NERW 11/18: WSEE, WICU Merger Costs Jobs in Erie

[fybush@gwind.pair.com]

------------------------------E-MAIL EDITION-----------------------------
--------------------------NorthEast Radio Watch--------------------------
                            November 18, 2002

IN THIS ISSUE:

*PENNSYLVANIA: Erie Station Merger Costs Jobs
*NEW YORK: Paul Harvey Visits Rochester, Praises Calendar
*PENNSYLVANIA: Cold Day at WARM

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

*The sale of the CBS affiliate in Erie, PENNSYLVANIA has some citizens
worried that their city will soon be served by only two TV news
operations - and it appears their concerns aren't far off the mark.

WSEE-TV (Channel 35) recently changed hands, becoming the first
property of Initial Broadcasting of Pennsylvania, a company controlled
by Kevin Lilly, whose father, George, controls SJL Communications,
which owns Erie's NBC affiliate, WICU (Channel 12).

And later this week, Initial will lay off 18 of WSEE's 66 staffers,
including weekend sports guy Red Hughes and weekend weathercaster Tina
Zboch. (Weekend news anchor Kara Calabrese is leaving of her own
volition.) Also leaving is 28-year WSEE veteran Carol Pella, who tells
the Erie Times-News that she was offered a management position but
turned it down.

WSEE wants to enter into a joint operating agreement with WICU, which
will handle some of the station's back-office and master-control
duties. Under the JOA, the stations' news operations would remain
separate, with about 25 to 30 employees remaining at WSEE to handle
those duties.

WSEE is also applying to replace its current STL tower at its Peach
Street studios with a taller tower which would also carry microwave
links to the WICU studio building.

*On the other side of the Keystone State, the ever-impatient Citadel
cluster in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton has struck again, this time
cancelling all local talk at WARM (590 Scranton), which just returned
from oldies to news-talk this past April.

WARM's local morning show employed host Rob Neyhard, newscaster Paula
Deignan and reporter Bobby Day; producer Sam Liguori was also out the
door when the show was cancelled last Friday.

WARM remains with the talk format, albeit all off the satellite; we
note as well that the 590warm.com domain, which is still linked even
from Citadel's corporate Web site, apparently expired and was
registered by someone with no connection with the station. It's a sad
story for a station that once owned the market...

Moving down the road, WSBG (93.5 Stroudsburg) PD/middayer Ang Mason
has parted ways with the station; you can find Mason at
moobabe@usa.net.

Down in Philadelphia, Todd Shannon gets a big promotion: the WIOQ
(102.1) PD is now operations manager for Q102 and all its Clear
Channel sisters: WDAS, WUSL, WSNI, WDAS-FM and WJJZ.

Jerry "Geator" Blavat has a new weekend home on the Philly airwaves:
he'll be doing 3-5 Sunday afternoons on WPEN (950); meanwhile, his
former colleague Hy Lit has filed an age discrimination complaint
against Viacom's WOGL (98.1), alleging that the oldies station cut his
pay, then cut his schedule back severely.

Over in Pittsburgh, WAMO-FM (106.7 Beaver Falls) is drawing some
complaints from neighbors of its new tower near Wexford; the
Tribune-Review says the station's signal, while more powerful in
Pittsburgh, is showing up on phones and such in the neighborhood of
the new site.

WKST-FM (Kiss 96.1) in the Burgh has a new PD; he's Dino Robitaille,
who comes to the Steel City from sister Clear Channel "Kiss" outlet
WDKF (94.5 Englewood OH) in Dayton.

And up near the state line - in the Youngstown, Ohio market, in fact -
D&E Broadcasting is selling WPAO (1470 Farrell) to Holy Family
Communications, the Buffalo-based group that runs Catholic-formatted
WLOF (101.7 Attica NY). Meanwhile, Stop 26 Riverbend has filed with
the FCC for its $48,125 purchase of the license of WASN (1330 Campbell
OH) out of bankruptcy.

*We'll start our NEW YORK news down in the big city, where your
intrepid editor spent most of last week (which is why there was no
issue last Monday) visiting transmitter sites and working on an
upcoming history of New York City FM radio. What's in the headlines
down there? We'll start with a new transmitter site for public radio
WNYC-FM (93.9), which will be on the air from the Empire State
Building any day now (if it hasn't happened already), now that the
work has been done to inject its signal into the combiner that feeds
the ERI master antenna high on the Empire mast. WNYC had been using
the Four Times Square tower as an interim site after losing its
transmission facilities at the World Trade Center; additional work yet
to come at Empire will add WPAT-FM (93.1) to the ERI master, as well
as building a second combiner that can be used to keep the ERI antenna
on the air while work is done on the main combiner.

What's next for poor bedraggled talker WNEW (102.7), which did at
least get a bit of publicity when it added a simulcast of David
Letterman's TV show last week? Owner Infinity brought Eric Logan in
from Chicago, where he was operations manager of country WUSN (99.5),
to be VP/programming for its New York stations, which immediately
prompted a new round of speculation that 102.7 will be playing country
soon.

