New England RadioWatch: August 27, 1996

More on ``WKLBCS''

by Scott Fybush

• Boston's one and only two-headed country station, WBCS 96.9 and WKLB 105.7, is sounding more and more like the old WBCS every day. 'BCS jock Carolyn Cruise greeted morning listeners on Monday, albeit with a promise that WKLB morning institutions Loren and Wally would be back on the air Tuesday morning on the temporary simulcast. It looks like Cruise will be the midday host on the simulcast when things settle down.

  The simulcast is clearly coming from the old WBCS digs at 330 Stuart Street; the EBS test that played on both stations Monday morning mentioned only WBCS, and the request line being given over the air is the old WBCS 800 number, ending in "-0969."

  Still unclear is which frequency the merged country station will end up on when the simulcast breaks up on or around September 5, and which set of calls they'll use. (By the way, the top-hour ID is erroneously referring to "WKLB Framingham-Boston." The legal ID should be WKLB-"FM," since WKLB with no suffix is AM 1290 in Manchester, Kentucky.)

• Thanks to the many NERW readers who let me know what's happening with 95.3 FM in York Center, Maine (Portsmouth NH market). Now known as WXHT, the station is playing 80s and 90s hits as "the Heat" -- quite a rise in temperature from their old playlist of oldies as "Cool 95." I'm also informed that the simulcast of WXGL 95.5 Topsham ME/WCME 96.7 Boothbay Harbor ME is moving away from oldies and towards a more current hot AC format. Your NERW hopes to combine some, ah, research in that area with some intensive seafood consumption before the weather turns bad.

• Just across the New England line, WYSR 98.3 in Rotterdam (Schenectady- Albany) NY has been sold to SFX Broadcasting, which recently gobbled the Liberty properties in the Albany market (WTRY 980 Troy [oldies], WGNA 1460 Albany/WGNA-FM 107.7 Albany [country], WPYX 106.5 Albany [AOR]). Before becoming satellite-70s "Star 98," the station was LMA'd to Liberty as oldies WTRY-FM, simulcasting WTRY ("A Great Pair of 98's"). And before THAT, the station was WSHZ "Show FM," simulcast with WSHQ 103.5 Cobleskill. And even further back, it was satellite AC WNYJ. All that, and it's still less than a decade old! WYSR owner Jarad Broadcasting exits Albany with this deal; they sold their other station, oldies WXXO 96.7 Clifton Park (ex-WWCP, WVKZ-FM) to Crawford Broadcasting earlier this year -- it's now WDCD-FM. Got all that? If not, a Greater Albany market listing will soon be on-line at http://radio.lcs.mit.edu/radio/ bostonradio.html.

• From our Technicalities Dept.: Thanks to Tom Taylor of Inside Radio, who points out (as your NERW should have in the first place!) that technically, the 15 year old boy who's suspected of vandalizing WWKJ/ WJCO was not "arrested," because that's not how Massachusetts juvenile law works. Anyway, he *was* in court, and of course it was a closed- door proceeding, so there's no saying exactly what happened.

• And a few bits that slipped through the cracks while your NERW was glued to 105.7 and/or 96.9: WNAW (1230) in North Adams MA is moving towards a news/talk format, with heavy use of AP All News. And it turns out the NERW Connecticut Road Trip two weekends ago *did* spot the WWCO 1240 transmitter in Waterbury CT. NERW Connecticut correspondent Bill Dillane points out that WWCO uses the tall center tower in what we had thought to be the 3-tower WQQW 1590 array. In fact, WQQW was just the outer two towers. Thanks, Bill!