earned by
the station's other signature show ("Car Talk," which is owned by
hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi), balked at the demand -- in the process
revealing to the media that Lydon had been offered a raise to nearly
$300,000 a year, and McGrath nearly half that.

After months of negotiations, Lydon and McGrath were suspended with
pay two weeks ago.  Most of the show's staff quit WBUR last week,
followed on Thursday by conflicting statements from the station and
from Lydon, both amounting to the same message: Lydon and McGrath
won't be returning to WBUR.

The station says the two "informed WBUR that they are leaving their
employment to pursue careers in a for-profit, independent production
company."  A statement posted at a hurriedly-created Lydon Web site
says Lydon and McGrath "didn't inform WBUR of anything except that we
were willing to negotiate a way to return to the station under any
reasonable circumstances to continue to do the program we love."

Lydon appeared on WBUR on Friday for brief segments on a "Morning
Edition" cut-in and on the station's noontime "Here and Now" program,
claiming that he never asked WBUR general manager Jane Christo for a
raise during his career at the station (which began in 1994), and that
the salary offer that's been making headlines is an attempt by Christo
to make him appear greedy.

Meanwhile, the pages of Boston's newspapers have been filled with
opinions about the "Connection" brouhaha, including a weekend diatribe
from Howie Carr (who, as a WRKO talk host, is hardly a neutral party)
that seemed to be more jealous of the money Lydon was making than
anything else.  More surprising was the Herald's Dean Johnson on
Friday, presenting the WBUR party line as "fact," then garbling the
actual facts (claiming the station created "The Connection" in 1983, a
decade ahead of its actual debut).

As for Lydon's next move: we hear New York's WNYC is already telling
listeners that Lydon will be back on its airwaves within a few weeks.
"The Connection," what's left of it, is carrying on over WBUR and a
few dozen affiliates with a series of guest hosts.

Since NERW is a journal of fact and opinion, we'll step on the soapbox
here:

Is "The Connection" itself Chris Lydon's intellectual property?
Probably not; WBUR did take the risks involved in its creation, paid
for the studio space and the satellite time and the producers'
salaries and so forth.

That said, we believe Lydon and McGrath were completely justified in
their desire to share in the proceeds WBUR would have reaped by taking
their show to a national audience via NPR.  Yes, the idea of a daily
talk show originated with WBUR management -- but the form that program
took was uniquely Christopher Lydon, as borne out by the lackluster
shows that have emanated under "The Connection"'s banner since his
ouster.  (And as for the show's name, we couldn't care less whether it
was Lydon's idea or that of WBUR; our local NPR station has been
running a 10 AM talk show called "1370 Connection" since the days when
Lydon was still doing the news on WGBH-TV, so it's hardly an original
title.)

Beyond the name and the timeslot, there's really very little
intellectual property that's associated with "The Connection," a
reality that we suspect will be borne out by the decisions hundreds of
public radio programmers will get to make in a few months' time.

Assuming Lydon can find a station willing to partner with him on his
terms (and if it's not WNYC, we suspect several other big public radio
players will be ready to jump on board), he'll be offering stations a
show that will sound, we're sure, just like "The Connection" did -- a
proven product with a unique host.  WBUR, by contrast, will be
offering something called "The Connection" with an untried host and
without the staff that booked the guests, screened the calls and kept
the conversation going on-line.  Think back to late-night TV circa
1993: NBC may have kept the title "Late Night," but would anybody doubt
that the David Letterman show still moved to CBS almost intact?  

No slam to Conan O'Brien here -- but we suspect the public-radio
community will take the well-known host, whatever his new program is
called, over whatever WBUR scrapes together and calls "The
Connection."  It's no different from the situation Westwood One would
face if Don Imus or Howard Stern ever decided to leave: the network
may own the show, but who'd listen without the host?  

(And for those criticizing the size of Lydon's paycheck: it's far, far
less than Howard or the I-Man take home, even with WBUR's proposed
raises.  It's been hard for some listeners, not to mention commercial
competitors, to come to terms with the reality of public radio,
WBUR-style, these days: it's big business, and when business is good,
the people who create the content and draw the listeners who donate
deserve to be compensated properly.  Sorry, Howie...)

The only question left to be answered will be this: if
WBUR stubbornly keeps on offering its rump "Connection," regardless of
affiliate defections (and there will be defections), how will public
radio listeners in Boston and Rhode Island hear Lydon's new show?

And if Lydon's serious about not caring about the money, only about
owning his own work...well, suddenly we here at NERW feel like we're
in good company.  (In fact, Chris, you're more than welcome to
distribute your new show at fybush.com...)

