NERW 10/28: WWJS is Back

[fybush@gwind.pair.com]

------------------------------E-MAIL EDITION-----------------------------
--------------------------NorthEast Radio Watch--------------------------
                             October 28, 2002

IN THIS ISSUE:

*NEW YORK: Watertown's WWJS Returns
*MASSACHUSETTS: Mega Sells WARE
*VERMONT: WKDR Goes Country as WVAA

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

*It's been ten months since Christian contemporary station WWJS (90.1)
in Watertown, NEW YORK went silent, the victim of a nasty spat between
owner Charles Savidge and his father-in-law, Rev. Robert Bryant, who
owns the Liberty Christian Center that was the station's home. And
with the FCC's strict rule about deleting stations that remain dark
for a full 12 months, the deadline was fast approaching for something
to happen with this frequency up there.

And while it looked a little iffy (and sparked a new battle between
Savidge and Bryant), WWJS made it back to the airwaves last Wednesday
(Oct. 23), according to NERW North Country bureau chief Michael
Roach. Actually, WWJS would have been back a few days earlier - but,
Roach reports, Bryant hired workers to go to the WWJS transmitter site
east of town on Champion Hill (also home to WWNY-TV and WTOJ 103.1) to
remove, yes, the transmitter!

But the mess has caught the attention of Watertown's other
broadcasters, and in stepped David Mance, owner of WTOJ (as well as
WBDI/WBDR, WATN and WOTT), who's letting Savidge use one of his
auxiliary transmitters for the moment. Expect another round (or three
or six) of lawsuits, including one in which Bryant is apparently
claiming that he owns the WWJS call letters! (NERW notes: there's no
trademark on "WWJS," and nobody actually owns call letters, according
to established case law.)

(One more quick note from Watertown: Fox outlet WNYF-LP on channel 28
has become WNYF-CA as it gains Class A status, and that means
simulcaster W28BC in Massena can now become...WNYF-LP!)

*Elsewhere in the Empire State, Sunrise Broadcasting has moved another
step forward in its attempt to get something back on the air at 1200
kHz in the Hudson Valley. You may recall that Sunrise's WGNY in
Newburgh occupied that channel under special temporary authority for
most of the 90s, in an attempt to win a permanent upgrade from its
longtime spot at 1220 on the dial. But the upgrade of New York's WLIB
on 1190 doomed a fulltime 1200 signal in Newburgh, and WGNY had to
slide back to 1220 a few years back.

But Sunrise didn't give up, and now its application for a new station
on 1200 in Kingston, some 40 miles north of Newburgh, has been
accepted for filing at the FCC. The new 1200 would run 2000 watts day
from two towers and 400 watts night from five towers, which would
require a rebuild of the existing WGHQ (920) site off Route 9W just
south of Kingston.

Down on Long Island, the FCC gave official approval to the takeover of
WLIW (Channel 21) in Garden City by the Educational Broadcasting
Corporation, parent of New York City PBS outlet WNET (Channel 13,
Newark NJ). WLIW's parent, the Long Island Educational Television
Corporation, had sought the merger to handle the cost of the DTV
conversion; both stations will now be able to better coordinate their
programming schedules, they say. (They're already sharing a common
master control room in Manhattan.)

While we're out Long Island way, we note that WBZO (103.1 Bay Shore)
has moved to its new facilities, on the other tower of what's now the
two-tower array of WLIE (540 Islip). WBZO moves up (from 285 feet to
462 feet), drops power (from 3000 to 1550 watts) and drops the
directional antenna that it had been using.

Judy Ellis is moving on from Emmis after an amazing 17-year run at the
company's New York City cluster, most recently as VP/general manager
of WQHT (97.1), WRKS (98.7) and WQCD (101.9). Ellis was already with
WQHT (then on 103.5) when Emmis bought the station in 1986. Emmis
hasn't announced a replacement for Ellis, who will stay through the
end of her contract next February.

