Baltimore Station

Longtime WMAR news anchor Stan Stovall is being dismissed by the Baltimore station when his contract lapses at the end of December. WMAR general manager Drew Berry and news director Staci Feger-Childers would not discuss the decision other than to praise Stovall's professionalism, saying the move is a personnel matter. But the two officials acknowledge they are taking a series of steps to try to reverse the fortunes of the consistently third-rated station. "I definitely will be leaving," Stovall said late Friday.

The biggest, best love story in the country was on local TV today. It's between the Baltimore Ravens, the city and the fans. And if the national sports networks like CBS never seemed to get the special nature of that relationship this year in their weekly game and playoff coverage, most of the local media do. And Baltimore's TV stations got a chance to zoom in for close-up coverage Tuesday of the epic Ravens victory parade and rally in downtown Baltimore....

More than 20 years ago two neighborhood women, Jaye Burtnick and Gloria DeBarry, established a safe and warm place for the street people of the Cross Street Market area. "Their first epiphany was that almost all the guys who came there were veterans and they had addiction issues," said Michael Seipp, executive director of what is now called the Baltimore Station, an agency that defines its mission as "a therapeutic residential recovery program for men who are homeless largely due to chronic substance abuse.

Baltimore television stations expected little in the way of political advertising this election year. Then the fight over expanded gambling in Maryland erupted, pitting deep-pocketed casino companies against each other. The barrage of ads urging viewers to vote for or against the gambling referendum could drive political ad spending at local television stations to well over $10 million this year, according to some estimates. Still, the Baltimore TV market's share of the political spending will fall short of 2010, a year that featured a governor's race as well as heavy casino-related issue advertising.

The way Joseph Carroll sees it, he has a second chance at life with his family. "I'll take that," Carroll, a 59-year-old Army veteran and father of four who brought back from Vietnam a propensity toward alcohol abuse. Now, after a spell on the streets and a five-month stint at The Baltimore Station, a treatment center whose population is made up mostly of military veterans, Carroll plans to return to his wife in Portsmouth, Va., after Thanksgiving. "If she don't change her mind," he said, laughing.

By 6 a.m., the free parking lot at the West Baltimore MARC station is almost full. The only sounds on the rickety wooden platform: cars whizzing by on U.S. 40, the blare of a police siren and the horn of the incoming train, a cue for the sweep of people that rushes inside. This is no Penn Station. There are no coffee shops or places to buy a paper, just mounds of trash along the side and a few partial shelters that don't do much good in the rain and snow. But city and state planners view the threadbare West Baltimore train station as the potential key to unleashing the redevelopment of an area long neglected and decimated by an unfortunate endeavor dubbed "the highway to nowhere."

Popular morning show host Randy Dennis will appear on WWIN-FM for the final time this morning, to be replaced by syndicated talk show host Tom Joyner. While Dennis said he has no ill will toward the station that fired him, he is fighting a clause in his soon-to-be-defunct contract that bars him for six months from taking another radio job within a 50-mile radius. On Friday, a lawyer for Dennis filed a lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court against Radio One, the Prince George's County-based company that owns the oldies station geared toward a black audience.

It's been a tough month for music fans, and the bad news hasn't slowed down. On Wednesday, we lost the Godfather of Go-Go and D.C. legend Chuck Brown to complications from sepsis. He was 75. Naturally, his loss was felt particularly hard in the Baltimore and D.C. areas. Local writer Al Shipley tweeted , "[O]n the drive home I heard Chuck Brown music on 5 different radio stations, including a Baltimore station and a rock station. " Read the Washington Post obituary by Chris Richards here . And today, Donna Summer lost her battle with cancer.

Three managers of five radio stations up for sale by the Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., including Baltimore's WVRT-FM (104.3), plan to make an offer to buy the stations.James P. Fox, vice president and general manager of the Baltimore station, announced the collaboration with Edward T. Hardy of Portland, Ore., (KUPL-AM/FM) and Donald W. Meyers of Memphis, Tenn., (WMC-AM/FM).The management group has engaged Pacific Coast Securities, a Portland investment banking firm, to assist in making the offer.

Andrea Parquet-Taylor, news director for WMAR-TV, is leaving the Baltimore station after less than a year to take the same position with WXYZ-TV in Detroit, according to colleagues. Both stations are ABC affiliates owned by the E.W. Scripps Co. WMAR general manager Drew Berry would not confirm her new appointment, but noted that Scripps had made a series of executive shifts recently. "We expect another announcement Monday," he said. WXYZ's vice president general manager, Grace Gilchrist, did not return a call seeking comment yesterday.

