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January 26,
2004
Nassau Grows Again in New Hampshire
*The eyes of the political world are
on NEW HAMPSHIRE this week, of course, but
so are the eyes of the radio business world in New
England - as, yet again, New Jersey's Nassau
Broadcasting Partners L.P. has picked up another radio
group in northern New England.
 In the
last couple of months, Nassau has bought clusters from
Mariner and WMTW in Maine and then from Tele-Media in
New Hampshire, and now Lou Mercatanti's group is
shelling out $5 million for the three Lakes Region
stations that are all that remains of the Sconnix
Broadcasting empire.
At its height in the eighties, Sconnix owned stations
from Kansas City to Miami to Boston (WHDH, WBOS and WCOZ
at various times), and for a few years it even had a
headquarters office (thanks to partner Ted Nixon) right
here in NERW's hometown of Rochester, N.Y. More
recently, Sconnix has been operated out of Vienna,
Virginia, and all it had left in its portfolio were hot
AC WLNH (98.3 Laconia), classic rock WBHG (101.5
Meredith) and news-talk WEMJ (1490 Laconia), which now
join Tele-Media's oldies WLKZ (104.9 Wolfeboro) in
Nassau's new Lakes Region cluster.
And NERW hears Nassau's not done in New Hampshire -
as early as this week, Nassau may be ready to announce
another acquisition that will give its other Granite
State purchases some company. Stay tuned...
One other Granite State note: when the New Hampshire
Fisher Cats (formerly the New Haven Ravens) of the AA
Eastern League begin their first season in Manchester,
they'll be on two Concord-area radio stations: the team
signed a deal to air its games on WKXL (1450 Concord)
and WTPL (107.7 Hillsborough) this summer and hopes to
add several network stations as well before the season
starts. (We'll have our complete baseball-on-the-radio
rundown in a few weeks...)
*Is MASSACHUSETTS just not
ready for two all-Christmas radio stations? That's what
WQSX (93.7 Lawrence) seems to believe - unlike many of
the stations that went to all ho-ho-ho weeks before the
holiday, "Star 93.7" saw its ratings slump after making
the flip. The Entercom station tells the Boston
Herald it "probably won't do
all-Christmas again," and if it does, it'll be just for
a day or two before Christmas. (Boston's other early
all-Christmas adopter, WODS, did see a ratings boost
from the move.)
Down the hall at Entercom, Mike Hsu is the new night
jock at WAAF (107.3 Worcester), moving there from his
gig as morning news anchor. Hsu is still WAAF's metal
director as well.
Over at Sporting News Radio's WWZN (1510 Boston),
Mike Winn replaces Bill Flaherty as general manager.
Sporting News Radio president Chris Brennan, who was in
town last week, told station staffers the format is
staying in place there, even though SNR has sold its
Chicago flagship and is leasing out all the airtime on
its New York station.
Up in Lowell, Gary Francis has departed WCAP (980)'s
"Afternoon Live" show, shutting down the storefront
studio in his Gary's Ice Cream shop from which he
broadcast daily. Francis is still involved with WCAP,
voicetracking the overnight music show and doing
production; the afternoon shift has been taken over by
Regina Faticanti, who'll do it from the WCAP studios on
Central Street. (Small World Dept.: When your editor was
working for WCAP in the early nineties, he covered
Faticanti, who was then - and still is - on the Lowell
School Committee.)
And down in Middleborough Center, Steve Callahan is
applying for a power increase at WVBF (1530), going from
1000 watts during the day to 2200 watts day, 940 watts
critical hours from a taller (49 meter) new tower at the
station's existing site.
*RHODE ISLAND's newest LPFM
station is already testing in anticipation of a February
7 debut; WCTD-LP (96.9 Ashaway) will be operated by
Chris DiPaolo of WBLQ (88.1 Westerly) fame - from a
spare room in his parents' house!
*In VERMONT, "Sloppy Joe" is
out as PD of WEXP (101.5 Brandon)/WVAY (100.7
Wilmington), with Kelli (Hughes) Kowalski inbound from
Vox sister station WNYQ (105.7 Queensbury NY) to replace
him.
*One CONNECTICUT obituary: Ken
Jordan, whose real name was Kenneth Jordan Berger, died
Tuesday (1/20) of congestive heart failure. Jordan was a
popular oldies DJ in the New Haven area, with shows over
the years on WNHC, WELI, WAVZ and most recently on Long
Island's WLNG (92.1 Sag Harbor). Jordan was 60.
 *Some big doings this week in the Capital
District of NEW YORK state, especially at the
Galaxy stations in and around Albany. Ed Levine pulled
the plug on modern rock "K-Rock" at WKRD (93.7 Scotia)
Thursday, playing construction noises until 3 PM, when
93.7 flipped to classic country as "The Eagle." WKRD is
also picking up NASCAR race coverage in a bid to siphon
at least a bit of audience from perennial market-leading
country outlet WGNA (107.7 Albany), though the station's
signal has nowhere near the coverage of WGNA.
Galaxy also shuffled some voices at sister station
WRCZ (94.5 Ravena), cutting Bill Sheehan loose from the
morning show he shared with Bob Mason. (The two go way
back, to the old "Mason and Sheehan" days on WPYX.) WRCZ
also named Laura Daniels to replace Cree Arigoni, who
departed last fall, as Mason's sidekick.
