UTICA/ROME -- Big Frog 104 (WFRG) is looking to replace an impending hole in its Sunday morning lineup. Lon Helton's "Country Countdown USA" program is being cancelled by its syndicator, Cumulus-owned Westwood One. The show's final episode will air on July 31.
SYRACUSE -- Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of Syracuse's NBC-3 (WSTM), has recently announced job openings for an assignment editor and for a news producer. And, given a recent announcement, it looks like they'll soon be posting for a new morning show co-anchor, as well.
UTICA — He hosted "Twist-O-Rama" on WKTV well before Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" became a thing. Longtime Utica broadcaster Hank Brown died at the age of 91 today.
SYRACUSE -- Just over a decade after he joined "The Rebel" (formerly WXTL 105.9), longtime Syracuse rock radio personality and programmer Dave Frisina says he was "ineligantly informed over a phone call," during the final hour of his show on Monday night, that his position is being eliminated. As a result, he's decided to call it a career after 45 years behind the microphone.
SYRACUSE -- Former NewsChannel 9 (WSYR-TV) sports anchor Anish Shroff has a new job. This week, the Carolina Panthers selected the Syracuse / Newhouse graduate to become the new play-by-play voice for the Panthers Radio Network.
UTICA-ROME - Longtime radio engineer Dave Doughty has died. An obituary published today says Doughty, who worked for WTLB and the rest of the Galaxy Media cluster, died late last month.
SYRACUSE -- It used to be unheard of, but it's now happened at least three times within the past year -- iHeart Media's country-formatted B104.7 (WBBS) was not ranked #1 in the latest Nielsen ratings. The once-dominant station, which is now almost completely devoid of locally-based DJs, fell to second place among those stations to have their numbers released to the public.
UTICA-ROME -- No big surprises in the latest Utica-Rome radio audience estimates released by Nielsen. As usual, Townsquare Media's entire cluster enjoys a solid lock over the rest of the market -- at least among those stations Nielsen includes in the publicly-available numbers.
CENTRAL NEW YORK -- Spare time has been sparse for your editor lately, but we have a handful of newsworthy items from the world of CNY radio and TV news to share. Here's a quick recap:
UTICA-ROME - Townsquare's 950 WIBX has borrowed a page from the playbook of many other news/talk stations on the AM dial, by adding an FM simulcast. Translator W295DI was officially licensed by the FCC as of December 27, allowing listeners to hear WIBX at 106.9 FM.