Heading upstate, it's been 25 years since WSUL (98.3) became
Monticello's first local radio station (though the Catskills community
has long had service from WVOS just up the road in Liberty), and the
standalone FM will be celebrating next weekend with 57 hours of
special retrospective programming, beginning on Friday afternoon,
November 1. Congratulations!

There's word from Albany that public radio WAMC (90.3) has cancelled
its locally-produced "Environment Show," which was syndicated to a mix
of about 150 noncommercial and commercial stations around the
country. NERW hears that host Greg Dahlman will stay with WAMC as a
news reporter, while producer Bob Barret is out; "Living on Earth"
will replace the show in its WAMC timeslots.

Here in Rochester, jazz institution WGMC (90.1 Greece) has modified
its application for a power boost, in a way that will bring more
signal to the jazz-friendly east side of town. The station, now
running 1050 watts at just 46 feet, already has a pending application
for 15 kW at 138 feet with a directional antenna; the modification
will let out that directional pattern in a pretty big way, so that
down here at NERW Central we'll hear the equivalent of about 8 kW
instead of 1 kW, which should help cut through all the RF hash from
nearby Pinnacle Hill.

A couple of TV notes: we've seen local Fox affiliate WUHF-TV (Channel
31) taking advantage of some cost-cutting possibilities from parent
Sinclair on weekend nights, using a weather forecast from the
company's new centralized news facility in Maryland in place of a
local forecaster. No mispronunciations, yet, but we wonder why they
couldn't at least use WUHF's own graphics package instead of something
so noticeably different. Down the dial, local wags have already been
ringing the changes on the new slogan at WHEC-TV (Channel
10). "Digging for answers, reporting them first" is the official
version; we're partial to "Digging through press releases, rehashing
them first" ourselves...

Finally, we note that the FCC has approved the transfer of Sabre
Communications' properties in New York, Pennsylvania and Indiana to
Backyard Broadcasting; in New York, that includes the Elmira/Corning
cluster (WWLZ 820 Horseheads, WGMF 1490 Watkins Glen, WPGI 100.9
Horseheads, WNGZ 104.9 Montour Falls, WNKI 106.1 Corning) and Olean's
WHDL 1450 and WPIG-FM 95.7.

*On the PENNSYLVANIA side of the line, Backyard also gets permission
to buy the Williamsport cluster that includes WWPA (1340), WBZD-FM
(93.3 Muncy), WZXR (99.3 South Williamsport), WCXR (103.7 Lewisburg),
WILQ (105.1) and WSFT (107.9 South Williamsport) from Sabre.

Just down the road in Avis, WQBR (99.9) applies to boost its antenna
from 823 feet to 1052 feet, dropping power from 900 watts to 570 watts
and moving to a new tower just a bit northeast of its current
location. Now if we could ever hear them do a legal ID...

While we're up that way (and can you tell it's been a slow week in the
Keystone State?), we note a new translator for ABC affiliate WNEP
(Channel 16) in Scranton: W40BS in Renovo will run with 200
watts. Also granted this week was a new TBN LPTV: W67BZ in Mansfield
will be a 2 kW station.

"JC Radio Inc." has been granted a license to cover for translator
W215BG (90.9 Milford).

And our buddy Dave Hughes down at DCRTV.com reports the death on
October 19 of Ed Lincoln, who was a disk jockey on WSBA (910 York) for
some 35 years. WSBA is looking for a newsperson, too, to replace Steve
Fermier, who's headed south to Baltimore to do news at WBAL (1090).

*Our friends at the NEW JERSEY Radio Museum have a permanent home:
they're signing a 20-year lease on a building next to the Dover
Presbyterian Church to house their collection of Garden State
broadcast memorabilia, and they're still looking for more. Drop Carl
Van Orden a line (carlvanorden@webtv.net) if you can help out...

