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Good Karma To Lease 880; WCBS News Programming To End

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This was upboard two pages back, but for the record (or tape or mp3 file) I wanted to respond. I'm doing this mostly from memory, so feel free to correct anything I'm misremembering.

Remember when New York had easy listening on 93.1 and 105.1? Seems like there was a third easy listening station, too, but I can’t remember which station. The market also had two commercial classical stations until the early 90’s. It had an FM station that specialized in Yiddish, Greek, and Italian programming until 1989. It sauntered over to AM and continued for a few more years, but a for profit operation can’t be a charity service forever. All of those stations saw their audience age out and no longer be in demand from advertisers.
Easy listening, back in the 60's and 70's, was 93.1/WPAT, 103.5/WTFM and 105.1/WRFM. Plus a handful of suburban signals like WKJY in Nassau County or WCTO in Suffolk. WPAT and WRFM were full-market signals off ESB, WTFM was on the Chrysler Bldg with a directional antenna pointing mostly east towards Queens and Long Island. TFM transitioned to "mellow" rock in the latter '70s, RFM did the same in the mid '80s, and PAT was the 'last man standing' in the format, so to speak.

Classical was 96.3/WQXR and 104.3/WNCN. WNCN got sold in the 90s from GAF to one of the iHeart predecessors and converted into a modern rock station, and later to classic rock. WQXR was acquired by Univision(?) and became WXNY. As part of that deal, the 105.9 signal was acquired by NY Public Radio (WNYC) and rebranded as WQXR, and the "old" WQXR's music library was donated to NYPR to launch classical on 105.9.

The foreign language station Kent referred to was WEVD, named in memory of the socialist Eugene V. Debs. It was on 1330AM and 97.9FM. Owned by the Forward Association, which also published the Yiddish-language Forward newspaper. Around 1987 or '88, they were offered a truckload of money to sell the 97.9 signal in a 3-way exchange with one of the Spanish-language broadcasters (HBC? SBS? Can't recall...) and Emmis, the then-owner of 1050/WFAN (previously WHN). Emmis was buying 660/WNBC from GE/NBC, which was going dark after 60-odd years. So the deal was:

660/WNBC --> ashbin of history
1050/WFAN --> 660/WFAN
1330/WEVD --> 1050/WEVD
Other owner (Multicultural?) --> 1330
97.9/WEVD --> SBS or HBC
Cash --> Forward Assoc. (to subsidize The Forward for a couple of decades)

At a certain point, mid-late '00s, Disney offered the Forward Assoc. another infusion of cash in exchange for 1050/WEVD. Believing that their primary mission was keeping the Yiddish-language Forward alive as well as a newer English edition, they took the money and never looked back. Disney put ESPN on 1050 and eventually leased 98.7 from Emmis. I don't remember all the machinations. 1050 got converted to ESPN Desportes for a few years, then sold to Craig Karmazin's Good Karma Brands, and currently is the repeater for the ESPN national feed.

(Edited @ 18:05 EDT. Accidentally posted this before it was ready.)
 
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I clocked the Levon Putney farewell at 8AM this morning, unless it was prerecorded...
Overnights have been pre-recorded for about a year. He did Late Edition before leaving the building but only the 8pm Eastern newscast was live (and it was the last live broadcast for WCBS). They left the same Late Edition newscast running on a loop through this morning when the retrospective started.
 
Overnights have been pre-recorded for about a year. He did Late Edition before leaving the building but only the 8pm Eastern newscast was live (and it was the last live broadcast for WCBS). They left the same Late Edition newscast running on a loop through this morning when the retrospective started.
Out of curiosity, I wonder how Audacy would have handled it had a BIG story broken overnight. Would they have left the loop going, or put a WINS person live on WCBS (since the WCBS crew was all gone by then)? I guess the most likely scenario would be throwing it to a WINS simulcast.
 
Out of curiosity, I wonder how Audacy would have handled it had a BIG story broken overnight. Would they have left the loop going, or put a WINS person live on WCBS (since the WCBS crew was all gone by then)? I guess the most likely scenario would be throwing it to a WINS simulcast.

There are editorial people in the building 24/7, so they would just put one of them on air. That's how the TV networks handle it.

It's not uncommon to see news producers as anchors until they can get one of the anchors. They're in the same union.
 
