New England Radio Watcher: WHAV goes spanish

[Scott D Fybush]

On Monday, WHAV (1490 AM, 1 kw ND) in Haverhill MA, some 30
miles north of Boston, flipped from an oldies/talk format to
Spanish, LMA'd by WNNW 1110 in nearby Salem NH.

WHAV's sister FM, 92.5 WLYT, keeps its AC format, which serves
the Merrimack Valley, southern NH, and rimshots Boston.

This leaves just 3 English-language AMs in the Merrimack Valley:
Lowell's WCAP 980 and WLLH 1400, and Lawrence's WCCM 800. WLLH
goes Spanish after 6pm daily, earlier on weekends. WCAP's
ownership situation is uncertain after the death last fall of
longtime co-owner Israel "Ike" Cohen.

Over in Leominster (40 miles or so NW of Boston), WCMX
1000 could come back on soon as religion, more than 3 years
after going dark.

Back in Beantown proper, WBZ radio has added a new affiliation.
Effective Monday, 3/6, we've added CBS Radio and ABC Business
Week radio to our current AP and ABC Information webs. CNN and
CNBC were dropped in the shuffle. 'BZ keeps ABC-I for the
hourly news 7pm-4am. Half-hourly newscasts overnight are
dropped.

And lest you think nothing's happening at WBMA 890 Dedham-Boston,
they finally moved their legal ID from :13 past the hour to
the top hour. Still no sign of the much-discussed call change
to WBPS (although a recent article in the Globe managed to refer
to the station as WBMA the first time, then WBPS in the next
paragraph!)

And on a TV-ish note: WPRI-TV Providence is being sold to CBS,
pending FCC approval. WPRI has been an ABC affiliate since the
late 70s, when they swapped affiliation with WTEV-6 New Bedford
MA (now WLNE). WLNE loses its CBS affiliation now...they're
likely to go ABC, but say they'll talk with Fox also. If WLNE
goes Fox, that will put Fox affil WNAC 64 into play as well.

-=Scott Fybush - fyb...@world.std.com=-