*Mega Communications has sold its lone central MASSACHUSETTS property:
WARE (1250 Ware) goes to Marshall Sanft's "Siccess Signal
Broadcasting" (hey, it's radio, spelling doesn't matter!) for a
reported $250,000. If the name sounds familiar, it's because Sanft
used to own WESO (970) in nearby Southbridge; his father owned WOKW
(1410 Brockton, now WMSX) in days gone by.

Pete Falconi has parted ways with Worcester's WXLO (104.5 Fitchburg),
where he was PD and operations manager for the Citadel cluster. We
hear Tuesday (10/29) will be his last day there, with no replacement
yet named.

Now that Mike Elder is settling in as PD at WRKO (680 Boston), he's
bringing in his own crew from his last post at WLS in Chicago: former
WLS producer Rich Carberry is following Elder to Boston to be
executive producer at WRKO.

Where are they now?: Former WODS PD Rick Shockley was back in the
trades this week; he's taking a new gig as PD at Infinity AC outlet
WEAT-FM (104.3) in West Palm Beach, Florida.

And on the TV side, WWLP-DT (Channel 11) in Springfield took air this
week, running 1.95 kW from the WWLP-TV (Channel 22) tower high atop
Provin Mountain.

*It took long enough, but AM 1390 in Burlington, VERMONT finally made
its format change last week, ditching the WKDR calls and talk/news
format to become WVAA, "All American Country," with a mix of local
jocks and Jones' satellite service. We can't imagine Burlington
country giant WOKO (98.9) being too worried...

More DTV developments: WNNE (Channel 31) in White River Junction has
been at low power for a couple of weeks, and we're told it's because
of DTV installation up at the station's Mount Ascutney transmitter
site. The NBC affiliate should be back to full power early this week,
we're told.

*Still more DTV developments: MAINE Public Broadcasting has three more
DTVs on the air, with WMEB-DT (Channel 9) in Orono, WMEM-DT (Channel
20) in Presque Isle and WMEA-DT (Channel 45) in Biddeford filling out
the statewide network.

The Congressionally-mandated tests of third-adjacent FM interference
will get underway soon in several cities, including Brunswick (and
Avon, Connecticut, too.) WC4XSH will be the call on the 97.3 in
Brunswick, which will operate between 10 and 100 watts to test
interference to WCME (96.7 Boothbay Harbor) from potential
third-adjacent LPFMs. According to this week's Radio World, the tests
could last for as little as three days, with listeners in the market
notified through newspaper and radio ads and a number provided to call
in any reports of FM interference.

And Jeff Marks, late of the News 12 Networks in the New York market,
is moving to Portland to head up "NewsInME," a service that will
provide news inserts and newscasts to stations in the Pine Tree State.

*Another quiet week in CANADA, as the CRTC plows through all the
various new license applications in several big markets. The
Commission did approve the C$432,000 sale of two stations in
St.-Georges-de-Beauce, Quebec, though: Guy Simard is buying CKRB-FM
(103.3) and CHJM-FM (99.7) from Marie Jalbert. (Longtime DXers in the
Northeast will remember the CKRB calls from AM 1460; the station also
took over from the now-defunct CJVL 1360 in Ste.-Marie-de-Beauce when
it moved to FM to serve the area southwest of Quebec City.)

Rex Murphy on TV? That's the promise the CBC is making as it buys the
"Country Canada" digital cable network from Corus for C$1.2
million. In addition to ratcheting up the amount of Canadian content
on the network to 80%, the CBC says it will put Murphy's
"Cross-Country Checkup" weekend talk show on TV as part of the
channel's offerings.

And in Belleville, Ontario, CJOJ (95.5) has been granted a move 25
kilometers west of its present site, to a new tower near Oak
Lake. CJOJ will drop power from 50 kW to 42 kW, but will end up with a
better signal over Trenton (not to mention across the lake to
Rochester) when it's all done.

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

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