*Other news around the Bay State: Entercom's Boston properties, talker
WRKO (680), sports WEEI (850), rhythmic WQSX (93.7 Lawrence) and
active rock WAAF (107.3 Worcester) have vacated the premises at the
old American Radio Systems headquarters, 116 Huntington Avenue, in
favor of new quarters at 20 Guest Street way out in deepest Brighton
(it's the new New Balance building, hard by the Mass Pike, across from
the Stockyard restaurant.)

While the new studio complex gives the stations more space in which to
work, we hear there were some pretty bad glitches last week when it
came to phone connections, leaving hosts such as Howie Carr without
callers for a while.  Assuming the phones work now, mark down
617-779-5300 as the new main number for the cluster.  

Clear Channel, next: "Cadillac Jack" McCartney's been busy filling
some holes in his lineup at WJMN (94.5), bringing jock Kobe east from
his gig doing afternoons at Denver's KQKS (107.5 Lakewood CO) to fill
his night slot at Jam'n.  Following Kobe in late nights will be Chuck
Dogg, moving over from afternoons at Radio One's WBOT (97.7 Brockton).

On the TV side of things, former WCVB icon Chet Curtis starts his new
career at New England Cable News this week, joining Margie Reedy to
anchor a revamped "NewsNight," now seen weeknights at 8 PM.
Meanwhile, WCVB has to do some weeknight reshuffling of its own with
the departure of Heather Kahn.  Once seen as the likely successor to
Curtis' ex-wife, Natalie Jacobson, Kahn instead decided to walk away
from the 5:30 and 11 PM anchor chair to concentrate on raising her
young children -- and that means Liz Brunner gets those newscasts
instead.

One more TV note: AT&T is extending the reach of its regional "AT&T 3"
channel, launching the service this weekend on the Boston and
Brookline systems it recently acquired from Cablevision.  "AT&T 3" has
taken on many of the sports and general-entertainment programs that
were abandoned by WHUB (Channel 66) when that station's brief stint as
an indie came to an end last month.  (Not that we're picking on the
Herald or anything, but we were amused to see "WHUB (Ch. 62)" in Joel
Brown's TV column over the weekend...)

Up on the North Shore, WNSH (1570 Beverly) is abandoning its little
top-loaded antenna on a furniture store roof in Hamilton, replacing
that 125-watt signal with a stronger signal from a new tower on the
campus of Endicott College in Beverly, where the station's studio has
been for several years.  We hear WNSH is now testing from the new
site, though we don't know yet whether the station has built the
four-tower, 500-watt directional array it was planning, or whether
it's running lower power from a single stick.

Out in Southbridge, Eastern Media unloads WESO (970) just a few months
after buying the station for the second time.  The new owner: Barry
and Susan Armstrong's "Money Matters Radio," for a reported $250,000.
Expect WESO to begin carrying the same business talk as Concord's WBNW
(1120) and Plymouth's WPLM (1390), extending the format into southern
Worcester County.

Longtime observers of the Boston radio scene know to mark down the
call letters on AM 1510 in pencil, and here's why: just weeks after
changing calls from WNRB to WSZE, the station formerly known as WMEX,
WITS, WMRE, WSSH, WKKU and WSSH (again) made yet another call change
last week.  It seems "Sports Zone" is someone else's trademark, so the
WSZE calls were quietly retired in favor of WWZN, though with no
change in the One-on-One Sports programming (which will eventually be
rebranded as Sporting News Radio).

The change left your Boston Radio Archives hanging, since we didn't
think to roll tape quickly enough to get a WSZE legal on tape.  Your
archivists would be darned pleased to hear from anyone who might have
recorded WSZE during its quick flash across the New England
ether...posterity thanks you!

*Here's one that should go under the Bay State headlines: we now know
why Attleboro's 1320 changed calls from WJYT to WARL a few months
back.  Since the station is now targeting listeners across the line in
RHODE ISLAND, we'll put it in the Ocean State for the moment:

The new calls stand for "Web Access Radio Live," a new format that
will apparently feature leased-time talk shows that will be streamed
live (video and audio) over the Web at the same time as they're heard
on WARL.  

We couldn't get much from the site at webaccessradiolive.com,
especially since all that unnecessary Java crashed our browser twice,
but here's what we gathered once we restarted our computer: WARL, a
new venture of station owner ADD Media, will lease hour-long blocks of
time (so far, judging by the posted schedule, it's leased two hours a
week, leaving just 166 to go!), allowing programmers eight minutes of
commercial time during the hour while also selling its own ad time to
corporate sponsors during program breaks.