On the AM dial, there's a new morning show on WWRL (1600 New York),
with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (author of Kosher Sex and advisor to
Michael Jackson - we couldn't make this stuff up if we tried) and
former Village Voice writer Peter Noel. Yes, we airchecked it; we'll
aircheck anything, you know...

We heard digital AM radio for the first time, thanks to Tom Ray at WOR
(710); while the circumstances weren't the best (a little speaker in a
noisy control room), we can say that it does sound pretty good on the
one existing receiver in New York City (WOR expects to get more in the
next few months), and that the sideband hash, while certainly present,
wasn't quite as odious as we'd expected (we could still hear WADS on
690 from Connecticut while driving in Rockland County, 60 or so miles
away, and a trip down to Trenton found WPHE on 690 from Phoenixville,
PA quite audible without WOR interference.)

Don't get us wrong; we still have some big concerns...which is why
we're reprinting last issue's IBOC Rant for the benefit of those who
missed it. (It's available on-line at www.fybush.com, and we'll run
some of your responses next week...)

Moving upstate, the Woody and Jim show that originated at WRVW in
Nashville and was picked up by WKKF (102.3 Ballston Spa) in Albany
went on suspension last week after a misguided stunt; the "Kiss" folks
in Albany told the local media that they had decided to "cancel" the
show to return to more music in morning drive, and nobody seemed to
question them very much. Meanwhile on the AM dial, WVKZ (1240
Schenectady) dropped its "Sun Country" classic country format to go
satellite talk, with the Dolans, Mike Gallagher and Sean Hannity on
the schedule. And there's a new PD/middayer at WQBK (103.9
Rensselaer)/WQBJ (103.5 St. Johnsville); he's Chili Walker, inbound
from WWDX in the Lansing, Michigan market.

Utica's "Lite 98.7," WLZW, has a new morning guy, as Mark Richards
arrives from WBHV (103.1) in the State College PA market to replace
Randy Jay.

Over in Syracuse, WTVH (Channel 5) has a new logo, and a redesigned
Web site to match. The honor of "first digital TV signal in Syracuse,"
meanwhile, goes to Fox affiliate WSYT (Channel 68), which signed on
with its DTV signal as we were passing through on Wednesday,
Nov. 6. WSYT is using just 4 kW from its tower in Otisco for now; it
hopes to move the channel 19 DTV signal to the new WSTM tower at
Sentinel Heights eventually (though we hear that tower's completion
has been delayed by a problem with the ice bridge, which apparently
didn't go in straight...)

On the radio dial in Syracuse, the last of Syracuse Community Radio's
translator CPs has expired unbuilt. W213BB (90.5 Skaneateles) joins
other dead CPs in Marcellus, Fenner and Truxton - while SCR remains
unable to be heard in most of Syracuse over its only operating
transmitter, WXXE (90.5 Fenner), which at least has a decent audio
line from the studios these days.

Up in Watertown, correspondent Mike Roach checks in to let us know
that indie WLOT-LP (Channel 66) won't be renewing its lease of cable
channel 97, so the station returns to "antenna-only" mode. Meanwhile,
WWNY (Channel 7) has a new set and graphics; the CBS affiliate's old
set came to Watertown from Boston's WBZ-TV, where your editor
remembers it fondly...

Binghamton's WMXW (103.3 Vestal) will go all-Christmas next week;
expect several more such temporary flips around the region as the
holidays approach. (You can keep track of the flips all over the
country if you visit your editor's other site, www.100000watts.com!)

Here in Rochester, WHAM (1180) celebrated its 80th anniversary in
style (if a few months late; the actual anniversary was July 1, when
WHAM held an outdoor party) by bringing the legendary voice of Paul
Harvey to town this past Thursday (Nov. 14).

That's WHAM PD Jeff Howlett welcoming Harvey to town; after greeting
his admirers at a reception, Harvey spoke to an audience of more than
1,000 at the Eastman Theatre (a most appropriate locale, since that's
where WHAM began back in '22.)

A word from your editor: if you ever have the chance to hear Paul
Harvey in person, don't pass up the opportunity: at 84, he's still a
commanding presence on stage, with a voice that shows no signs of the
illness he suffered last year and a mind that's as sharp as ever,
going more than 45 minutes without glancing at his notes more than a
few times and even working in a reference to his last local appearance
- in 1966! (And it was all for a good cause, too; proceeds from the
event benefitted WHAM's Heart of Gold Children's Foundation...)

(Oh, and keep reading to the end of the column to find out how we left
Paul Harvey speechless, too!)

Rochester's "Big TV," UPN affiliate WBGT-CA (Channel 40) and W26BZ
(Channel 26) in Victor, is being sold; founders David and Molly Grant
are selling the LPTV outlet to Corning's Vision Communications. (If
we're not mistaken, this is the same group that bought Corning's "Big
TV," Fox affiliate WYDC Channel 48, from the Grants a couple of years
ago.)

The new religious LPFM in Arcade, WNAR-LP (100.3), is on the air - but
we're getting some interesting reports that suggest it's being heard
much better in Williamsville, just northeast of Buffalo, than in its
licensed spot in Arcade, 20 miles or so southeast of the Queen City...