And over at Albany Broadcasting's WFLY (92.3 Troy), a
familiar voice returned to the air - Brian Cody, former
co-host of the "Brian, Ellen and Big Ray" morning show,
joins Fly 92 as afternoon jock, while marketing VP
Patrick Ryan takes interim PD duties.
 Up in
the Adirondacks, we're told WIRD (920 Lake Placid) is
back on the air after several weeks of silence.
On the Binghamton TV dial, that's a new logo there
for top-rated CBS affiliate WBNG (Channel 12), its first
new look in about a decade and a half.
Here in Rochester, Infinity modern rocker WZNE (94.1
Brighton) sent morning guy Dem Jones packing, moving
midday jock Ty to mornings and music director Jeff
Sottolano into middays. No word on whether the move had
anything to do with WZNE's abysmal ratings - the latest
book found it near the bottom of the pack in the Flower
City.
(Clear Channel talker WHAM stayed at the top despite
a ratings hit from the temporary loss of Rush Limbaugh
and the permanent departure of midday host Bob
Lonsberry; the latest in the parade of fill-ins for the
Lonsberry shift include WRKO morning co-host Scott Allan
Miller, who did the shift last week for a day or two,
and former WRKO and WPHT talker Jeff Katz, who'll take a
swing at it today through Wednesday. But NERW really
missed having a local pro in the seat last week, when
weekend legal-show host Frank Cegelski was trying to
field calls about the massive Kodak layoffs in town
without the experience to give the topic the insight it
deserved.)
Heading downstate, WCBS (880 New York) unveiled a new
afternoon format last Monday, breaking from the nonstop
news wheel from 5-7 PM daily for a new show called
"Drivetime Live," hosted by Mary Alice Williams, Wayne
Cabot and Ed Crane. Could WCBS, which already breaks
from all-news for Yankees games during the season, be
moving toward more long-form programming? Its Los
Angeles sister station, KNX (1070), now breaks out of
news for several hours each weekend afternoon to do
talk...
And we're sorry to have to report the passing of
Harry Fleetwood, the smooth-voiced announcer familiar to
New Yorkers from "Music in the Night" on WNBC/WRCA in
the fifties and sixties and later from WNCN (104.3).
Fleetwood died January 18; he was 86.
*A familiar central
PENNSYLVANIA voice has not only left the
airwaves, he says he's done with radio: Bruce Bond and
sidekick "Stretch" Raback were told their WRKZ (102.3
Carlisle) morning show was cancelled, effective January
14. Bond, the longtime afternoon jock on WNNK (104.1
Harrisburg), hoped Z-102.3 would bring him back to
prominence after a nasty contract dispute with WNNK that
kept him off the air for more than a year - but the
ratings never materialized, and now Bond tells the
Harrisburg Patriot-News that he's not
looking for new work behind the mike. Raback, meanwhile,
says he's contemplating a career in politics.
An FM and UHF TV pioneer passed from the scene this
month: Raymond Frank Kohn, who died January 15 in
Clearwater, Florida, founded WFMZ (100.7 Allentown, now
WLEV) way back in 1947, when a standalone FM signal had
almost no chance of succeeding. Yet WFMZ stayed on the
air through the forties and fifties, with Kohn finally
selling the station in 1965. Kohn also founded the
original WFMZ-TV (Channel 67), which went dark after a
brief period of operation in the mid-fifties and was
later revived (after he'd sold the station) on channel
69. Kohn was 87.
 *In CANADA's capital, an application
for a new station has triggered a call for competing
applications by the CRTC. Applications are due April
21.
Veteran CHFI (98.1 Toronto) jock Don Daynard is
hanging up his headphones. Health problems have forced
Daynard (the station's morning jock from 1987-1999) to
retire from his Saturday Night Oldies show. Over at CILQ
(Q107), weekend jock Bob "Iceman" Segarini is out - not
of his own volition, we're told.
And a very happy 25th anniversary to CJTN (1270
Trenton), which marked the occasion with a special
morning show last week.
*That's it for another week...except for our usual
housekeeping notes. First, a reminder that while we
don't ask you for a password to read NERW, this isn't a
free product, either. Many of you have already sent in
subscription payments for 2004, and to all of you we say
"thank you." If you haven't, what are you waiting for?
Your contribution - of any amount - makes it
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If you haven't seen it yet, don't miss our roundup of
all the news that was fit to remember from last year...
Click
here for our 2003 Year in Review package!
 *And if you still haven't ordered one,
we have plenty of 2004 Tower Site Calendars still
available for your enjoyment!
Just as in past years, the calendar features a dozen
spiffy 8.5-by-11 inch full-color images of tower sites
from across the nation - everything from Washington's
WTEM to New York's WCBS/WFAN (shown at left) to Los
Angeles' KHJ to WCTM in Eaton, Ohio.
Other featured sites include Cedar Hill in Dallas,
Lookout Mountain above Denver, CKLW Windsor, WELI New
Haven, WPTF Raleigh NC, WBT Charlotte NC, WAJR
Morgantown WV, WMT Cedar Rapids IA and the mighty 12
towers of KFXR (the old KLIF 1190) in Dallas.
Unlike last year, this year's calendar features
heavier paper (no more curling!) and will be shipped
shrink-wrapped on a cardboard backing to make sure it
arrives in pristine condition.
All orders received by January 24 have
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should be enjoying your calendar any day now. (And if
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calendar yet, please let us know!)
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dropped.
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2003 by Scott
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