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WJFD-FM!

M

mordacom

Guest
Has anybody discussed anything about WJFD-FM in New Bedford? That's the Portugese radio station that's owned by former D.A. Ed Dinis. It broadcasts 24/7 in Portugese with a wide selection of music from the Luso world, including Portugal, Brazil & other places. Among the great local performers heard are Nelia & Marc Denis. They also air live soccer from RDP Antena 1 in Portugal every week during the Portugese season. They also have great shows like "Super Sabado," "Sabado FM," and "Catedral Do Fado," as well as programs for the Cape Verdean community. I'd like anyone's opinion about it. After all, ethnic broadcasting is the wave of the future.
 
I'm surprised no one else replied to this thread. Forgive me if I ramble on a bit here, but I'll pass along my thoughts and experience...

I used to work there as their junior engineer/IT guy about 2 years ago. It has a family owned feel to it. Claudia works up front and handles all of the administrative stuff and sales. They have all live and local on-air personalities from the morning until about 9pm, including Jorge, Cris and Dino. They all speak English as well and are truley good people who care about radio. I don't speak Portuguese even though I am 100% Portuguese, but it was fun working with them :)

WJFD-FM used to be WBSM-FM in the 70's until they sold it. 1420 & 97.3 WBSM (AM & FM) were sister stations. Similarly, 1340 & 98.1 WNBH (AM & FM) are still sister stations owned by Hall. 98.1 was WMYS as well, with a soft rock format aimed at New Bedford and Fall River and NOT Providence until July 28, 1989 when they switched to "Country 98.1" (and later CAT Country 98.1). The studios then moved from County Street in New Bedford to Providence.

In any case to get back to 97.3... I sometimes wonder what could have been if WBSM never sold the station in the '70s. 107.1 WFHN was a new station that WBSM (AM)'s owners placed on the air in 1989. Could 97.3 have been a 50,000 watt CHR powerhouse? Possibly "Fun 97"? :) Here's a thought... when 97.3 adds IBOC (which was briefly discussed while I was there as a future project), they could add some locally produced content there versus canned satellite/syndicated stuff. They care about radio as I mentioned and I can see some potential there.

Some of the things I did while I was at WJFD by the way, was light maintenance at the transmitter site in Fairhaven, I rebuilt their on-air automation computer and helped maintain the 2 production room computers. I worked under the direction of Dave Goldstein who is a longtime friend of mine and a ham operator like myself. Currently, Dave is the engineer for WBZ 1030 and CW28. Ironically, Dave was the engineer at 98.1 in it's earlier days as well. I'm out of radio at the moment (hopefully not for too long - the radio bug never dies) :)
 
Richard J. Cabral said:
I'm surprised no one else replied to this thread.
Click to expand...

Why be so surprised? For the vast majority of us who don't speak a foreign language, a station like 97.3 simply does not exist.

Same goes for 990, 1110, 1400, 100.3, or any other station that can be heard in this market which airs foreign language programming......OK......I'll make one small exception......990 is always fun for the occasional snide remark... ;D

But, back to the point......Should Edmund Dinis ever decide to sell 97.3......WELL...that's a whole different story! THEN...just watch all the speculation that would pop up on this board like mushrooms after a spring rain. ;)
 
Unfortunately, it is also New Bedford we are talking about here. While Fun and that other AM station tend to come up every once in a while, Fall River/New Bedford really only count as diary placement around here. If there actually was a SE Mass board, they wouldn't come up at all....
 
If someone wanted to sell the signal look for Al Alves and Frank Baptista to try to buy it...Baptista runs the 1400 AM signal and would love to grab the New Bedford one if it came avaliable..who else would really want it?
 
I don't know who the night DJ is but a couple of times I hit the seek buton I heard english songs.One in particular was "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding.When my seek stopped on it one night I thought they flipped to oldies but then some guy came on speaking spanish and went into a sloew spanish song.I get the feel it is a nice place to work since no one bitches about it.WALE on the other hand is a mess.has always been a mess and will always be a mess.So we just came to accept it.That it is just a toxic waste dump of a station.
WHTB was ok to work for. No complaints here and WKKB from what I hear has its's sh't together since they moved into the Ghetto Plex and away from those loonies on North Main st.
 
At one point in the late 1990's, Edmund Dinis held a Construction Permit to build a 5000 watt AM station on 1270, which would have been licensed to Fairhaven. Unfortunately, a really strong attack of N.I.M.B.Y. broke out regarding a proposed transmitter site in North Dartmouth, and the project came to a screeching halt. The Construction Permit eventually ran out, and got deleted by the FCC.

I have a pretty strong feeling the idea was to move the Portuguese programming to 1270, thereby freeing up 97.3 to pursue an English speaking format of some sort.

Which reminds me......If I'm not mistaken......I believe Alex Langer only has until April 2, 2010 to get his 1140 AM Construction Permit for Greenville on the air, or else......another CP bites the dust.
 
Dighton Rockhead said:
At one point in the late 1990's, Edmund Dinis held a Construction Permit to build a 5000 watt AM station on 1270, which would have been licensed to Fairhaven. Unfortunately, a really strong attack of N.I.M.B.Y. broke out regarding a proposed transmitter site in North Dartmouth, and the project came to a screeching halt. The Construction Permit eventually ran out, and got deleted by the FCC.

I have a pretty strong feeling the idea was to move the Portuguese programming to 1270, thereby freeing up 97.3 to pursue an English speaking format of some sort.

Which reminds me......If I'm not mistaken......I believe Alex Langer only has until April 2, 2010 to get his 1140 AM Construction Permit for Greenville on the air, or else......another CP bites the dust.
Click to expand...

You are correct. Mr. Dinis wanted to move the Portuguese format over to WLAW (1270 kHz) and put "American" programming on 97.3 FM. But the NIMBYs pretty much destroyed any possibility of that happening. So, here we are. I recall before 97.3 went all Portuguese in around 1970, WBSM-FM was full-time Stereo music (1970's style). Eventually the station was sold and became WGCY, all Portuguese programming in mono. The signal was not very good due to it only running horizontal polarity on a short stick on Pope's Island.

Admittedly, the station is sounding much better these days due to a digital telco circuit installed a few years ago, some good Orban Stereo processing and a full-powered circularly-polarized signal covering a nice stretch of real estate through several states. Somehow, it still delivers to the audience.
 
In the back engineering room/work bench, there is an 8 1/2 x 11" information sheet from the late 1970s for the then WGCY. I should have made a copy of it while I was there... it's a good piece of history. Ed Dinis would still stop by the station to visit at least once a week when I was there a few years back. I talked to him on a couple occasions about the station's history and learned a thing or two that I didn't know about it.
 
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