NERW 7/22: WQEX Loses the Asterisk

[fybush@gwind.pair.com]

------------------------------E-MAIL EDITION-----------------------------
--------------------------NorthEast Radio Watch--------------------------
                              July 22, 2002

IN THIS ISSUE:

*PENNSYLVANIA: WQEX's Channel 16 Dereserved
*NEW YORK: WBBF(AM) Goes A-Stunting
*CANADA: CBC Tower Demolished

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

*Pittsburgh's public television station is about to get at least $20
million richer - but PENNSYLVANIA will lose its last public TV
duopoly, thanks to an FCC decision last week that will allow channel
16 in the Steel City to be used for commercial broadcasting.

WQED (Channel 13) was among the first public television stations in
the country when it signed on in the spring of 1954 (KUHT in Houston
beat it on the air by more than a year, but WQED claims to be the
first community-owned station, while KUHT was and is owned by the
University of Houston); five years later, the station took an old
black-and-white transmitter and added WQEX (Channel 16) to its
lineup. Initially intended to provide in-school educational
programming, WQEX eventually became an "alternative" public TV
outlet. After going color in the eighties, WQEX operated for a time
under completely separate program management from WQED, with a
schedule that included classic TV reruns and PBS programs that weren't
cleared on channel 13.

By the late nineties, though, WQED became determined to sell WQEX, to
help meet what the station said was a serious financial shortfall. In
1997, WQEX began simulcasting WQED - something WQED hoped would be a
brief temporary move before selling the station completely.

One plan involved the fledgling Pax network, which lacked a Pittsburgh
outlet. Pax planned to buy commercially-licensed WPCB (Channel 40) in
Greensburg from religious broadcaster Cornerstone TeleVision, which
would then purchase channel 16 from WQED and move the WPCB programming
there. A brief gasp of courage from several FCC commissioners,
questioning whether Cornerstone's programming met the qualifications
for a noncommercial channel, quashed that deal (although the FCC later
backtracked on the new rules that were briefly put forth), and WQED
then asked the FCC to "de-reserve" channel 16, allowing it to be sold
for full commercial use.

That prompted a community outpouring of opposition, with several
groups asking the FCC not to allow the de-reservation, under which
WQED proposed to sell WQEX to ShootingStar, Inc., a new company formed
by Diane Sutter, former general manager of WWSW (970/94.5) in
Pittsburgh, for $20 million.

Last October, the FCC denied the request, but opened a Notice of
Proposed Rule Making on the case. That NPRM was closed this week when
the FCC ruled that the de-reservation can proceed. Most of the
commissioners agreed with WQED's argument that it needs the money from
the sale for DTV conversion (something the station hasn't done yet,
while working its way through the WQEX sale) and an upgrade of the
WQED facility in Pittsburgh's Oakland district.

The ruling also acknowleged that Pittsburgh is under-served by
television, with just seven commercial stations in the market
(Viacom's KDKA and WNPA, Hearst-Argyle's WTAE, Cox's WPXI, Sinclair's
WCWB and WPGH and Cornerstone's WPCB). Commissioner Michael Copps
dissented, calling public television stations the "gems" of the
television system, and noting that once a station is de-reserved, it's
gone for good.

No word yet on when WQEX's simulcast of WQED might be replaced by
commercial programming (from Pax, perhaps?) - stay tuned!

*Elsewhere in PENNSYLVANIA, WZSK (1040 Everett) has ended its longtime
simulcast with country sister WSKE (104.3), switching to news/talk
programming as "News Talk 1040."

Southwest of Pittsburgh, in Washington, PA, the college station at
Washington and Jefferson College is changing calls. The former WXJX
(92.1) becomes WNJR; you won't hear those calls on the air, since the
station is silent at the moment.

The Family Worship Center Church (Jimmy Swaggart's organization) has
asked the FCC to dismiss a whole slew of translator applications
around the country, including several in Pennsylvania - so say goodbye
to the apps for 88.7 Bradford, 91.9 Lewistown and 88.7 Bloomsburg.

