New England RadioWatch: October 11, 1996

WAAF (back) on the tube

by Scott Fybush

• Greater Boston's hard rock radio station has found a new home for its first television venture. WAAF (107.3 Worcester) had planned to debut "WAAF Real Rock" last Saturday night (10/5) on Boston University's independent TV station, WABU-TV (68). Then WABU pulled the plug with less than a week to go, saying the raunchy 'AAF telecast didn't fit with WABU's quality image (alert readers will want to note that WABU is Boston's outlet for "Baywatch;" draw your own conclusions).

  That didn't faze the folks at soon-to-be ARS-owned WAAF; they've found a new home on Univision affiliate WUNI (27) in Worcester, where they're scheduled to debut this Saturday (10/12) at midnight.

  Speaking of WABU, they're bidding farewell to late-night talk host Charles Adler ("call me Chuck"), as he departs his nightly 10pm call-in spot to return home to Canada in search of greener pastures. Adler's zenith in Boston came a couple of years ago, when he was holding down 7-10pm on WRKO (680), with the middle hour simulcast on WABU. But then WABU got the Red Sox contract, bumping Adler to weird hours like 4pm and 11pm; and then WRKO bumped Chuck to weekends so it could plug in "Two Chicks Dishing" in evenings. WABU is bolstering its sports image by introducing a nightly sports talkfest in the 10pm time slot; it will be a post-game show on nights when WABU has the 'Sox or other sports.

  Meanwhile, to the south, WB affiliate WBNE-TV (59) in New Haven, Connecticut has signed on to carry 20 regular-season Whalers games; the biggest broadcast schedule the Whalers have enjoyed since the days when they were on now-defunct WHCT (18) in Hartford.

• And speaking of defunct: Say goodbye to WNHA (1140) in Concord, NH. Never heard of it? Don't worry; it never got on the air, and now it never will. NERW research director Garrett Wollman reports the FCC has cancelled the CP and deleted the callsign for the would-have-been 2500 watt daytimer. Last time we looked, WNHA was owned at least in part by upstate New York broadcaster Craig Fox (who's just bought WVOA 105.1 De Ruyter NY and WSIV 1540 East Syracuse in the Syracuse market...presumably a format change from classical and religion is in the works there).

• Coming soon to northern New Hampshire, eastern Maine, and a decent chunk of Quebec: More country music. NERW has learned that when WZPK (103.7 Berlin NH) returns to the airwaves from high atop Mount Washington, it will be simulcasting country WOKQ (97.5 Dover NH), one of the flagship properties of new owner Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcasting. The change will take WZPK out of the hot-AC format war with new stablemate WCSO "The Ocean" (97.9) in Portland, Maine, and it will bring WOKQ's top-rated country format to an even more enormous audience. WOKQ's primary transmitter on 97.5 covers an area from just north of Boston well up the seacoast into Maine, and a WOKQ translator on 97.9 in Manchester NH covers the densely-populated Manchester-Nashua area well. No word on a call change yet, but NERW wouldn't be at all surprised.

• An addendum to the mention in the last column about WWFX in Belfast- Bangor ME changing to country: The format change reportedly accompanies a sale, from Group H Radio to Mark Osborne's Star Broadcasting, which also owns WKSQ "Kiss" (94.5 Ellsworth-Bangor).

• There's now a bit less music on Boston's public-radio airwaves on Saturday nights. Boston University's WBUR (90.9 Boston, simulcast on 91.5 WSDH Sandwich, 90.7 WKKL West Barnstable, and 90.3 WCCT Harwich on Cape Cod) has canned "Mountain Stage," "Sweet Soul Music," and "Afropop Worldwide" in favor of more talk, namely "All Things Considered" at 7, followed by "This American Life" with Ira Glass, "Studs Terkel's Almanac," another "Car Talk" repeat, "Soundprint," and "Latino USA."

  WBUR has been edging away from music on weekends for several years, and NERW is still saddened by the cancellation a few years back of James Isaacs' weekend-afternoon music shows. Isaacs played a mix of jazz, R&B, and what was later discovered to be AAA, and he did it with a lot of style and a ton of class. "Sweet Soul Music" was his last music show on WBUR; he stays with the station to do music reviews and features for "Morning Edition."

  Noncomm music options on Saturday nights in the Hub include the excellent "Blues After Hours" (9pm-1am) and "Jazz Gallery" (overnights) on WGBH (89.7), and "Rhythm 95" on Harvard's WHRB (95.3), among others.

• And that wil close it out for this abbreviated edition of NERW...more to come next week, after a weekend jaunt up to Vermont. Here's hoping NERW's views of the Green Mountain State's radio towers aren't obscured by all those garish leaves :-)