Harrison has been a New York fixture since his days as midday man on WMCA (570), where he was a "Good Guy" from 1959 until 1968. That year, Harrison replaced Herb Oscar Anderson in morning drive on WABC (770), where he would remain until 1979. In 1980, Harrison began 24 years in morning drive on WCBS-FM, where he'd eventually be joined by other WABC legends including Dan Ingram and Ron Lundy.
Longtime WCBS-FM listeners have already heard some changes in the last year or so: the disappearance of most of the pre-Beatles music from the playlist, the dismissal of morning sports guy Phil Pepe, and the recent departure of another WABC veteran, Dan Daniel, from middays -- so it's no wonder that the abruptness of Harrison's departure (he announced for the first time on Friday's show that this Wednesday's would be his last) is sparking plenty of discussion on the message boards and beyond.
Harrison says the decision to leave WCBS-FM right now is all his -- and he's not "retiring," leaving the door open to a return to the dials at some point. WCBS-FM hasn't named a replacement; Dan Taylor will be doing the shift on an interim basis after Harrison's final show, which he'll broadcast in front of a live audience at Manhattan's Museum of Television and Radio.
Only Harry Harrison is big enough to keep this next item from being our lead story this week: more than a year after it launched, the YES network has finally won carriage on the Cablevision systems serving Long Island, northern New Jersey, southern Connecticut, the Bronx, Westchester and Rockland.
A deal reached between Cablevision and YES last week provides at least a little something to make both sides happy: Cablevision won't have to make YES available on its basic tier (thus increasing cable rates for all its subscribers), instead offering it a la carte for $1.95 or as part of a sports tier with MSG and Fox Sports NY for $4.95 a month; YES gets the same $2.12 per subscriber per month from Cablevision that it's been charging other cable operators. It's a mixed bag for Yankees fans: some of them had been getting MSG and Fox Sports without an extra fee (they'll now have to pay for that $4.95 package, though their basic cable rate will decrease somewhat), and anyone who wants YES will need a set-top box to descramble the channel.
(Next week: NERW's annual look at major-league baseball broadcasts across the region, just in time for Opening Day!)
On the DTV front, another signal is finally coming to the New York City airwaves: WPIX-DT was seen testing last week, albeit not on its assigned channel 33 spot. With the loss of the World Trade Center, where most of the city's TV stations had just finished building DTV facilities on September 11, it's been a scramble to get digital TV back on the air -- and the solution for WPIX is a low-power (125 watt) transmitter at the Empire State Building, operating on channel 12 under special temporary authority. We'd expect WPIX-DT to return to channel 33 whenever permanent DTV facilities for New York are completed, whether in Bayonne, N.J., or at the Trade Center site -- but it will take a few years.
Heading upstate, there's a full airstaff in place now at Clear Channel active rocker WWDG (105.1 DeRuyter) -- but most of them aren't at the Dog studios in Syracuse. Morning guy Bob Schmidt doubles in creative services for sister AM stations WHEN (620) and WSYR (570); middayer Laura Steele does her shift from WFBQ in Indianapolis; night guy Chad Erickson is at WMRQ in Hartford, leaving only afternoon jock Scorch as a full-time WWDG personality.
Up in Watertown, John Shatraw is the latest departure at WWNY (Channel 7), departing the station instead of trading his noon anchor shift for weekends, as had been planned. Former WWNY morning anchor Mark Mason has been filling in on radio for WTOJ (103.1 Carthage) morning host Annette Miller, who's out on maternity leave.
Where are they now? Former WBEE-FM (92.5 Rochester) PD Coyote Collins has landed on his feet in beautiful Flint, Michigan, where he's now programming country station WFBE (95.1).
WBOQ started out in the late eighties as classical "W-Bach," the successor to Simon Geller's legendary one-man WVCA operation, but in recent years it's become a swinging standards station.
Out on Nantucket, a Paul Christensen has asked the FCC to allocate 97.7 as a new class A frequency. Comments on the proposal are due May 5 (and we wonder what happened to John Garabedian's proposal last year to allocate 98.7A out there?)
Way down east in Calais, Maine PBS received a license to cover last week for WMED-DT (Channel 10), which means most of the Pine Tree State now has DTV service from Maine PBS (and those lucky Bangorites have DTV service from all of the Big Three networks, too!).
That's it for this very quiet news week... we'll be back next week with more news and the major league baseball list!