WBMR (91.7 Telford) and translator W245AG (96.9 Gladwyne) get
transferred from United Educational Broadcasting to United Ministries,
for whatever that's worth...

Down in Red Lion, oldies WSOX (96.1) applies to move from its current
50 kilowatts at 152 meters to 13.5 kilowatts, directional, at 290
meters. If that sounds familiar, it should: WSOX already holds a CP
for that move, but it's expiring soon, and the station wants more time
to build, especially since its current LMA holder, Brill, is working
through bankruptcy.

Up in the Scranton market, WQFN (100.1 Forest City) is looking for a
new transmitter site; the station (a simulcast of oldies WQFM 92.1
Nanticoke) has applied to move to a new site just across Route 6 from
its current tower in the hills east of Carbondale.

*Just one bit of NEW JERSEY news: the construction permit for W201BF
(88.1 Cape May), a planned translator of Pensacola Christian College's
WPCS, has been deleted.

*We'll start our NEW YORK report right here in Rochester, where WBBF
(950 Rochester) broke out of its simulcast with oldies WBBF-FM (93.3
Fairport) Friday evening just after 6, switching to a short playlist
of songs drawn from WBBF-FM and its Entercom sister stations, classic
hits WBZA (98.9) and country WBEE-FM (92.5) - with announcements
proclaiming the station to be "News Talk 950." (All of the music in
the rotation, by the way, had either "News," "Talk," "Sports,"
"Business" or "Weather" in the title or the name of the artist...)

The 1000-watt signal on 950 covers Monroe County quite well (in its
heritage top-40 days, it was regularly the number-one station in town
by wide margins), but it's a far cry from the market's dominant
news-talker, Clear Channel's clear channel WHAM (1180).

Expect to hear Bill O'Reilly on 950 - and we hear rumors about Dr. Joy
Browne, Sean Hannity, Tom Leykis, some sports coverage and perhaps a
local morning show.

This is hardly the first time the format has been tried on this
facility; when WBBF dropped that heritage top-40 format in 1982, the
station went all-talk for several years, later going to country,
standards (briefly using the WEZO calls) and then to oldies to help
the poor coverage of the 93.3 FM signal back when it was licensed to
Avon. With last year's move of the FM to the WBEE-FM tower in
Penfield, there was no longer a need for the AM simulcast, and rumors
about a flip to talk have been making the rounds locally ever since.

For the moment, AM 950 will be operating from the back production room
at Entercom's facility in the B. Forman Building; it will get a "real"
studio when the cluster makes the move to the High Falls neighborhood
in a few months.

LATE UPDATE: Tuesday evening, WBBF flipped stunts to become "Swifty
950," doing the same music-testing snippets thing that we've heard in
other markets as "Quick 108" or what have you. 

(And yeah, we did say "classic hits" for WBZA's format; the station
that started out as "the hits of the 80s and more" has been playing a
lot of tunes from before and after the 80s these days, even if it's
still imaging itself as an 80s station. Just up the dial, WVOR, aka
"Mix 100.5," has also refocused its format, dropping most of the 70s
classic rock to become a more straightforward modern AC - and sounding
pretty good in the process!)

Down in New York City, WOR (710) has signed on to test Ibiquity's
"in-band, on-channel" (IBOC) digital system. While WOR is making the
right noises publicly about staying in the forefront of broadcast
technology, behind the scenes it's clear that this will be a critical
test of the controversial IBOC system - largely because "IBOC" is a
misnomer. Ibiquity's system sends considerable signal out on the
adjacent AM channels as well, and we expect WOR's neighbors WLW (700
Cincinnati) and WGN (720 Chicago) to be watching this test very
closely to see what the system really does at night when the skywave
kicks up. (It's yet to be approved for nighttime use, and many
engineers are skeptical, at least in private, that it will really work
in the after-dark RF environment.)

On the programming side, WOR has parted ways with 7-9 PM host Jay
Diamond; no replacement has yet been named. Meanwhile, ESPN's WEVD
(1050 New York) has moved Michael Kay from afternoons to middays;
Kay's other committments forced him to make that move fairly often
anyway. Wally Matthews takes afternoons on ESPN 1050.