Here's where it gets stranger: check out this "coverage map" we found
on the site.  The map shown on WARL's site looks like a perfect circle
centered somewhere near East Providence...but unless something's
changed, 1320's signal is a directional one, aimed southeast from its
four towers in Attleboro.  (That's the day signal, mind you...at night
it's an even more directional beam to the southeast!)

The site also claims two additional affiliates carrying the
programming: "WRPT Boston" on 650 with 2500 watts (NERW readers know
it's now WJLT, licensed to Ashland, and running just 250 watts with a
CP for 2000), and "WNTY Hartford," actually WNTY 990 Southington CT,
with 2500 directional watts instead of the claimed 5000.

The whole thing sounds like a belated relic of the dot-com craze a few
years ago; we have our doubts about how a second leased-time talk
format will fare on a signal-challenged facility in a market that
already has three "real" talkers (WICE, WPRO and WHJJ), a public radio
AM outlet that's mostly talk (WRNI) and of course the leased-time WALE
(990 Greenville) aiming its mighty 50 kilowatts at all the fishes in
the sea...

(Anyone in the Providence, er, Attleboro area who can hear WARL is
invited to let us know what's filling all those hours on 1320 at the
moment!)

*Local talk is returning to afternoon drive in southern CONNECTICUT,
as Laura Schlessinger gets bumped from that slot on WELI (960 New
Haven), replaced by a voice from the past.  Steve Kalb left Radio
Towers Park eight years ago, ending up in TV news management up and
down the Eastern Seaboard.  With the demise (more or less) of his last
TV employer, "Philly TV News" (seen on WTVE 51 Reading PA), Kalb is
back in radio and back at WELI, holding down the 3-7 PM slot beginning
today (March 5).  Schlessinger moves to mid-mornings, displacing the
Tom Scott local talk show.

The Pomfret School's WBVC (91.1 Pomfret) applies for a license to
cover, so we guess this new noncomm must be on the air up in the rural
northeast Connecticut area, just outside Putnam.

Congratulations to Ann McManus; she moves up from VP/sales to
VP/station manager at WICC (600 Bridgeport) and WEBE (107.9 Westport)!

We're still waiting to hear a rescheduled date for the WTIC (1080)
maintenance period that was postponed last weekend.  The basic plan is
still the same: CBS sister stations WTIC and KRLD (1080 Dallas) will
coordinate some needed maintenance work so that the 1080 frequency
will be wide open for half an hour or so one Saturday night soon.
We're told last weekend's work was delayed when KRLD didn't get a
common-point meter back from the repair shop in time.  Expect a new
date within a few weeks...you'll hear about it here on NERW!

A few quick bits of TV news: The Hartford market has always been the
"no man's land" where Red Sox Nation meets Yankee/Mets country, and it
appears WTXX (Channel 20) has crossed over to the dark side (oops, is
our bias showing?), switching from the Olde Town Team to the Mets for
this season.  In fairness to the folks at "WB20," they say the rights
to the Sox have been claimed by another station this year; no word on
where Nutmeg State viewers will be able to get their Sox fix this
year.  Fans looking for UConn women's basketball will be able to catch
that action on Connecticut Public TV for four more years; the
university and the network signed that deal this week, continuing what
may be the most successful public TV sports contract in the nation.

Just down the dial, the scheduled March 1 flip of WUVN (Channel 18) in
Hartford from shopping to Univision has been postponed; no word yet on
when that change will become reality.

*The only part of Northern New England checking in this week is MAINE,
where we're happy to draw your attention to a nice profile of the
legendary J.J. Jeffrey in this week's "Casco Bay Weekly" (and yes,
writer Allen Dammann quoted yours truly extensively...), even as we
puzzle over an application from Jeffrey's WJJB (900 Brunswick) that
appears to propose dropping the station's daytime power from a
kilowatt to 66 watts.  That can't be right...and we suspect the
garbled FCC database strikes again.

A correction from the Bangor area: the new calls in Searsport on 101.7
are in fact WFZX, which is supposed to spell "Fox" somehow.

*We'll start out our NEW YORK report with two new morning shows in
Binghamton.  One's at WLTB (101.7 Johnson City), which has lured
longtime WMXW (103.3 Vestal) co-hosts John Carter and Chris O'Connor
over to Vestal Parkway for the wakeup shift beginning today (March 5).

The other marks the return to radio of the "Greaseman," aka Doug
Tracht.  The Ithaca College graduate cut his teeth in Binghamton at
WENE (1430 Endicott) before moving up to Rochester (WAXC) and on to
the big time in Jacksonville and Washington, before a racist remark
led to his dismissal from WARW (94.7 Bethesda MD) two years ago.  

