A quiet week, as the broadcast world recovers from the Thanksgiving weekend, and we at NERW recover from our 1400+ mile expedition into the radio wilds of Ohio and Indiana; on with the news...
It's official; as we speculated a few months back, Greater Media is signing a 15-year lease on a Morrissey Boulevard building to house all its Boston stations. WBOS (92.9 Brookline) and WSJZ (96.9) will move from 1200 Soldiers Field Road in Brighton, WKLB-FM (99.5 Lowell) and WMJX (106.7) will move from the Salada Tea building on Stuart Street, and WROR-FM (105.7 Framingham) will move from the Prudential Tower. It'll create quite the media circus down there; the Boston Globe and WLVI (Channel 56) are already housed next door to each other across the street from Greater's new home, which is itself just down the block from the 1960s and early 70s home of WHDH-AM/FM/TV.
On the South Shore, there's a new pirate station on 89.3. Listeners in the Duxbury-Kingston area are hearing all sorts of music and no talk on the frequency.
On the TV side, Springfield's W69AQ has been granted a move to channel 46 as W46CS, along with a power upgrade to 13.8 kilowatts. The station relays Univision affiliate WUNI (Channel 27) in Worcester.
We're happy to be able to pass along information about ``Sounds in the Night'', the new Norm Nathan retrospective cassette. It's available at the Berklee College of Music bookstore in Boston, either in person or by phone at 1-800-670-0023 (weekdays 9:30 AM-7 PM, Saturdays 11 AM-7 PM), or by mail for $15 postpaid to Norm Nathan Tape, PO Box 234, Boston MA 02133. It's also available at several other New England outlets; e-mail normtape@aol.com for more information about this worthwhile project. Tell 'em NERW sent you!
And from the rumor mill, there's speculation (in the Boston Herald, anyway) that talker WRKO (680) is on the verge of some shakeups, with Marjorie Clapprood and Tai being ousted in morning drive in favor of evening talker Jeff Katz and recently dismissed WBCN jock Mark Parenteau (a move that could bring Parenteau back to the CBS family, unless CBS sells WRKO as part of its ARS acquisition). Also in the rumor mill: could Rush Limbaugh lose his WRKO afternoon slot to the Two Chicks Dishing? Stranger things have happened...stay tuned!
The Connecticut AP Broadcasters handed out their awards this week, and WICC (600) in Bridgeport cleaned up in the large-staff category, taking home best newscast awards for Tim Quinn and best general news for Joe Gresko. Jeff Ziner of WZBG (97.3 Litchfield) and John Dankosky and Ray Hardman of Connecticut Public Radio won the respective small-staff awards. The Mark Twain Award went to the news staff of WLAD (800) Danbury, while Tom Kuser of WSHU won the Ellen Abrams Award. Congratulations to all!
And Hartford's WVIT (Channel 30 New Britain) is officially transferred from Viacom to NBC on Monday morning; no major on-air changes are expected.
Up the road in Lebanon, W299AM, the 107.7 translator for WRJT (103.1 Royalton VT) has applied for a license to cover; funny, we thought they were already on the air.
Up the Hudson in Newburgh, WGNY-FM (103.1) has been granted a power boost from 3500 to 6000 watts from a new transmitter just north of the existing tower. Translator W272AF Rhinebeck, which relays Family Radio's WFRH (91.7 Kingston), has been granted a move from 102.3 to 105.7, where it'll be known as W289AG. It's been bumped by the new 102.5 allocation in Rosendale N.Y.
Albany morning team "Mason and Sheehan" will end up in court after all for a segment on their old WPYX (106.5) show in June 1996. The duo, whose real names are Roy Moon and Bill Sheehan, poked fun at a Schenectady woman's wedding photo in the newspaper, mentioning her by full name and occupation. This week, the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court ruled that Annette Esposito-Hilder can take her defamation case to a jury, upholding a lower court's ruling in the case. Mason and Sheehan now work for crosstown WXCR (102.3 Ballston Spa).
One more from the translator files: Say hello to W212BA, 90.3 in Geneva. It's the newly-granted translator of Geneva public radio outlet WEOS (89.7), and it will operate from WEOS's old transmitter site on the campus of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, filling in some gaps in WEOS' new signal from a tower a few miles away. Not to be outdone, religious station WCIY (88.9 Canandaigua) has applied for a 105.7 translator in Geneva. This is Family Life Ministries' second try for a Geneva frequency; the FCC dismissed an application for 104.3 back in June.
Rochester's WPXY-FM (97.9) marks its fifteenth anniversary as a hit radio station Thursday night with a concert at the newly-renovated War Memorial downtown; Lisa Loeb and Blessid Union of Souls are among the headliners, along with a roster of 70s disco stars.
And we join with the staff of Buffalo's WBEN (930) in mourning the passing of Clint Buehlman, a WBEN personality from the 1940s until his retirement in July 1977. Buehlman was Buffalo's most popular radio host for years, as the "AM M-C" at the helm of the WBEN Good Morning Show. Buehlman hosted the show from March 1943 (when he joined WBEN from rival WGR) until he left the station. He died Tuesday at his home in Snyder, outside Buffalo. Buehlman was 85 years old.