The Radio Chick (aka Leslie Gold) is riding alone in mornings on
classic rocker WAXQ (104.3 New York); PD Bob Buchmann has signed a new
contract to stay with the station, but he's moving out of mornings,
where his music-first style clashed with the Chick and the colleagues
she brought with her. Buchmann will now be heard from 2-4 PM, between
Maria Milito and Ken Dashow, while Gold, Chuck Nice and Butchie
Brennan do their thing in morning drive.

Out on Long Island, the NY Radio Message Board reports that Bob Ottone
is retiring after 23 years as station manager of WXBA (88.1
Brentwood), the Brentwood High School station. Ottone has also worked
at WGBB, WGLI, WNEW and ABC television.

Moving upstate, the Sound of Life religious network wants to put its
Troy translator back on the air. W230AC (93.9) had to go silent when
WHTR-FM (93.7 Scotia) made its move into the Capital District from the
Glens Falls market; a new application would move the translator up the
dial to 94.1, with a very directional pattern aiming southwest from
its site in the hills east of Troy. (W230AC would also switch
primaries, from WHVP 91.1 Hudson to the currently-dark WSSK 89.7
Saratoga Springs.)

Syracuse Community Radio's W201CD (88.1 Lansing), which has been
relaying WEOS (89.7 Geneva), had its application to move to 89.9
dismissed by the FCC this week. A few DTV notes: we stopped by the
WSTM (Channel 3) site south of Syracuse late last week to see the new
tower for WSTM, WSTM-DT and several other local stations. It's now at
about the same height as the old channel 3 tower; when it's finished,
the big stick will rise some 840 feet and be crowned by a
candelabra. (More pictures to come!)

In Buffalo, WGRZ (Channel 2) returned to full power Sunday night; no
word on when the new DTV antenna for WGRZ-DT (Channel 33) that was
being installed there will go live. 

Back in Syracuse, WSTM lost its first news director last week.

Fred Hillegas joined WSYR (570) in 1946; when WSYR-TV launched four
years later, Hillegas became the one-man news department for the
station. He remained with WSYR/WSYR-TV until 1972, when he retired as
news director and moved to Arizona and then Oregon, where he died on
Monday (July 15). Hillegas was 85.

*Moving over to CONNECTICUT, one of the region's longest-serving
program directors is leaving. John Griffin has programmed Cox rocker
WPLR (99.1 New Haven) for an amazing 25 years; his last day there will
be August 31. No replacement has been named yet.

*MASSACHUSETTS will get a new talk station August 5, but we don't
expect big Boston stations like WRKO, WTKK and WBZ will be very
worried about the latest challenger in the format.

As reported earlier in NERW, a Chicago-based company called Air Time
Media will begin leasing WBPS (890 Dedham) from Mega Communications
next month, replacing the current C-Net Radio tech talk with
conservative satellite talk under the moniker "The Boston Talk Party."

The programming - mostly from out of town - will include Doug Stephan
in the morning, Deborah Ray's health show at 9, Neal Boortz at 2,
Rusty Humphries at 5, Michael Savage at 7 and Roy Masters from 10
until midnight.

The "big name," if you can call it that, will be Laura Schlessinger,
returning to the Boston airwaves after being unceremoniously dumped
from WRKO (680), which had exiled her to late-night tape delay at the
end. WBPS will run her show from 10 AM until noon; the station still
hasn't announced its entries from noon until 2 (against Bill O'Reilly
on WTKK and Rush Limbaugh on WRKO), 4 to 5 PM (against Howie Carr on
WRKO and Jay Severin on WTKK) or overnights and weekends.

Meanwhile, the rumors about Loren Owens and Wally Brine moving their
long-running morning show to Infinity's WODS (103.3 Boston) proved to
be just that; Loren and Wally signed a five-year deal last week that
will keep them on Greater Media's WROR-FM (105.7 Framingham). The two
have been paired on 105.7's various incarnations (WVBF, WCLB-FM,
WKLB-FM, WROR) since 1981, making them by far the longest-running
morning team on the same station in Boston.

