Channel "5" during Boston's great OTA TV outage of 2012

[Scott Fybush]

On 4/11/2012 2:34 PM, Laurence Glavin wrote:

> Yesterday (Tuesday 04/10) I learned something new courtesy of Scott:
> that the legendary, long-standing WBZ-TV
> Tower at 350 Cedar Street, Needham, was no longer OWNED by WBZ/CBS. I
> had never heard about Richland Towers
> nor can I remember ever reading about the sale of the tower and land. I
> just visited Richland Tower's website, and
> evidently they're a big playah in this industry, although probably not
> close to our friends at American Tower. Now it
> seems WBZ/CBS may have to site new auxiliary facilites elsewhere like
> the Candelabra a la Sunbeam TV, or they could
> regard this incident as a rare one-off event that only affects two per
> cent of the potential audience. Also, I wonder: who
> booted WCRB-102.5 off the 350 Cedar Street Tower when the extra height
> was added...WBZ/CBS or Richland?

I believe CBS still owned the tower at that time...and without knowing 
the details of the contract between 102.5 and CBS, I'm not sure "booted 
off" is necessarily the right phrase.

Tower leases expire, tower owners raise rents, and in a competitive 
environment like Newton-Needham, other tower owners (like, say, American 
Tower, which owns the "FM128" and candelabra sites) might simply have 
offered more favorable terms.

As for Richland, it is indeed a "playah," and a fairly substantial one 
these days. Buying most of the CBS and NBC tower portfolios a few years 
back certainly helped.

s