North East RadioWatch: December 18, 1998

Vermont Heats Up

by Scott Fybush

• Must be the first big snowfall of the season, because suddenly things are hopping up in VERMONT.

  Most of this week's action in the Burlington market happened with the Capstar stations, and it started with a new home for two of them. Last Sunday (12/13), rocker WCPV (101.3 Essex NY) and sports-hot talk WXPS (96.7 Vergennes)/WEAV (960 Plattsburgh NY) moved in with AC WEZF (92.9 Burlington) at Fort Ethan Allen. The facility includes three air studios and three production studios.

  Next shoe dropping: WXPS/WEAV's new studios came with a new format. On Monday, the talk (with the exception of Imus in the Morning) disappeared, replaced by "KIX" hot country. The new format is the first in-market challenge to the dominance of Hall's WOKO (98.9 Burlington), the longtime market leader. PD Brian Ashton, from WCPV, handles 2-7 PM duties, while Tim Buskey is on air from 10-2 and the syndicated Nashville Nights show is on in the evening.

  And the third shoe (?) dropped with a transmitter move for WXPS that will give it better coverage of Burlington. From its old site in Westport NY, WXPS moves to Willsboro NY and Rattlesnake Mountain with 1500 watts at 740 feet AAT. In the process, WXPS' city of license changes to Willsboro NY from Vergennes VT.

  There's still more news in the Burlington market: Vermont Public Radio is wrapping up the first week of a month-long experiment aimed at bringing VPR listeners a second public radio service. "VPR World Channel" will run from Dec. 14 until Jan. 14 on WWPV (88.7 Colchester), the St. Michael's College station that would otherwise have been dark during the school's holiday. Programming on "World Channel" includes BBC World Service, CBC's As It Happens, The World (from WGBH and PRI), The Connection (from WBUR), and other international programming from WRN. NERW wonders: How does the proposed VPR-New Hampshire Public Radio second service in the Upper Valley fit in with this experiment?

• Nothing from the Granite State this week, but we'll stay in ski country and head to MAINE, where Cumulus Media added three more stations to its Bangor-area group late this week. The upstart group owner will pay $4 million to buy standards WDEA (1370 Ellsworth), soft AC WEZQ (92.9 Bangor), and oldies/Imus WWMJ (95.7 Ellsworth) from Dudman Communications. Cumulus already owns country gaint WQCB (106.5 Brewer) and CHR WBZN (107.3 Old Town) in the market, as well as five stations in Central Maine. NERW's sorry to see Dudman get sold -- group head Martha Dudman has been an industry leader through her work with the NAB and other trade organizations -- but at the same time, we've got to admit that Cumulus has done a decent job with its strategy of small-market clusters.

• Onward to MASSACHUSETTS, where WXKS-FM (107.9 Medford) was one of the Chancellor stations mentioned this week in a Los Angeles Times article raising questions about modern-day payola. Seems Bryan Adams' new single was played plenty of times on Kiss and its sister stations, while getting almost no airplay anywhere else in the country. And, coincidentally enough, Adams' record company, A&M, just dropped $237,000 on a marketing campaign with Chancellor. Chancellor says it did nothing wrong; Kiss GM Beverly Tilden tells the Herald the station was already playing the Adams tune and wouldn't, in any case, jeopardize its on-air sound for the sake of a promotional campaign. This and similar deals have been raising some eyebrows in and out of the business; expect it to be a big story in 1999...

  NERW has a feeling WBUR-FM (90.9) will be raising an objection to this one: Toccoa Falls College in Georgia has applied for a 160-watt translator in Winchendon on 91.1, to relay religious WRAF (90.9 Toccoa Falls). We'll forgo the usual rant about the translator rules this time, but only because we'll be hitting this topic hard in a couple of weeks in the editorial portion of our big "year in review" special.

  "We won't do it again!": That's the response from CBS to complaints about the infomercials that have been airing right in the midst of prime access (7:30 PM) on WBZ-TV and other CBS O&Os, in place of "Entertainment Tonight." CBS says when the current contract is up, the infomercials won't be back...

  From the DTV front, WUNI (Channel 27) Worcester has been granted a CP for WUNI-DT (Channel 29). Oddly, the FCC's release on this one gave the city of license as "Needham," although the database has it right.

  On the web: WKLB-FM (99.5 Lowell) is on for real now, at , and you can see a tribute to Yiddish centenarian broadcaster Ben Gailing at .

