New England RadioWatch: May 21, 1996

by Scott Fybush

• A big one I missed last time: Radio Equity Partners, parent company of WHYN AM-FM Springfield MA and WWBB-FM Providence RI/WWRX-FM Westerly-Providence, has been sold to Clear Channel Broadcasting for $235 million. Both are new markets for Clear Channel, whose only other New England operation is WELI(AM)/WKCI-FM/WAVZ(AM) in the New Haven market. NERW wonders how this will affect Clear Channel's planned purchase of WPRI-TV Providence from CBS...

• Classical survives on Cape Cod: Charles River Broadcasting, owner of Boston's classical WCRB-FM Waltham-Boston, is buying WFCC 107.5 Chatham, the Cape's lone classical outlet. No terms announced on the deal. WCRB PD Mario Mazza takes on WFCC duties as well.

• A few formats get cleared up: Our spies in northern New England tell me WVFM 105.7 Campton NH is on the air, simulcasting oldies WLKZ 104.9 down in Wolfeboro for now. And WRDX (ex-WRGW) 98.7 Somersworth NH, on the seacoast, is again running AC, after a brief stint as standards "Radio Deluxe." Meantime in Rhode Island, the smooth jazz is dead on WOTB 100.3 Middletown-Newport. New owner Philip Urso is now using the station to simulcast his modern-rock WDGE 99.7 Wakefield-Peace Dale, "the Edge." There's a lot of overlap between those two signals in southern Rhode Island. The only remaining smooth-jazz outlet in the area now is WPLM-FM 99.1 Plymouth MA, which mostly runs SW Smooth FM, as does WKCD 107.7 Pawcatuck CT, which gets into some of the more remote parts of the former WOTB listening area on the seacoast.

• WAMC swallows another one: The ever-growing WAMC Northeast Public Radio Network, based in Albany NY, has acquired another outlet which can be heard in New England. Control of WCFE-FM 91.9 Plattsburgh NY, which also serves the Burlington VT area, is being transferred from the Mountain Lakes Public Telecommunications Council (licensee of WCFE-TV 57 in Plattsburgh) to WAMC, and 91.9 will presumably become part of the WAMC network, allowing travelers to hear WAMC from the Canadian border pretty much all the way down to the northern New York City suburbs. Thanks to the main WAMC 90.3 transmitter on Mount Greylock in Adams MA, the station can already be heard from central Massachusetts most of the way to Utica NY.

• A new station in St. Johnsbury VT has been issued calls. WAOA will operate on 90.5 up there, with a few hundred watts and what I believe will be a religious format. Also in Vermont, the FCC has revived the construction permit for WWGT 96.7 in Vergennes, south of Burlington.

• A tower move is in the works for WOAZ 99.5, Infinity's smooth jazz outlet serving Boston from Wood Hill in Andover, Mass. WOAZ has applied to drop power from 39 kw to 24 kw, boosting its antenna from 550' AAT to 689' AAT from a new, taller tower just slightly northeast of the current one.

• Speaking of the Merrimack Valley area, the Lowell Spinners, the New York-Penn League (short season A) minor-league baseball team that begins play in June, will have two additional radio outlets in addition to flagship WLLH 1400 Lowell. The Boston Globe reports the new outlets as "WNVU 900" in Nashua NH and "WADM 1120" in Concord MA, but those are actually WMVU and WADN, respectively. (Confidential to the Globe's radio columnist: 93.7 hasn't been "WCGY" for a year and a half, even if you did call it that in two consecutive columns. Try "WEGQ.")

• And we'll close it out with some fun. According to the latest Arbitrends, as reported in the local papers, WBCN's decision to move Howard Stern from evenings to mornings, bumping AM drive institution Charles Laquidara to sister station WZLX, hasn't quite paid off. WBCN took a bit of a hit in mornings in the latest Trends...and it will be interesting to see what the next book looks like. Meantime, Charles is reuniting all of his old WBCN group over at WZLX. Sportscaster "Tank," who initially chose to stay at WBCN (where he's involved in Patriots broadcasts, among other things), has been lured over to the Big Mattress on WZLX... after Laquidara launched a "Million Pound March" to bring the rather hefty Tank around.

• And, barring something really huge tomorrow, that is it until mid-June. Mark Shneyder will be watching things for the next few weeks, and NERW will return on or around June 12.