Fybush.com

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NorthEast Radio Watch 4/19/2021: More Reach for HVs "Wolf"

Posted: 20 Apr 2021 06:17 AM PDT
https://fybush.com/nerw-20210419/


(Were experiencing technical issues with our regular website, so until its
back in service, were offering you free access to this weeks NERW column,
including all the juicy bits that are normally exclusive to subscribers.
Thanks for your patience well be back to normal soon!)

By SCOTT FYBUSH
Jump to: ME NH VT MA RI CT NY NJ PA Canada

*The drive down I-84 from NEW YORKs Hudson Valley to the Danbury market it
western CONNECTICUT takes less than an hour when traffic is light, but
culturally and economically, those areas have remained distinct as separate
radio markets at least until now.

As it tries to streamline operations and save expenses, Townsquare Media is
consolidating its country brands in the Hudson Valley and Danbury. On
Wednesday, it killed off the Kicks brand it had been using in the Danbury
market since 2010 on WDBY (105.5 Patterson NY), replacing it with a
simulcast of its Poughkeepsie-based Wolf stations serving the Hudson Valley
and Catskills, WCZX (97.7 Hyde Park) and WZAD (97.3 Wurtsboro).

The move actually turns the Danbury-market WDBY more local, or at least
more regional, as it attempts to bolster ratings that have flagged against
a local competitor, The Bull, which is heard on an HD subchannel of
Berkshire Broadcastings WDAQ (98.3) and two translators. CJ McIntyre and
Jess Buono, the Poughkeepsie-based morning hosts on WKXP/WZAD, replace
Danbury-based Bill Trotta, whod been the only local host on WDBY before it
picked up tracked hosts from other Townsquare markets.

Trotta, a veteran of Danbury radio whod worked on WDAQ before WDBY, has
moved to afternoons on all three signals, and Paty Quin will do middays
from Poughkeepsie.

Townsquare also quietly shifted another Danbury-market signal last week:
WINE (940 Brookfield) had been simulcasting Kicks country, but is now
instead simulcasting classic rock I95 (WRKI 95.1 Brookfield).

*Thought there wasnt room to squeeze another FM signal into the New York
City dial? Think again at least if Bridgelight gets its way. The Christian
broadcaster has been moving translator W232AL (94.3) closer to the big city
for a few years now, starting in Pomona, Rockland County, then crossing the
Hudson in 2014 for a run as WFAS, leased out to Cumulus to continue the AC
format of the old WFAS-FM (103.9).

Several applications followed to jump across the Hudson again, where 94.3
would have operated with 55 watts from the historic Armstrong Tower in
Alpine, NJ but those applications were never built out, and now theyve
been supplanted by a new proposal that will move 94.3 within New York City
limits.

The new plan for 94.3 is made possible by the deletion of WSBP-LP (94.3)
over in Wood Ridge NJ, which surrendered its license to the FCC after its
antenna was destroyed in a windstorm. It takes the translator to the roof
of The Apartments, as traffic reporters from time immemorial have described
the tall buildings that sit on a platform over I-95 as it exits the east
end of the George Washington Bridge. From there, the 94.3 signal with 65
watts would cover all of the Bronx, Manhattan from Central Park north, and
slices of New Yorks Bergen County and northern Queens.

(94.3 is now listed as being a fill-in translator of EMFs WPLJ 95.5, which
has been carrying Bridgelights The Bridge on an HD subchannel, and its a
long way from the days when 94.3 in Rockland County formed a link between
the original Bridgelight station, WJUX 99.7 up in the Catskills, and one of
the original super-translators, W276AQ on 103.1 in Fort Lee.)

*Thomas Lohmann was known to Hudson Valley radio listeners as Tommy Lee
Walker on WRWD (107.3 Highland) for many years, and hed been open on social
media more recently about the struggles with substance abuse that ended his
career there in 2014. Sober since 2017, hed been in and out of the hospital
recently, undergoing heart surgery and testing positive for COVID-19 at the
end of March. He was 47 when he died last Monday (April 12).

*Heres an odd tale from deep in the world of FCC filings: were fast
approaching the sunset date for the last analog low-power TV stations to go
off the air in June, and its not just the Franken-FM services on channel
6/87.7 FM that stand to be affected. In Ithaca, Lilly Broadcastings WENY-TV
from Elmira has long operated a channel 7 translator, W07BJ, and its eager
to take that signal digital on channel 34 as W34FR-D, especially because it
had to abandon channel 7 last year when the repack put WICZ-TV (Channel 40)
from Binghamton on that channel.

With the end of its silent STA period fast approaching, Lilly has an
unusual problem: it tells the FCC it cant make contact with the landlord at
the translator site on Snyder Hill Road east of Ithaca and because its
been unable to reach the landlord, it cant make arrangements to build out
the new digital facility there.

What now? Lilly is asking the FCC to extend the silent STA for channel 7
for a few months longer, and it says if it cant connect with the landlord
at the old site, it will seek out a new site and file an application to
relocate WENYs new digital channel 34 signal for Ithaca.

(The kicker? As best we can tell from tax records, the tower in question is
owned by the former Time Warner Cable. Perhaps Lillys still stuck on hold
dealing with them, just like we are whenever our cable service goes out)

*If youre keeping count, the number of surviving AM stations in
PENNSYLVANIA is down by one this week. WNAP (1110 Norristown) went silent
March 1 after losing the transmitter site it had called home for decades.
As with so many AM sites near big cities, the land under WNAPs three towers
(shown here in 2010) became more valuable for other purposes in this case,
a new housing development thats already under construction on that hilltop
northwest of Philadelphia.