  And if you haven't read January's "Popular Communications," be sure to pick it up -- Boston Radio Archives contributing editor Donna Halper leads off the issue with an excellent summary of her research on women in the early days of radio. Nice work, Donna!

• In CONNECTICUT, the roofers are out at WTNH (Channel 8) in New Haven, after a leak at the station's Elm Street building forced Thursday's newscasts out of the studio and into the newsroom. Without a chromakey wall to stand in front of, WTNH's meteorologists were forced to do their forecasts as simple voice-overs.

  Up in Hartford, WFSB (Channel 3) news director Steve Sabato has been promoted to station manager.

  On the radio side, WKSS (95.7 Hartford) was broadcasting a remote from the "Stadium" nightclub in Bristol last Saturday night when a fire broke out at a nearby box factory, forcing the remote crew to evacuate. NERW wonders why Kiss had to go to dead air for a while, though -- wasn't anybody running the board back at the studio?

  Operations Manager Mike Raub has departed WELI (960) and WAVZ (1300) in New Haven.

• NEW YORK's big news begins with a $7.5 million station sale in Albany. Paul Bendat is cashing out on WABY (1400), WKLI (100.9), WABY-FM (94.5 Ravena), and WKBE (100.3 Warrensburg), which go to Tele-Media of Eastern New York. No word yet of any format or personnel changes at standards WABY AM-FM or the hot AC "K-100" simulcast.

  Downstate, a heritage call sign is back on the air for the first time in a few years. WYNY, last heard with the demise of country music on 103.5 Lake Success-New York, is the new callsign for what was WWXY (107.1 Briarcliff Manor), the north suburban part of Big City Media's "Y-107" quadcast. (Oddly, Big City's press release calls the new WYNY-FM just "New York," and almost every single trade we've seen has swallowed it whole...) The other three parts of the 107.1 simulcast -- WWVY Hampton Bays, L.I.; WWYY Belvidere NJ; and WWZY Long Branch NJ -- keep their calls.

  WNEW (102.7 New York) has hired Steve Mason as its new morning host. Mason comes from Jacor's "XTRA Sports" (XETRA Tijuana/KXTA Los Angeles) out West, and was also the last host of the "Late Late Radio Show" on CBS. By the way, we neglected to mention last week that Scott Muni's new Big Apple radio home is at classic rocker WAXQ (104.3).

  Upstate, WASB-FM (105.5 Brockport) hit the airwaves for real last Sunday (12/13), with a simulcast of the religious talk and music from WASB (1590 Brockport) and WRSB (1310 Canandaigua). As we'd expected, the signal on the east side of Monroe County is so clobbered by co-channel WTKV Oswego as to be unlistenable -- but it gets out nicely to the west, anyway.

  Speaking of co-channel, CSN has applied for a translator in Arcade (about 20 miles east of Buffalo) on 89.5, which just happens to be the same frequency used by American Family Association's W208AM a few miles away in Batavia. Once again, we'll suspend the usual rant in advance of our Jan. 1 editorial...

  And NERW's new favorite TV station, W47BM here in Rochester, has been sold by Equity Broadcasting to Tiger-Eye Broadcasting. NERW's hoping and praying that Tiger-Eye doesn't change W47BM's innovative format of "All Color Bars, All The Time!"

• Outside the region, we found out why 102.3 Pittston PA is now calling itself WSHG: Seems "Wish" changed its mind about switching to a simulcast of the WILK news-talk network...but its old WWSH calls had already been taken by the former WKXE (95.3 White River Junction VT), so they had to settle for next-best. 103.1 in Freeland PA returns to WWFH from WILP-FM.

  And out in Charlottetown, PEI, CHLQ (Magic 93.1) has reportedly flipped from hot AC to CHR. Hmmm...could a NERW return trip be in order now? (We'd go back to PEI anytime!)

That's almost it for this week...except for one little request to all of you out there in the region: We want to see how many stations out there kick off the New Year with you-know-what Prince song. We'll be rolling tape on our likely local suspects (in fact, we hear one of them is considering running nothing but "1999" for a few hours on 12/31/98), and we'd love to hear your local stations sliding into the new year as well. Send us tapes...or at least let us know what you hear...and in our January 8 issue we'll party like it's, well, you know!

Next week: Part One of NERW's 1998 in Review.