Happenings

First of all, I would like to thank those of you who responded to my last “musings” article where I revealed what was going on in my personal life. I received nothing but nice messages and support from you good folks and appreciate the sentiment. Thank you for your continued understanding and support.

It seems that the month of October was a slow one in this city – at least from the perspective of all things media. But a couple of interesting things have happened in the last week or so.

Subscribers in nonsubscribers (I unfortunately admit to being the latter) alike, who read Scott Fybush’s extensive website Monday morning saw that the top master antenna on a Needham, Massachusetts tower failed. The failure, which was the second one of its type in four years, took outstations WBZ, WSBK and WGBX. If viewers did not subscribe to Comcast cable, they were out of luck to be able to watch the New England Patriots defeat our own Steelers. Or so we think. Comcast receive station signals through a direct connection and their viewers probably noticed nothing wrong. Engineers rerouted the affected stations to the lower master antenna, which normally carries WGBH which was thereby rerouted to WCVB’s auxiliary antenna. It’s interesting to note however, that Dish Network subscribers got a quick fix when the satellite provider routed to KDKA-TV to their viewers in the Boston area. Don’t worry, New Englanders had their opportunity to watch the Steelers lose to their beloved Patriots at Heinz Field.

Patrick Cloonan of the Uniontown Herald-Standard reported on Wednesday that Laurel Highland Total Communications Inc., owner of WCNS (1480 Latrobe) and more recently WAVL (910 Apollo) and its FM translator, has purchased Spectrum Radio Group’s WMMN (920), WTCS (1490) and WRLF (94.3) in Fairmont, and WZST (100.9) in Westover, West Virginia for $650,000. LHTC has long been a telephone and cable provider for the region and diversified into radio in 2014 with the purchase of WCNS from John Longo. Cloonan says that the company will be unifying all of its subsidiaries under one name in time so that the company can “spend more time focusing on what has been and always will be our number one priority, providing high-quality communication services, supported by personalized customer service.”

It is interesting to note that WMMN is one of West Virginia’s oldest radio stations having signed on in November 1935. Today it is a sports talk station (5000w day; 200w night) with a distant signal into Uniontown. Cloonan’s complete article can be read here. (You may need a subscription to read the article.)

Stay tuned… We will update the translator list for Pittsburgh over the weekend.