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