New England RadioWatch: November 25, 1996

WBNW ``Not For Sale''

by Scott Fybush

• Boston's business-radio station is raising a lot more questions than it's answering with its public pronouncements this week. WBNW (590) has been the subject of repeated sale rumors over the last few weeks, and now station owner Back Bay Broadcasting has gone to the trouble and expense of hiring veteran Boston PR man George Regan to spread the word that "there will be no change of owner."

  In an article in Saturday's Boston Herald, Regan is quoted as saying, "as far as (Back Bay owner) Peter Ottmar is concerned, no one has an option on the station." The very next paragraph begins by noting that Salem Communications has an option on WBNW. It also answers a question we've been puzzling over here at NERW headquarters: it seems Salem picked up the option on WBNW in the process of selling KDBX(FM) Banks-Portland, Oregon to American Radio Systems this fall. This is the first solid confirmation we've seen of the long-held speculation that ARS had an option to buy WBNW ever since the station went on the air in September 1994.

  Back to the denials: Regan tells the Herald that the departure of WBNW's general manager, Peter Crawford, this week was a "mutual parting of the ways," and he says October was WBNW's most successful month yet.

  We'll be keeping a very close ear on 590...at least as long as the station audio isn't drowned out by all those denials.

• It was a very close call for one of Metro Networks' airborne traffic reporters and the pilot flying him over Boston's northern suburbs last Thursday afternoon. Pilot Tom Haught's Cessna lost power over busy Route 3, and he and reporter Chris Culkeene made an emergency landing that ended with the plane nose-down in the woods near a Raytheon plant in Tewksbury, Mass. Metro was without radio contact with Culkeene and Haught for more than 20 minutes, and another airborne reporter was sent over the scene to find out what happened.

  Haught and Culkeene were lucky; both men walked away from the plane unhurt. It's still not clear what caused the plane to lose power.

• There's a new TV station on the air in Boston. W54AT is the latest low-power outlet to hit the airwaves, operating with 1000 watts from the "FM-128" tower in Newton, Mass. As reported last week in NERW, channel 54 is rebroadcasting the infomercials from WGOT (Channel 60) in Merrimack, N.H. Word has it that W54AT will soon change calls to WGOT-LP, and that it will soon buy its way onto cable systems south and west of Boston (the primary WGOT signal is already on cable north of Boston thanks to must-carry).

  Channel 54 replaces WRAP-LP (Channel 33) in Gloucester. NERW has learned that the channel 33 equipment, which has been removed from its Gloucester site, will reappear soon in Brockton, which was the original city of license for W54AT.

• WFGL(AM) in Fitchburg MA is getting new owners. Calvary Chapel, which has owned the station for about two years, is selling it to a company called "CSN, Incorporated." No word on who these guys are, or what changes they may have planned to WFGL's religious format on 960 AM. Also getting new ownership, in name only, are Brockton's WCAV(FM) and WBET(AM). They're being transferred from the Enterprise Publishing Company to "WBET, L.L.C.," to allow the Enterprise Publishing Company and the Brockton Enterprise daily newspaper to be sold, while WBET and WCAV remain in the hands of their longtime family owners.

• Rhode Island may soon lose its distinction as the only state with no public radio station. A group called "Rhode Island Public Radio" has applied for 88.1 MHz in Westerly, R.I. No word on what kind of power they're seeking; it can't be much, since WPBX is operating on 88.3 in Southampton, L.I., not that many miles across Block Island Sound.

• From the translator front: Religious WHCF (88.5) in Bangor, Maine wants to move its translator in Presque Isle from 99.9 to 102.7. NERW can't think of anything much to add to this tidbit...

• One of Boston's best-known newspaper columnists is hanging up his keyboard next week. Jack Craig has been reporting on TV and radio sports for the Boston Globe for three decades, and has achieved a reputation for accuracy that some of his colleagues at that paper have never quite been able to equal. NERW wishes him the best of luck as he heads towards retirement.

• And now, we'll make good on half of NERW's long-running promise to deliver a history of southern Maine radio and a travelogue of our recent radio-related journeys. This time around we'll do the travelogue; next time we'll tackle the Maine material:

  As the snow-free weather draws to a close, your NERW has been racking up the miles on the Saturn (a very good car, by the way -- everything you see in the ads is true) checking out the radio dials across the region. Two of the trips in the last month have involved New York's HUDSON VALLEY, just across the line from Connecticut and Massachusetts.

  We'll start with the really neat stations...and in the Hudson Valley that list is headed up by WDST (100.1) in Woodstock and its simulcast, WDSP (96.9) Arlington/Poughkeepsie. "Radio Woodstock" has always been a favorite of ours, with a very eclectic blend of music and a friendly, homey on-air sound. Of a similar bent is WQQQ (103.3) in Sharon, Connecticut, a small community operation in Connecticut's placid northwestern corner. That must be a fertile area for radio; just down the road in Salisbury is WKZE-FM (98.1), which seems to run everything from classical to rock. WKZE's sister AM on 1020 is satellite country. (Why am I mentioning them here? All three have their transmitters across the line in Millerton, New York).

  More good listens: On the AM dial, WHVW (950) in Hyde Park was spinning country music with a live DJ on a Sunday afternoon. The rest of the AM dial was all satellite -- WGHQ (920) Kingston and WEOK (1390) Poughkeepsie with standards, WKIP (1450) Poughkeepsie and WBNR (1260) Beacon with talk, WPUT (1510) Brewster with country. On the drive down, we caught some very good live oldies programming and local news on WLAD (800) Danbury CT, and local talk on WINE (940) Brookfield-Danbury, which simulcasts with WSTC (1400) Stamford and WNLK (1350) Norwalk these days.