Tracht announced last week that he's coming back -- albeit, for now,
on a small scale, signing Binghamton's WCDW (100.5 Conklin) as his
first affiliate for a new DC-based show that starts today (March 5).
The only other affiliates so far are small AM stations in Baltimore
(WNST 1570 Towson) and Washington (WZHF 1390 Arlington VA), but Tracht
is hoping to show that he's cleaned up his act and is ready to return
to the airwaves.

Can he keep himself from tripping up this time?  We'll be listening...

Speaking of foul-mouthed talk hosts, the FCC this week dismissed an
indecency complaint filed against Buffalo sports station WGR (550).
Listener Michael Palko had complained about the "Bauerle and the
Bulldog" show, in particular a promotion in which the Entercom-owned
station distributed NHL-logo urinal cakes (the one item NERW never
wants in our radio promo collection!).  WGR's hosts then discussed who
in the NHL they'd like to -- and we quote -- "piss on."

The Commission said the potty talk on WGR didn't "describe sexual or
excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner," thus
letting WGR off the hook.  And that made outgoing commissioner Gloria
Tristani really, um, annoyed (no, we weren't going to go there!)

Tristani, who's been rather outspoken in her last lame-duck months,
issued a scathing statement that carefully explored the offensive
nature of urination (remember, dear readers, this is your government
at work, unless of course you're reading this in Canada, in which case
this kind of talk is probably OK as long as it's in the right language
and the logger tapes are running...but we digress), then slammed the
Commission's own Mass Media Bureau for "read(ing) the facts alleged in
the complaint in the light most favorable to the broadcaster rather
than the complainant," winding up with a conclusion that the public
rightfully perceives the FCC's indecency efforts as "ineffective."

Speaking of "ineffective," the increasingly silly community-of-license
rules are getting tested again right in NERW's back yard.  As
predicted in this space last fall, Entercom has applied to move the
93.3 allocation in the Rochester area from Avon (about 20 miles south
of town in Livingston County) to Fairport (a quaint canal village
about 8 miles east of downtown).  The result would be a move of oldies
WBBF-FM from a tower down in Livingston County to the WBEE-FM (92.5
Rochester) tower in Penfield, thus improving what's now a decidedly
rimshot signal in much of the market.

We've got nothing against the move itself, especially if it means
we'll actually be able to hear "93BBF" at NERW Central, but reading
the application reminded us that it's just plain silly to be wasting
FCC administrative effort on determining whether Fairport has its own
businesses, newspaper, phone exchange, and so on -- when everyone
outside the sheltered confines of the Portals knows that the only
thing about WBBF-FM that will be "Fairport" will be the word spliced
into the legal ID once the change goes through.  We're still waiting
for someone to get a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking going to bring the
community-of-license rules in line with the real world of
deregulation...

Before we leave western New York, there's late word that WBKX (96.5
Fredonia) has dropped the country format it was running (as "the
Bull") for 80s pop as "96 Kix FM."  

There's a job open in Syracuse: Chris Mann has departed nights at WWHT
(Hot 107.9) for the Music City, where he's now doing nights at WRVW
(107.5).

Over in the Albany market, WGY (810 Schenectady) revamped its
nighttime lineup this week, bringing Tom Leykis back to its schedule
after a year of Lionel.  Leykis' syndicated show will run from 6-10 PM
on WGY, cutting J.R. Gach back to three hours from four and pushing
Phil Hendrie to a 10 PM start.  Gach won't have to wait around the WGY
studios to do his long-distance show for WLW (700 Cincinnati) anymore,
either; the Clear Channel outlet ended that gig after Gach let loose
with some remarks that offended the Japanese community.  (Gach would
have been off WLW in a few weeks anyway when the Reds season begins.)

Over in Kingston, the talk is gone at WGHQ (920), as that station
settles into an adult-standards simulcast with Clear Channel sister
WKIP (1450 Poughkeepsie).

Way up north in Plattsburgh, the FCC finally makes official a call
change that we thought had already happened: 1070 changes from
WGLY(AM) to WLFE(AM), simulcasting WLFE-FM 102.3 across the lake in
St. Albans, Vermont.

Gunfire erupted outside the Greenwich Village studios of New York's
WQHT (97.1) last Sunday, as 22 shots were fired following a live
appearance by rapper Lil' Kim.  The tabloids say it was related to a
spat between Kim and "Capone 'n' Noreaga," and who are we to argue?

The FCC has dismissed WFUV (90.7 New York)'s application for an
on-channel booster in Manhattan; we're still waiting for the station's
application to make changes to its primary site in the Bronx to show
up in the database.

