North East RadioWatch: August 27, 2001

Bad Blood at the Blood Drive

by Scott Fybush

• We begin this week's update, reluctantly, in MASSACHUSETTS, where resident Infinity bad boys Opie and Anthony are at it again. No sooner did the duo's New York-based show begin airing in afternoons on Boston's WBCN (104.1), than the two were back in the news for another stunt.

  You'll recall that Opie and Anthony were forced out of Boston for their April Fools' Day stunt back in 1998 in which they declared Boston mayor Tom Menino to be dead for an entire afternoon. It seems they haven't quite forgiven WAAF (107.3 Worcester) for showing them the door after that incident (even though it landed them at WNEW in New York and now in syndication), at least judging by the scene at a WAAF-sponsored blood drive at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Natick.

  WBCN staffers reportedly visited the blood drive with megaphones in hand, and one assaulted WAAF afternoon jock Matty Blake. The Entercom-owned station says it has pictures of the WBCN employees involved, and intends to press charges. We'll keep you posted.

  On a much classier note, Charles Laquidara is being heard from again, a year after his final morning show on WZLX (100.7 Boston). The longtime WBCN "Big Mattress" host tells the Tab's Ed Symkus he's enjoying the anonymity of life at his new Hawaii home. Laquidara says he's learning Japanese, Chinese and Italian, and enjoying driving his motorcycle too fast. As for a return to the airwaves, Laquidara says he'd probably be "assassinated" if he went on the radio in Hawaii to air his views on sugarcane farming and other local issues...

  A bit of Boston TV news: Over at WCVB (Channel 5), chief meteorologist Dick Albert is giving up the 11 PM newscast (the station says it's for "personal reasons"), moving David Brown from mornings and noon to the killer split shift of noon and 11 PM. Weekend guy Mark Rosenthal will move to weekdays to handle the "Eyeopener" morning show, and Albert will keep his early-evening duties.

• There's a new signal on the air in CONNECTICUT, and even though it's just a watt, we'd bet plenty of people can tune in W220CE (91.9 Southington). That's because the new WMNR (88.1 Monroe) translator sits high atop West Peak in Meriden, shoulder-to-shoulder (well, bay-to-bay) with most of the big FM signals in Hartford and vicinity.

• The final days of talk on NEW YORK's WEVD (1050 New York) are apparently upon us, and so is another protest from Chuck Zlatkin's "Save WEVD" group. This time, they're planning a candlelight vigil outside WEVD's studios at 333 Seventh Avenue, to begin at 9:30 PM on Friday (August 31) and end with the candles being snuffed out at midnight, when 1050 will reportedly become ESPN Radio under ABC management.

  On the TV side, we hear October 1 will be the debut of Univision's second network, to be known as "Telefutura." WHSE (Channel 68) in Newark, N.J., WHSI (Channel 67) in Smithtown, WHSP (Channel 65) in Vineland, N.J. and WHUB-TV (Channel 66) in Marlborough, Mass. will be the initial affiliates in NERW-land; we'd expect some call changes down the road.

  Some TV news from the Utica area: Fox affiliate WFXV (Channel 33) will be adding a 10 PM newscast in September, part of the network's push to get news on all its affiliates around the country (in NERW-land, only WFFF in Burlington and WUTV in Buffalo are still holdouts, and WFFF says it will be doing news next year). WFXV's news will be produced by NBC affiliate WKTV (Channel 2), which will itself be adding a 5:30 PM show next month. WKTV also promotes news director Vic Vetters to general manager.

  Heading west, our DX buddy Rick Lucas tells us he's seeing color bars that just might be the new channel 52 in Ithaca testing. Anybody down that way know more about it?

• As we head off to PENNSYLVANIA (more on that in a minute), we note that listeners in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre are getting a little bit of Rochester on their morning radio. The new "Breakfast Buzz with Kimberly and Beck" show on Entercom's 80s-pop WBZA (98.9 Rochester) is being simulcast to the company's other 80s "Buzz" stations, WBZJ (102.3 Pittston) and WBZH (103.1 Freeland). By the way, that "WBZJ" call is now the correct one for Pittston, picked quickly after the FCC realized the initial "WUBZ" call for the station was already in use across the state in Phillipsburg!

• We'll start this week's news from CANADA with word that CBC's Radio Two service will soon be available in Quebec City. As part of the CRTC's mandate to broaden the reach of CBC/Radio-Canada services, the CBC won permission this week to put a new CBM-FM (93.5 Montreal) relay on the air in Quebec City. The new signal, with 308 watts, will be at 96.1, the former home of noncomm CKIA ("Radio Basse-Ville"), which is moving (or perhaps has already moved) to 88.3.

  Anyone hoping to build a new radio station in the Toronto area will have to wait a bit longer. The CRTC extended its suspension of a call for new applications while Industry Canada continues its study of FM spacing, in hopes of making still more short-spaced channels available for new Toronto broadcasters.

  And when we visited Radio Canada International in Sackville, New Brunswick a few summers ago, we had no idea that the giant shortwave transmitter site had its very own call letters. Yet there it was in the CRTC's releases this week: a renewal for Sackville under the calls "CKCX." Who knew?