  On FM, Poughkeepsie's WSPK (104.7) was doing its usual competent job with CHR as "K104." WPDH (101.5) with classic rock and WCZX (97.7 Hyde Park) with oldies are co-owned along with WEOK, and both have simulcasts high in the Catskills -- WPDA (106.1) Jeffersonville and WZAD (97.3) Wurtsboro, respectively.

  Among the ranks of the satellited: Poughkeepsie's WRNQ (92.1), with AC as "Q92;" Newburgh's WGNY-FM (103.1), also with AC but with no legal ID that I ever heard; Patterson's WAXB (105.5), with oldies as "B105," and a newcomer, Poughkeepsie's WNSX (96.1), using ABC's "MR-35" adult modern rock format as "96-X." WNSX is co-owned with WKIP and WRNQ. Also on satellite was Newburgh's WGNY (1200), which does standards.

  There are tons of translators up and down the valley, and leading the charge are sister stations WBWZ (93.3 New Paltz), doing hits as "Z-93," and WRWD (107.3 Highland), with country. WRWD's sister AM in Cornwall-on-Hudson has not changed calls to the requested WWLE, and it's still simulcasting WRWD on 1170. The sign-off a few minutes after sunset was accomplished simply by shutting off the carrier; quite graceful. WBWZ has a translator on 95.3 in Kingston, among others, and both stations have applied for several more.

  The noncomm band isn't especially local these days. The "Sound of Life" network based out of WFGB (89.7) Kingston is now also heard on WLJP (89.3) Monroe, WRPJ (88.9) Port Jervis, and an 88.3 translator in Newburgh. Also with religion is Family Radio's WFRH (91.7) Kingston. Two of Albany's public outlets have relays in the valley; WAMC (90.3) runs news and talk on WAMK (90.9) Kingston, WOSR (91.7) Middletown, and a 107.7 translator in Newburgh, and WMHT (89.1) runs classical on WRHV (88.7) Poughkeepsie. WRHV allegedly shares time with WFNP at SUNY-New Paltz, but I've almost never heard New Paltz using the channel. Rounding things out is one decent college station, Vassar's WVKR (91.3) in Poughkeepsie.

  The biggest "huh" of the trip was Kingston's WBPM (94.3), which ran CHR as "B-94," with no personalities, few spots, and just a handful of liners, only one of which actually identified the station.

  Drifting in from the fringes, the Catskills offered up modern rocker WRRV (92.7 Middletown), the former WKOJ-FM. WTHN (99.3) in Ellenville was satellite "Thunder Country," WSUL (98.3) in Monticello was AC, and WJUX (99.7) in Monticello was doing "Jukebox Radio" as the nominal primary for that 103.1 translator down in Fort Lee, NJ. To the south, NERW tuned in to WHUD (100.7 Peekskill) with the usual solid blend of AC and WZZN (106.3 Mount Kisco), under yet another new set of calls, with a rock format this time around. New York City? Mostly lost under all the new FMs in the valley, although WQHT (97.1) was listenable as far up as Kingston.

• NERW also made a brief trip to ALBANY last weekend, just long enough to hear the new WXCR (102.3 Ballston Spa). It's classic rock, all right -- but not satellite as we reported here. It's running live, and no doubt meant to give market giant WPYX (106.5) a serious run for its money. The NERW-mobile stopped in at public station WMHT-TV/FM and WMHQ-TV, housed in a very non-ostentatious concrete-block building in Rotterdam, as well as at the transmitter/studio site of WKLI (100.9), on a small hill midway between Albany and Schenectady, and at WDCD (1540), which still has the old "WPTR" calls on the tower and building.

• Also on the agenda was another visit to MAINE, which gave us our first chance to hear the new CHR format of WCSO (97.9) in Portland. "The New Q 97-dot-9" is well-executed, and was drawing listener calls from as far away as Winslow, a good 60 miles from Portland. The 96.9 Portland translator of WKZS (99.9 Auburn) is now running 250 watts, with a very good signal up and down the coast. We found the "main studio" of Lewiston's WCYI (93.9), an office in a building on the outskirts of town. The programming all comes from the WCYY (94.3 Biddeford) studios in downtown Portland, of course. Seen around Sebago Lake were several of Portland's big FM/TV sticks, including the 1300+ foot WGME-TV/WBLM(FM) tower in Raymond, which presented a magnificent view when seen against the sunset over the lake. That tower was briefly the tallest in the nation, for a few months in 1961.

  Less worthy of note: WSME (1220) in Sanford, Maine, which apparently does not bother offering a legal ID, or even a less-than-legal ID. The United Broadcasters' Network programming just segues into top-hour network news with no local ID at all each time I've listened. Also lacking a full legal ID was religious WTME (1240) in Lewiston, which at least mentioned its calls once in a while.

  Missing: WLOB (1310) in Portland remains silent, the victim of serious flood damage last month. Owner Carter Broadcasting is reaching much of the Portland market with WWMR (96.3), an FM with a massive signal up in Rumford. Also not heard was little WSJB (91.5) at St. Joseph's College in Standish, Maine. A few college stations that merited a few minutes' listening: WRBC (91.5) at Bates College in Lewiston, WBOR (91.1) at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, and the always-listenable WMPG (90.9) at the University of Southern Maine in Gorham.

• And that will close things out for this edition of New England Radio Watch. Later this week, we'll finally make good on the Southern Maine history...as well as learning whether WBNW is still not for sale.