The foreign language station Kent referred to was WEVD, named in memory of the socialist Eugene V. Debs. It was on 1330AM and 97.9FM. Owned by the Forward Association, which also published the Yiddish-language Forward newspaper. Around 1987 or '88, they were offered a truckload of money to sell the 97.9 signal in a 3-way exchange with one of the Spanish-language broadcasters (HBC? SBS? Can't recall...) and Emmis, the then-owner of 1050/WFAN (previously WHN)...

When WEVD was on 97.9 they referred to themselves as "The Great 98." When they moved, they became "The Greater 1050." Lame.
 
The foreign language station Kent referred to was WEVD, named in memory of the socialist Eugene V. Debs. It was on 1330AM and 97.9FM. Owned by the Forward Association, which also published the Yiddish-language Forward newspaper. Around 1987 or '88, they were offered a truckload of money to sell the 97.9 signal in a 3-way exchange with one of the Spanish-language broadcasters (HBC? SBS? Can't recall...) and Emmis, the then-owner of 1050/WFAN (previously WHN). that has nothing to do with WCBS' demise.
When WEVD was on 97.9 they referred to themselves as "The Great 98." When they moved, they became "The Greater 1050." Lame.

Can we go any farther off-topic? Sheesh.
 
It was a straight simulcast between 5:30 and 5:45 AM.

I wonder how 101.1 joined up with 880 cleanly.. you know, didnt lop off a song or a promo/psa/commercial.. getting stations to join up for a simulcast can be a little nerve wracking if you have fluid programming

i had to do that on an FM in Nebraska.. the am was automated, the fm was live... so i had to get the FM to meet the Am... at the end of the 4 pm hour, it would switch the AM to one of a few sources on the switcher.. Console feed, fm automation, am automation.... and id switch it to console.

Back timing was a b&^ch.. if i was more than 2-3 seconds early on the AM, id hear about it the next day... several times i got it within about half second
 
I wonder how 101.1 joined up with 880 cleanly.. you know, didnt lop off a song or a promo/psa/commercial.. getting stations to join up for a simulcast can be a little nerve wracking if you have fluid programming

i had to do that on an FM in Nebraska.. the am was automated, the fm was live... so i had to get the FM to meet the Am... at the end of the 4 pm hour, it would switch the AM to one of a few sources on the switcher.. Console feed, fm automation, am automation.... and id switch it to console.

Back timing was a b&^ch.. if i was more than 2-3 seconds early on the AM, id hear about it the next day... several times i got it within about half second
WCBS(AM) runs on time all the time. Probably not that hard to get the WCBS-FM automation to backtime into that.
 

More Specials released on the final days of WCBS-AM as it changes its name to WHSQ-AM ESPN New York.
I don't want to but I need to nitpick...

The "-AM" suffix is not a thing, not officially part of the call sign. It's just WCBS...and after Midnight on Monday, just WHSQ.

Broadcasting magazine would place AM in parenthesis at times, and that's what I and others do to differentiate AM stations from FMs and TVs with the same calls.

😀
 
It would be interesting to see the WINS AM vs. FM audience, but Audacy probably would not want to release those numbers.
And it is not certain that they buy them every month. Separating a SLR reporting combo is an "extra charge" each time. Were I the manager, I'd likely only do that a few times a year at most.
 
I hope that the severance payments to the terminated employees will be fair. I assume the amounts are written in the union contract.
 
I hope that the severance payments to the terminated employees will be fair. I assume the amounts are written in the union contract.

They're all in the union. It was negotiated in the 2022 contract. It's usually based on time served. Health benefits are in the union contract. The union will ensure that the company adheres to the contract. That's really all the union can do at this point. Management isn't in the union, and their benefits are based on their employee handbook and any contract they may have negotiated at time of employment. Then there are government benefits, such as COBRA or unemployment payments.
 
I hope that the severance payments to the terminated employees will be fair. I assume the amounts are written in the union contract.

In market #1, you can safely bet that that's covered in great detail within the SAG-AFTRA contract.
 
In market #1, you can safely bet that that's covered in great detail within the SAG-AFTRA contract.
Paul and Wayne indicated they’ll be “okay, not set, but okay” based on the severance negotiated by SAG-AFTRA.

Someone like Anita Bonita who has only been there a few years and wasn’t even full time (any more - she was also doing work under the Writer’s Guild) may not be.
 
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