WNAP told the FCC in March it was looking for alternate sites after having
its old land sold out from under it, but trying to site a new directional
antenna these days in a metro area is nearly impossible, especially for a
signal that both requires multiple towers by day (when WNAP used 4800 watts
into three towers, providing a tight null to nearby WGPA 1100 in Allentown)
and cant operate at all at night.

And so last week, licensee WNAP, Inc. notified the FCC that the station
wouldnt be returning to the air and would instead be surrendering its
license, which was first issued in 1946 when the station was known as WNAR.

*Just down the road in Philadelphia, Steve Ardolina is the new operations
director for Salems WFIL (560) and WNTP (990); hed most recently been with
Townsquare (and Millennium before that) as regional operations manager for
the companys stations on the Jersey Shore.

*A format change we missed over the winter: Backyard Broadcasting has
flipped WWPA (1340) and its 101.3 translator in Williamsport from ESPN
sports to a simulcast of co-owned WMLP (1380) down US 15 in Milton.

The Twin Valleys Talk Network lineup is all syndicated and leans heavily on
Salems product, including Hugh Hewitt in mornings and Sebastian Gorka in
afternoons, and its also heard on the HD3 of big sister station WILQ
(105.1) in Williamsport.

*Whats going on with the FM translator that Pittsburghs KDKA unveiled with
great fanfare on its 100th birthday last November? W261AX (100.1) was and
is owned by Tim Martz Radio Power, Inc., which had been using it as part of
its web of WAMO urban signals before LMAing the signal to what was then
Entercom last year. Part of the deal included moving the 100.1 transmitter
from the South Hills site of WPGP (1250)/WKST-FM (96.1) to the more central
site on Mount Washington thats home to Audacys KDKA-FM (93.7) but now
Radio Power has filed an application to move the 100.1 signal back to the
1250/96.1 site, which would lose much of the North Hills coverage KDKA
picked up with the translator move.

*Ritmo Broadcasting is rearranging signals in southern NEW JERSEY, where
its apparently pulled the plug on a short-lived top-40 format on WIFI (1460
Florence)/W225DJ (92.9 Burlington). Instead of WiFi, those signals were
being heard last week with the Ritmo Spanish-language format that
originates on an HD subchannel of WPEN (97.5) from Philadelphia and had
been targeted for translators on 98.5 in Trenton and 104.1 in Cherry Hill
and Swedesboro.

That Swedesboro 104.1 translator (W281CM) is now switching to a different
Spanish top-40 format, Voice Radio Networks Maxima, with plans to target
the Wilmington, Delaware market just across the river. The new Maxima 104
was already being heard last week on the HD3 of Beasleys WBEN-FM (95.7
Philadelphia), and the Maxima brand already exists in southern Delaware on
WKDB (95.3 Laurel).

*At John Fullers Full Power Radio in CONNECTICUT, Tim Burrows moves up to
VP/operations for the entire company. Burrows has been with Fullers group
for 15 years, most of the time based in the New London market as sales
manager at WBMW, WWRX and later WJJF/WSKP as well. The group is also
advertising for a new VP/programming with the exit of Ed Sabatino; the
veteran programmer whose resume includes KC101 and WPLR in New Haven had
been with Full Power since 2019.

*Cary Pall epitomized the town to town, up and down the dial radio
lifestyle of the 1970s. A graduate of Grahm College in Boston,
MASSACHUSETTS, he worked all over the place as a jock and programmer in his
first few years, with stops that included WAAB/WAAF in Worcester, 13Q (WKTQ
1320) in Pittsburgh, WXLO in New York and WHAM and WBBF in Rochester.

By 1981, hed settled down in Pittsburgh, doing production and on-air work
for WTAE (1250)/WXKX (96.1) and rising to PD of WXKX, which he helped
relaunch as WHTX in 1983. By 1985, he was in Rochester doing production and
on-air work at the short-lived WZKC (KC99) and its successor, WKLX. After a
couple of years in Detroit and South Carolina, Pall achieved perhaps his
biggest success in the early 1990s in Orlando, where he was the founding PD
of WMMO (98.9), pioneering an adult hits/rock AC format that was unique for
the time and leading the station to the top of the ratings.

Pall went on to a long career in management and programming all over the
place, from ABC Radio Networks in Dallas to Clear Channel in Toledo to Saga
in Columbus. Hed been living (off the air) in Cincinnati in recent years,
working as a consultant in music programming, when he died on Sunday (April
11) at 69.

*Maintaining a multiple-tower AM facility isnt easy for anyone in 2021, and
its a particular challenge in CANADAs biggest market, where CHKT (1430
Toronto) operates a six-tower array located offshore on the edge of Toronto
Island. Owner Fairchild Radio made the case to the CRTC that as the site
ages, its getting harder to ensure that the pattern switches properly twice
a day from the day to the night pattern.

And so instead of using five towers by day and all six at night, CHKT has
won permission to stay on its night pattern full-time, with the hope that
it will reduce strain on the relays and contactors that were switching the
pattern daily. Both patterns use 50 kW, and the change will shift daytime
coverage very slightly to the north and east from the current day pattern.

(The Chinese-language station had actually applied for this change once
before, but that grant in 2016 lapsed after Lake Ontario flooding damaged
the site a year later, so this is CHKTs second try at making the switch.)