Some sad news from Buffalo: Larry Anderson, who did middays at WGR
(550) in the seventies, programmed the station, then served as its GM
in the mid-eighties, died November 4 in Wheeling, West
Virginia. Anderson had been the GM of Clear Channel's Wheeling
cluster, including WWVA (1170) and the Capitol Music Hall, at the time
of his death.

*In CONNECTICUT, veteran news director Deborah Johnson is leaving WFSB
(Channel 3); no replacement has been announced.

*A new program director is on the way to MASSACHUSETTS; NERW hears
Gordon Smith from WILI-FM (98.3) down in Willimantic, Connecticut, is
heading north to fill Pete Falconi's shoes at WXLO (104.5 Fitchburg)
in the Worcester market.

In Boston, WRKO (680) shuffled its schedule last week, moving Michael
Savage's show to a live slot from 7-10 weeknights, replacing the taped
Sean Hannity show. "VB's Pleasure Pit," featuring Howie Carr producer
"Virgin Boy," now runs from 10-1 following Savage.

We don't usually spend a lot of time reporting on college stations'
studios, but we'll make an exception for WBRS (100.1 Waltham) at
Brandeis University, seeing as how it's where your editor got his
start in this crazy business.

And alas, the very studios where so many crimes against good radio
were committed (we're not proud...) are no more; the station moved
last week into its new home in the school's new Shapiro Campus Center,
where the walls are nice and clean, the equipment is (mostly) new, and
there are no unidentifiable smells lingering around the sofa in the
jock lounge. (Yet.)

We've somehow neglected to note that WGAW (1340 Gardner) is now
simulcasting WOTW (900 Nashua NH), at least part of the time; also out
that way, alert NERW readers have been hearing some Spanish
programming on WCAT (700 Orange).

Out in the western part of the state, WCDC-DT (Channel 26) has signed
on from Mount Greylock, one of the last Massachusetts DTVs to take
air. (Fellow ABC affiliate WGGB-DT, channel 55 in Springfield, beat
WCDC to the air by a couple of weeks; historians will note that
channel 55 was also where WGGB's analog predecessor, WHYN-TV, was
located when it signed on in 1953, though it later moved to channel
40.)

And we're sorry to report the passing of John Lynker, whose obituaries
in Washington, D.C. rightly recount his many years doing news for WTOP
but somehow omitted his stint at all-news WEEI (590) in
Boston. Lynker, who died November 12, was 75.

*One NEW HAMPSHIRE note: NBC's purchase of WPXB (Channel 60) in
Merrimack comes with a call change; the station will soon be running
Telemundo programming under new calls WNEU.

*In VERMONT, Peter Speciale is the new news director at Burlington ABC
affiliate WVNY (Channel 22); he comes to the station from KWTV in
Oklahoma City, where he was assistant news director.

*MAINE's Pax affiliate is being sold; Lowell Paxson will be $10
million richer after the deal closes transferring WMPX (Channel 23) in
Waterville and WPXO in St. Croix, USVI to Corporate Media Consultants
Group. No word on whether WMPX keeps the Pax affiliation after the
sale goes through.

And WMTW-DT (Channel 46) signed on last week from the new WMTW tower
in Baldwin, Maine.

*Digital radio broadcasting is coming to CANADA's capital, but with
one station missing; while the CRTC approved DAB signals in Ottawa for
stations owned by the CBC, CHUM, Rogers, Standard and Astral, one
station was missing: Rogers' CIOX (101.1 Smiths Falls) won't get an
Ottawa DAB signal, thanks to interventions by competitors who argued
that the station should only be heard digitally in Smiths Falls, some
45 miles from Ottawa, and not on the DAB transmissions from the main
Ottawa transmitter site at Camp Fortune, Quebec.

Aboriginal Voices Radio still isn't on the air at 106.5 in Toronto,
but when it does, it'll be allowed to use 350 watts instead of the
originally-approved 250 watts. The CRTC also granted a power increase
to CFCO-1-FM (92.9) in Chatham; the relay of AM 630 can jump from 50
watts to 250.

*Have you ordered your Tower Site Calendar 2003 yet? (Yes, the very
calendar that we had the honor of presenting to Paul Harvey himself
during his Rochester visit - and the delightful surprise of hearing
him praise on Monday's broadcast!)

You can hear what Paul Harvey had to say about his visit to Rochester - and
the 2003 Tower Site Calendar - by visiting www.fybush.com.

It's no Oreck vacuum, or even Bose Wave radio, but if you liked last
year's calendar, you'll love this one: higher-quality images
(including Providence's WHJJ; Mount Mansfield, Vermont; Buffalo's
WBEN; KOMA in Oklahoma City; the legendary WSM, Nashville; Harvey's
flagship WGN, Chicago and many more), more dates in radio history, a
convenient hole for hanging - and we'll even make sure all the dates
fall on the right days!

This year's calendar will be going to press later this week; complete
ordering details (and a special offer for NERW subscribers) can be 
found at www.fybush.com.

We'll see you back here next week...

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

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