January 10, 2003

Nassau Buys Big City’s NY Cluster

As reported in QuickNews, Nassau Broadcasting has purchased the New York City Cluster of Big City Radio Group. The reported price for all four stations is $43 million cash. The stations are located in Long Branch and Belvidere, both New Jersey, WYNY, Briarcliff Manor, NY (Westchester County) and the Hampton’s on the east end of Long Island. The betting is that Nassau will sell the east end Long Island station to a present Long Island operator. The Long Branch station was reengineered to better serve New York City and not New Jersey. Nassau will try to engineer it back to being a strong Monmouth County Station. Overall the deal appears to be a very good one for Nassau, as the Belvidere station will be a good fit with the Northeast Pennsylvania cluster Nassau owns, and the Briarcliff Manor station gives Nassau entry into the rich Westchester Suburban Marketplace. Briarcliff Manor is much like Princeton as far as markets go.

WAWZ Switches Format

The long time listener supported Christian Station has gone to Contemporary Christian music for most of its broadcast day. As Scott Taylor, program director, said, “ We are taking a good Christian station and making it a great one”.  The station has always supported itself with donations from listeners, but now will sell advertising time and has hired Ed Abels, a former employee of WOR Radio, in New York, as its sales manager.

EEO Gets Legal

The FCC has finally published its rules in the Federal Register and they will become the law of the land on March 10, 2003. The NJBA EEO program, which is now in its third year, will satisfy all of a stations outreach requirements if a station fully participates in the program. The new rules permit State Associations to do the outreach for each job at its individual member stations. If you are not familiar with the station requirements or how the program works, call Phil at 1-888- NJBA-Fone toll free.

Off He Goes, into The Wild Blue Yonder

Jim May, chief lobbyist and Executive Vice President of the NAB has assumed a new position as the President and CEO of the Airline Transportation Association. May is responsible for the excellent lobbying efforts of the NAB and its many successes on the Hill. He established a very strong public policy department and the excellence of their work are expected to continue. It was a pleasure for NJBA to work with May.  We wish him luck in his new venture.

Greater Media Goes HD Radio

Greater Media’s head Peter Smyth has announced a deal with iBiquity, which will make them the first New Jersey Station group to convert their stations to HD Radio. HD radio is in band on channel digital radio, which was formally known as IBOC. It makes FM radio sound like CD, and AM radio sound like FM. It is not compatible with IBOC system in Canada, which uses the Eureka 147 system and is in another band.

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