There's a new PD on the way to Entercom's "Star 93.7" (WQSX 93.7
Lawrence); Jerry McKenna makes the move north from dance-CHR "Hot"
WWKX (106.3 Woonsocket RI) and WAKX (102.7 Narragansett Pier RI) to
fill the shoes recently vacated by Jeff Scott.

Eddie Andelman will soon be heard even better in Worcester. The
longtime WEEI sports-talk host lost central Massachusetts when he
moved to WWZN (1510 Boston) last year; even with a better daytime
pattern, the Sporting News Radio outlet still doesn't really reach
Worcester very well. So Andelman's show will be heard on WORC (1310
Worcester) beginning August 5, replacing G. Gordon Liddy in the noon-3
slot.

The World Champion New England Patriots will have new radio homes this
fall in Worcester and Springfield; the team will move from WTAG (580
Worcester) to Citadel's WWFX (100.1 Southbridge) and WAHL (99.9 Athol)
in central Massachusetts, and from WHYN (560 Springfield) to Saga's
WAQY (102.1 Springfield), part of a region-wide move to the FM dial
for the team.

We can explain that transfer of the 91.1 Winchendon CP that we
reported last week: it was part of the settlement agreement between
Friends of Radio Maria and Toccoa Falls College. The deal gave Toccoa
Falls the CP, but with a clause allowing Radio Maria to buy that CP
for $10,000 - which is just what Radio Maria did.

Out in vacation-land, WNCK (89.5 Nantucket) filed for a license to
cover this week; we'd love to hear from any beach-bound NERW readers
who can tell us if this new (religious?) station has really made it to
air.

*We can explain the call change filed for WKBK (1220 Keene) in NEW
HAMPSHIRE; Saga group head Ed Christian checked in to tell us that the
WKBK calls will move to WKNE (1290), the stronger of the company's
newly-purchased Keene AM signals, while the 1220 signal will be
WZBK. On the air, they'll be "WKBK 1" and "WKBK 2," doing the sort of
news-talk-sports brand extension Saga's already practicing in Portland
with WGAN (560) and WZAN (970). And the WKNE calls will live on the FM
dial, where WKNE-FM (103.7 Keene) will keep doing its hot AC thing.

*There's an application for a new FM allocation in northeastern
VERMONT, where Lutterloh Community Broadcasters is asking the FCC to
add 94.5 as a new class A channel in Albany. Where the heck is THAT,
you may ask? It's on Route 14 north of Hardwick and south of Irasburg,
about halfway between St. Johnsbury and Newport in sparsely-populated
Orleans County (where several other class A allocations are still
awaiting their turn at auction...)

*Lightning struck in MAINE last week, with a direct hit on the tower
of WERU (89.9 Blue Hill) taking the station down to 50 watts (from 15
kilowatts) for a few days, until repairs could be made to the
station's damaged transmission gear.

A few clarifications on the Waterville/Augusta market situation:
Mountain Wireless' WHQO (107.9 Skowhegan) is not exactly a simulcast
with Clear Channel news-talker WVOM (103.9 Howland); WVOM picks up the
WHQO morning show, and the stations share a Premiere talk lineup until
6 PM, but they split apart after that (with WHQO doing sports at
night). WHQO is simulcast on Clear Channel's WCME (96.7 Boothbay
Harbor), which is considered to be part of the market. And Mountain
still owns WCTB (93.5 Fairfield), which is in a JSA with Clear
Channel.

*Heading into CANADA, Cogeco will get to add a new FM outlet in Quebec
City to its existing stations there, CJFM (93.3) and TQS affiliate
CFAP (Channel 2); the company beat out 3 other applicants to win CRTC
permission to put on an adult contemporary station on 91.9, the last
remaining open FM channel in the provincial capital.

