North East RadioWatch: February 7, 1997

Just Under the Wire...

by Scott Fybush

• With just three days to spare, AM 1060 in Natick MA is back on the air. The erstwhile WBIV (and before that, WTTP and WGTR), returned to the air Thursday morning with a mighty 500 watts, daytime-only, non-directional, as contemporary Christian WJLT, "J-Light 1060." Owner Alexander Langer is using the WKOX (1200) facilities in Framingham for the station, which would have lost its license on Sunday if it had not returned. NERW's correspondents in the Boston area tell us WJLT may already be breaking the rules by signing on a bit early in the morning...and somehow, we're not surprised.

  Speaking of WKOX, the Boston Herald is again claiming the station is about to go 50 kilowatts, and could become a Bloomberg business outlet. Inasmuch as WKOX has no valid construction permit for such an increase, NERW is taking that report with caution.

  Whither Langer's other station, WRPT (1050 Peterborough NH, with an application to become 650 Ashland MA)? Nobody knows...but NERW would be unsurprised to find something showing up on 650 by this weekend to keep the license afloat.

  We're told that WEAV (960 Plattsburgh NY) has escaped the deadline by returning to the air as a simulcast of a Burlington VT station - and if any of our readers in the Champlain Valley know which one it is, we'd love to know too.

  As for WAUB (1590 Auburn NY) and WSCP (1070 Sandy Creek NY) - they were still silent when the NERW-mobile drove through Central New York last weekend. The clock is ticking - and anything that's still dark on Sunday loses its license for good. We'll have the list in the next NERW.

• Local ownership is rapidly becoming a thing of the past in Waterbury, Connecticut. Both of the city's FMs are now owned by conglomerates and operating from Hartford, and long-dark WQQW (1590) will vanish from the FCC files next week - and now WWCO (1240) has been sold. Buckley Broadcasting is buying the station from the Johnson family for $550,000. Buckley owns WDRC AM-FM in Hartford and WSNG in Torrington, and the company says it plans to simulcast Brad Davis' morning show from WDRC(AM), but has made no other programming plans. WATR (1320), which reportedly had an interest in buying WWCO, is now the last local station in Waterbury. Thanks to NERW Connecticut correspondent Bill Dillane for that tidbit.

• The folks at WHYN AM/FM in Springfield MA are mourning their late general manager. Mike Marder died early Monday morning, less than two months after he was diagnosed with leukemia. Marder had been at WHYN since early 1995, capping a career that started at Westinghouse's KYW-TV in Philadelphia, continuing through several other Westinghouse stations, and then as general manager at several stations in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Marder was 53 years old. PD Gary James is serving as interim GM for the time being.

• Never mind...: It turns out WKLB-FM (96.9) in Boston is in fact now transmitting from the Prudential Tower, not from the FM128 tower in Newton, Mass. It's Evergreen's WJMN (94.5) that's still holding an unbuilt CP to make the same move. Thanks to alert reader Rick Levy, among others, for setting NERW straight on this one.

• Call it "CBS": The broadcasting half of the Company Formerly Known as Westinghouse spent 30 grand to hire a consulting firm to tell it what to call itself - and the surprise answer was: "CBS." Not only that, but the highly-paid consultants came to the remarkable conclusion that the best logo for the new company was, you guessed it, the eye that CBS has used for almost 40 years. So...mark down "CBS Inc." as the corporate ownership on Boston's WBZ (1030), WBOS (92.9; for sale), WOAZ (99.5), WZLX (100.7), WODS (103.3), WBCN (104.1), and WBZ-TV (Channel 4).

• Connecticut TV Fun: Hartford's WHCT-TV (Channel 18) is back on the air to beat the FCC deadline, but the station's ownership is still up in the air. Two If By Sea Broadcasting filed a request for emergency relief last week, asking the FCC to hurry up and grant its purchase of the station from a bankruptcy trustee - and the answer from the folks in Washington was a resounding "no." Meantime, WHCT owner-to-be Lowell Paxson has sold his other Connecticut TV property. WTWS (Channel 26) in New London, which runs the InfoMall service, is being sold to Roberts Broadcasting. In another bit of TV fun to come, the Boston Globe reports Meredith Broadcasting is getting closer to a deal to buy WABU (Channel 68) in Boston and its satellite stations in New Hampshire and on Cape Cod...we'll see what comes of that.

• From our new home base in Upstate New York: Radio listeners in Rochester are hearing a familiar voice with a not-so-familiar name. To mark his 20th anniversary on the Flower City's airwaves, Tony Matthews of WRMM-FM (101.3) has returned to his real name, Tony Infantino. Matthews says he never wanted to use an air name, but the programmers who were running WMJQ (92.5, now WBEE-FM) when he started in radio insisted. By whatever name he uses, his morning show with Dee Alexander is one of Rochester's highest-rated radio shows. Up in Watertown, radio listeners are getting used to a new FM lineup. Gone is hit radio WTNY-FM "T93.5," and new to the air is "Froggy Country 97.5," WFRY. Rocker WCIZ, which used to occupy the 97.5 frequency, is now at WTNY-FM's old 93.5 spot, with a much weaker signal.

• Fun with Underwriting: Listeners to one outlet of the ever-growing WAMC Northeast Public Radio network are hearing a different ID at the top of the hour. WAMQ (105.1) Great Barrington, Mass. runs a top-hour ID announcing its transmitter location atop a ski facility in South Egremont, Mass. The ski area used to be mentioned in WAMC's network ID, which now includes seven primaries and a bunch of translators - but it was dropped as the ID kept getting longer. NERW suspects the ski area was insisting on the hourly mention in exchange for the transmitter space - hence the new ID.

• What, MORE delays?!?!? Yes, NERW will be taking another brief hiatus for the next week and a half, as we decamp for the sunny (well, sunnier than Rochester, anyway) West Coast. We'll be back with more radio fun and excitement on or around February 20. In the meantime, please drop any Northeast radio news in the NERW mailbox, nerw@mercury.lcs.mit.edu. See you then!