New England RadioWatch: November 13, 1996

WBOS For Sale

by Scott Fybush

• Wanna buy a full class B Boston FM? That's the question CBS will have to be asking, after yesterday's agreement with the Justice Department to sell Infinity's WBOS (92.9 Brookline-Boston) and CBS's WMMR (93.3 Philadelphia) in exchange for Justice approval for the CBS-Infinity merger.

  Justice was apparently worried that the new CBS/Infinity group would control in excess of 40 percent of the market revenue in both Boston and Philadelphia, as well as giving CBS/Infinity near-total control of the rock audiences in both cities.

  This means the final CBS/Infinity group in Boston will include news/talk WBZ (1030), smooth jazz WOAZ (99.5 Lowell-Boston), classic rock WZLX (100.7), oldies WODS (103.3), and modern rocker WBCN (104.1).

  What happens to WBOS now? It's possible that one of Boston's other major groups will work out a trade with CBS for WBOS. Likely candidates include Evergreen and American Radio Systems. Other possible local buyers include Woody Tanger's Marlin Broadcasting, which is known to want a stronger signal for its North Shore classical outlet, WBOQ (104.9 Gloucester), and which is flush with cash after selling its Philadelphia and Detroit stations.

  And who's celebrating the most? Probably the folks at little WXRV (92.5) up in Haverhill, who could end up as the city's only AAA outlet if new owners change WBOS's low-rated "rock of the 80s and 90s" format.

• A Vermont radio station says it won't budge from its controversial transmitter site. WIZN (106.7) Vergennes-Burlington just received a letter from town officials in Charlotte, Vermont informing them their tower is causing fear and resentment among the neighbors, some of whom say they're getting WIZN on their toasters. WIZN officials say they've been willing to work with the neighbors all along, and they won't move off Pease Mountain. NERW's comment: A recent trip to Vermont took me past this tower, just off route 7...and it didn't seem any different from any other transmitter site. At the base of the tower, WIZN's signal didn't even overload the radio in the NERW-mobile.

• There's a dearth of TV news managers in Connecticut. Last week, WFSB-TV (3 Hartford) assistant news director Bob Longo returned home to upstate New York to become news director of WKBW-TV in Buffalo. And yesterday, WVIT-TV (30 New Britain-Hartford) news director Steve Schwaid announced he's leaving for sister station WTOG in Tampa.

• Miscellaneousness: M Street says WMOU (1230) way up there in Berlin NH has changed satellite formats from standards to oldies. Congrats to former Boston broadcaster Barry Lunderville; he beat out two other applicants for a new FM CP in Lancaster NH on 102.3. Barry also owns talker WZBZ (1070) Plattsburgh NY-Burlington VT.

• A group called Nantucket Radio, Inc. is applying for a station on 91.9 out there. NERW wonders how it will avoid co-channel interference with WFPB on 91.9 in Falmouth, MA, on the Cape Cod mainland. And WBIV (1060) in Natick MA is reapplying for 40kw directional, daytime-only, apparently from the former Unisys site on Route 117 in Sudbury MA. The FCC returned the first version of this application in May, and NERW thought the town had tossed it out at some point in the meantime. WBIV has been dark for more than a year, and will disappear if it doesn't get back on the air by February.