The CRTC renewed the license of Genex's CHOI (98.1 Quebec City) for
two years instead of seven, and denied the company's request to move
CKNU (100.9 Donnacona) closer in to the Quebec market.

Out in New Brunswick, religious CKOE (100.9 Moncton) was granted
permission to add commercials to its programming, over the objections
of Maritime Broadcasting System, which owns commercial CKCW/CFQM in
town.

The big news from Ontario is the demise of the CHUM Group's "Team"
sports format, at least in the Peterborough market: CKPT (1420) dumped
the format last Thursday (July 18), the Peterborough Examiner
reported, to return to the adult standards it was playing before
launching the Team a little over a year ago. The format has been
plagued by poor ratings at flagship CHUM (1050 Toronto) and other
outlets across Canada; it's being retooled with more local hosts, and
we wouldn't be surprised to see it disappear from other smaller
markets (such as Halifax and Kingston) in the months to come.

There's a new station in Cobourg: that new 93.3 signal there signed on
for real on Thursday (July 18) at 9:33 AM as hot AC "Star 93.3," with
full programming starting Friday. And the calls are...CKSG.

Up in Sudbury, Rogers is denying that it targeted CJMX (EZ Rock 105.3)
jock Dave Lindsay for layoffs because he was the president of CEP
Local 725-M, the station's union local. Rogers laid off three staffers
at its Sudbury cluster last week, with several shifts now being filled
by voicetracking from Ottawa, we hear.

In Toronto, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Commission slapped CFNY
(102.1 the Edge) with a Code of Ethics violation for several incidents
last November on Dean Blundell's morning show. The CBSC says the show
slipped over the line into sexually-explicit territory, but denied to
sanction the station for several other comments cited by an anonymous
complainant (who couldn't even spell "Blundell" correctly); the
punishment, if you can call it that, is that the station will have to
make two on-air announcements that it has been sanctioned.

The CRTC gave CFXJ (93.5 the Flow) permission to boost its power; the
urban station will jump in power from 298 watts to 1430 watts from the
top of First Canadian Place.

Rogers has found a channel for its new "CFMT Too" television service;
the broadcaster is asking the CRTC to let it use channel 44 in Toronto
with 179 kW visual for the new sister station to multiethnic CFMT
(Channel 47).

And we're very sorry to report the impending demolition of a bit of
Canadian broadcast history: the old CBC TV tower on Jarvis Street in
Toronto is being taken down, piece by piece, over the next five weeks
or so.

The tower went up in 1952, rising more than 150 meters above the CBC
television complex in a cluster of old buildings on Jarvis to become
the tallest structure in Toronto for several decades.

In September 1952, it became home to CBLT (Channel 9, later channel 6
and now channel 5), the first TV station in Ontario. In later years,
the tower was also home to CBC-FM (99.1, later CBL-FM on 94.1),
French-language CBLFT (Channel 25), CJRT (91.1) and TVOntario's CICA
(Channel 19).

With the construction of the CN Tower in the late seventies, the CBC
moved its services (as well as CJRT and CICA) to that much taller
mast, and the CBC tower was soon lost in a sea of tall downtown office
buildings, losing any real viability as a broadcast site. Its fate was
sealed when the CBC moved out of the Jarvis Street complex in the
nineties, building the new Broadcast Centre near the CN Tower.

The CBC sold the Jarvis Street land to developers, who are building a
condominium complex on the site; without the big tower, we wonder if
anyone a generation from now will know why the development is called
"Radio City"...

*Finally this week, we're happy to announce that our good friends at M
Street have released the 11th edition of the M Street Radio
Directory. With the disappearance of the old Vane Jones log and the
declining accuracy of the Broadcasting Yearbook, the M Street
directory is widely regarded as the most accurate, most comprehensive
source of information on the US and Canadian radio scene - and we're
thrilled to be able to offer it to you at a substantial discount!
Visit www.fybush.com for all the information on how to place your
order...


*That's it for another week; we'll see you again next Monday on
fybush.com!

-----------------------NorthEast Radio Watch------------------------
                       (c)2002 Scott Fybush
                          www.fybush.com

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