A quiet week in Northeast radio and television -- but there are a few bits of news to tell you about this issue:
Across the Nutmeg State, Vince Cremona is leaving WEBE (107.9 Westport), the station he helped to purchase back in 1983, when it was still WDJF. Cremona and his partners flipped the station to AC as WEBE the following year; he stayed on as general manager as the station (and sister AM'er WICC, the station Cremona left in 1983, then helped to acquire six years later) changed hands to Frank Osborne's Aurora in 1999 and then, earlier this year, to Cumulus.
Cremona stayed on with Cumulus during the transition, managing its stations in Connecticut and the New York suburbs; there's no word yet on who'll replace him -- and Cumulus is saying no further changes are planned at the stations. (We know what that usually means, don't we...)
There's a new AM station about to hit the air in the Mohawk Valley: we've heard reports that Michael Sleezer's new WFNY (1440) in Gloversville is testing; by next week, perhaps we'll even have a format to tell you about!
Up north, Mars Hill Network has calls for its latest outlet: 90.1 in Malone will be WMHQ(FM), and if those calls sound familiar, you probably remember them from channel 45 in Schenectady, which used them in its public TV days (it's now WEWB, Albany's WB affiliate).
It looks like Galaxy is changing the call letters at the Albany-market stations that were once doing hot talk as WHTR-FM (93.7 Scotia) and WHTR (1400 Albany), but there's some question about just what the new calls actually are.
Several listeners in the market have reported hearing the new FM call as "WKRD" (and your editor has already changed the listing on our recently-affiliated sister site 100000watts.com to reflect that), but others are hearing "WKRT-FM." The FCC hasn't updated its database yet, and the "WKRT" calls are already taken...
...150 miles away in Cortland, where Citadel recently flipped WKRT (920) from satellite oldies to a talk format. Now being heard on WKRT: Doug Stephan mornings, followed by Mike Gallagher, Bill O'Reilly, Dave Ramsey, Sean Hannity, Rusty Humphries, Michael Savage and Jim Bohannon. (What's on weekends? No idea; WKRT's Web site, like so many these days, doesn't as much as acknowledge that the station exists on Saturdays and Sundays...)
Could WKRT soon have a sister station to the south? The Web site for Citadel's WYOS (1360 Binghamton) disappeared recently, and the rumors are flying that the oldies station (the former WKOP, which took the WYOS calls and format when they moved from 104.1 FM, now "Wild" WWYL) will soon become a sister talker to Citadel's WNBF (1290 Binghamton).
Adding fuel to the fire: WNBF just reshuffled its program schedule, pulling Laura Schlessinger from her late-afternoon slot and replacing her with a new local afternoon news block. So what's brewing down in the basement on Court Street? Sounds like we may hear as early as this week...stay tuned, right here at fybush.com, for updates!
(LATE UPDATE: Sure enough, WYOS dropped the oldies as of Monday morning and went all-talk -- more details in next week's issue!)
Up here in Rochester, we've been tuned in to WBJA (102.1 Albion), the Calvary religious outlet that may be changing calls to WJCA any day now. But we might never know if they do; you see, for the last few days the only station ID being heard on 102.1 each hour is "KAWZ Twin Falls, KRTM Temecula." We found out why when we finally heard an actual local ID late Saturday night: the station was apparently hit by lightning and some equipment was damaged. (Since when does that relieve a station from legal ID requirements, we wonder?)
(LATE UPDATE, PART II: As of Monday afternoon, WBJA had indeed changed calls to WJCA, with a legal ID coming straight outta Idaho: "KAWZ Twin Falls, KRTM Temecula, WJCA Albion." So it's apparently easier to redo the ID to the whole Calvary network than it is to get a local ID to play out of Western New York. Hmmm...)
On a brighter note, we've bemoaned here many a time the absolute lack of legal IDs on school station WBER (90.5 Rochester), and it appears that someone at the Monroe County Board of Cooperative Educational Services #1 finally realized the station was at risk of a decent-sized fine (yes, we have tapes...); of late, we've heard WBER doing an ID between 11 and 15 minutes after the hour mentioning its 15th anniversary and saying the almost-magic words "WBER in Rochester." Get rid of the "in" and move it to the top of the hour, and they might actually comply with the letter and the spirit of 47 CFR 73.1201 (and even teach the students something in the process...)
On the LPTV front, it's been an interesting week here in Rochester: local MTV2 outlet WBXO-LP (Channel 15) has been stuck on an ID full-screen with no other programming for days now, thereby proving our suspicion that nobody's watching; up the dial, Tri-State Christian TV's W42CO has switched back from the TCT satellite feed to the somewhat different program lineup of WNYB-TV (Channel 26) in Jamestown, received over the air at W42CO's Pinnacle Hill site.
(W42CO used to be W59BV, and it began as a WNYB off-air relay, but eventually abandoned the off-air pickup because of severe channel 26 interference from quasi-local UPN affiliate W26BZ over in Victor. You can still see co-channel interference lines in the W42CO signal, and we wonder how the picture will look when UHF reception hits its seasonal doldrums in a few months.)
One more Pinnacle note: the old AT&T microwave tower up near the Rochester TV towers came down a few weeks ago, clearing the way for a new tower that will be home to WUHF-DT (Channel 28) and perhaps some of the LPTVs.
And we hope your travel plans, like ours, include a stop this Thursday (Sept. 26) at the Turning Stone Casino in Verona (between Syracuse and Utica) next Thursday (Sept. 26) for the Society of Broadcast Engineers' Chapter 22 Northeast Regional Convention. This is the 30th year for the event, which has become the biggest broadcast engineering trade show in the region; if you're not registered yet, visit http://www.sbe22.org/html/convention/convhome02.html to get signed up -- and don't forget to say hello to your editor!
The little 250-watt daytimer (are there any "big" 250-watt daytimers?) was a last bastion of country music in central Jersey, and still sounded like something out of the mid-70s the last time we listened a few months back. We're expecting to hear religion next time...
Montreal's all-news CINW (940) is mourning traffic reporter Joel Gordon; he died Sept. 18 of cancer at age 40.
In Brantford, Ontario, religious CFWC (99.5) wants to boost power from 50 to 250 watts.
And that's it for the week; we'll see you back here on Monday, Sept. 30!