Out on Long Island, we can put a price to the sale of WLIM (1580
Patchogue): Jack Ellsworth's Long Island Music gets $850,000 from
Polnet for the adult standards outlet.

*Just across the Hudson from Manhattan, the big news from NEW JERSEY
is the demise of "Sunny 1430," the most recent attempt to keep the
adult standards format alive in the New York market.  Arthur Liu's
Multicultural Broadcasting pulled the plug on the format at WNSW (1430
Newark) this past week, replacing the big bands with leased-time
ethnic programming and displacing jocks like Russ "Weird Beard"
Knight, leaving listeners in the city struggling to pull in suburban
signals such as WVNJ (1160 Oakland NJ) and WRTN (93.5 New Rochelle) to
get their Sinatra fix.

Heading south a hundred miles or so, there's a shakeup coming in Cape
May County next week.  We hear March 12 will be the day the modern AC
programming of "The Coast" moves from WCZT (94.3 Avalon) up the dial
to WWZK (98.7 Villas).  WWZK was recently sold to Coastal Broadcasting
Systems, WCZT's owner, which had been operating 98.7 under an LMA as
"K-Rock" during Marc Scott's tenure as owner.  Scott walks away with
$1.4 million; Coastal plans to take 94.3 to oldies once the Coast
makes its move, we're told.

*Not much doing in PENNSYLVANIA this week, except in Johnstown, where
we hear WODZ (850) is dropping oldies to go sports as WSPO (though
it'll always be WJAC to us), and in Allentown, where "Cat Country"
WCTO (96.1 Easton) brings Ken Anderson back to town as its morning guy
beginning today (March 5).

*Up in CANADA, the CRTC signed the death warrants this week for four
more AM signals, granting moves to FM for CJNH Bancroft, Ontario (from
1240 to 97.7 and 50 kW), CKGB Timmins, Ontario (from 750 to 99.3 and
40 kW), CJCJ Woodstock, N.B. (from 920 to 104.1 with 10 kW) and CKCL
Truro, N.S. (from 600 to 99.5 with 16.75 kW).

The CRTC also granted the CBC a new FM signal in Shelburne, Ontario,
northwest of Toronto.  The 2600 watt signal on 102.5 will relay
Toronto's CBLA (99.1) to an area that used to be able to hear CBC
Radio One just fine until the plug was pulled on CBL (740) two years
ago.  Speaking of CBLA, it's applied to change its licensed power from
48 kW to 55.1 kW, in a uniquely Canadian tradition by which stations
can build new facilities at slightly different power levels than
originally licensed, then apply for a new power to reflect the
station's "as-built parameters."  Wonder what the FCC would make of an
application like that?

The CBC also wants to reduce its rent at the CN Tower by moving the
transmitter of CJBC-FM (90.3 Toronto), the little-heard outlet of
Radio-Canada's "chaine culturelle."  CJBC-FM would, if approved, serve
both its listeners with 5730 watts from First Canadian Place (the
CBLA-FM site) instead of 3500 watts from the CN Tower.

Redmond Broadcasting won approval for its C$1.05 million purchase of
Simcoe's CHCD (106.7) from James McLeod's CHCD-FM Inc., revealing in
the process that the station has yet to have a profitable year since
moving from the AM dial in 1998 (it was CHNR on 1600 back then.)

As long as we're out that way, we'll note the end of an era in London
television.  After 35 years at CFPL-TV (Channel 10, known these days
as "The New PL"), George Clarke was dismissed from the CHUM-owned
station last week.  Clarke had been the station's news director and
anchor of the 6 PM "News Now."

Speaking of CHUM, general manager Brad Phillips left Toronto flagships
CHUM (1050) and CHUM-FM (104.5) this week, just a few weeks before the
AM side drops oldies to go all sports.  Aiding in that transition:
CHUM re-upped with the Toronto Blue Jays to carry play-by-play for
another season.

Over in Quebec, Corus closed this week on its purchase of Metromedia
CMR, thus adding French all-news CINF (690), English all-news CINW
(940), English AC CFQR (92.5), French AC CKOI (96.9 Verdun), French
rock CKOO (98.5 Longueuil) and rimshotter CIME (103.9 Ste-Adele) to
its portfolio in the Montreal market.

*And that's it for another week here at NERW Central.  Don't miss this
week's Tower Site of the Week, coming Wednesday: the first part of our
pre-quake visit to Seattle -- and don't forget to take advantage of
the NERW Classifieds!  See you in seven...

-----------------------NorthEast Radio Watch------------------------
                       (c)2001 Scott Fybush
                          www.fybush.com

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