About 60 sailors and Marines who shipped into Baltimore for Sailabration, the maritime festival marking the bicentennial of the War of 1812, combined shore leave with community service. They spent Monday volunteering at the Baltimore Station, a transitional housing and counseling center for men, many of whom are veterans. They were among the 4,000 military men and women who visited the city during Sailabration. They took in the sights, sampled the fare and, in many instances, donated their time and talent to local projects before their ships left Tuesday.

WBFF-Fox45 led Baltimore stations in winning eight regional Emmys announced Saturday night at the Newseum in Washington. But overall, that was only good for a fifth place finish behind one Virginia and three Washington stations in the competition for the awards presented by the National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. WTVR, in Richmond, won 12 regional Emmys, while Washington outlets WRC, WJLA and WTTG won 11, 10 and 9, respectively.

Military past and present came together Friday morning on a patch of farmland that played a key role in the defense of Baltimore during the War of 1812. Armed with the weapons of landscaping, 55 sailors and Marines in town for the Star-Spangled Sailabration reclaimed the ground around Todd's Inheritance Historic Site from years of neglect. "Does everyone know their assignment?" asked Larry Leone, an officer on the historic site's board. "Destroy bushes," barked Marines.

An 18-year-old man dressed in women's clothes was fatally shot in the head at a gas station in East Baltimore early Saturday morning, according to police. Desean Bowman, of the 200 block of Ballou Court, was pumping gas shortly after 2 a.m. at the Exxon gas station at the corner of E. Fayette and N. Caroline streets, near the Douglass Homes neighborhood, when a female friend of his got out of the car he was fueling and went to the station's cashier window, police said. At the window, the girl was approached by an unknown man who identified himself as "Tay" and attempted to talk to her, police said.

A theft this month of 311 gallons of gasoline from a station in Baltimore is one in a series of similar incidents, according to the station's owner, who says people have been disabling pumps and allowing friends and relatives to fill their tanks for free Mehdi Rezakhan, who owns BP stations in Remington and East Baltimore, said each businesses has been hit once, and stations owned by friends have been taken several times, one for 1,800 gallons of...

It's been a tough month for music fans, and the bad news hasn't slowed down. On Wednesday, we lost the Godfather of Go-Go and D.C. legend Chuck Brown to complications from sepsis. He was 75. Naturally, his loss was felt particularly hard in the Baltimore and D.C. areas. Local writer Al Shipley tweeted , "[O]n the drive home I heard Chuck Brown music on 5 different radio stations, including a Baltimore station and a rock station. " Read the Washington Post obituary by Chris Richards here . And today, Donna Summer lost her battle with cancer.

In the shadow of a South Baltimore shelter, a high-ranking federal housing official brought an eloquent message of hope yesterday to the homeless men who have found refuge there.For far too long, said Andrew Cuomo, HUD's assistant secretary for community planning and development, cities have received inadequate federal aid for programs like the South Baltimore Station, a shelter mainly for men overcoming drug and alcohol abuse.Baltimore was the first stop on Mr. Cuomo's 10-city publicity blitz for legislation that would boost from $800 million to $1.6 billion the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's annual budget for homeless programs.

With an eye on cultivating a regional network, the Baltimore CFL Colts are on the verge of awarding radio broadcast rights to WJFK-AM (1300) of Infinity Broadcasting."

A large swath of downtown Baltimore's west side would become the city's third state-designated arts and entertainment district, and the state's 20th, if Maryland economic development officials approve a city application designed to strengthen the area. The proposed Bromo Tower Arts and Entertainment District is a 117-acre tract that would join districts in Station North and Highlandtown as city areas in which individuals and businesses would be eligible for tax breaks for arts-related activities and investments.

A loaded handgun was found in a holding cell in a Baltimore police station this week, officials confirmed after receiving inquiries from The Baltimore Sun.  The weapon, a .22 caliber handgun with six rounds in the chamber, was found by an officer as he was placing a suspect into a cell in the Southeastern District station on March 12, according to a report provided by police. The officer had entered the detainee's information in a station log book, then walked into the cell to hand back a driver's license when he noticed a black knit glove lying on a shelf.